“He left you here to delay us,” said Pleasant, “and went on to the Temple without you. How far is it?”

“Three days’ ride,” Noche said.

Pleasant curled his fingers, and the Necromancer gasped for breath. “Tell us where it is.”

They rode.

On the second day they had grass under their horses’ hooves.

The third day they found Serpine’s horse. It had snapped its leg in a gulley and Serpine hadn’t even had the decency to put it out of its misery. Hopeless laid his hand on its neck and put a bullet in its head, and it was a kindness, and then he remounted and they carried on.

They made good time. Serpine’s tracks got fresher. They reached the top of a hill, looked down across the valley and saw a man running and falling, making his way to a rocky outcrop of curiously shaped stones and boulders. Standing outside the opening to what looked like a cave were a dozen figures in black, all in a line, watching Serpine approach.

The Dead Men tore down that hill like the devil’s own demon dogs. They got close enough so that when Serpine glanced back they could see the fear and exhaustion painted across his dirty, sweating face.

Then he stumbled through the line of black, and disappeared into the cave behind them.

Pleasant leaped from the saddle, using his magic to propel himself through the air like he’d been shot from a cannon. He landed a couple of strides from the line of Necromancers.

“Move,” he said.

The Necromancers, being the contrary lot that they were, showed no intention of budging an inch. The one in the middle, the one who’d stepped aside to allow Serpine pass, gave Pleasant a smile.

“Welcome to our Temple,” he said. “Ours is a place of peace and learning. Do you have business here?”

“Move,” Pleasant said again. His voice, usually so smooth, was coarse as the sand they’d travelled across to get here. The Dead Men dismounted behind him, walked slowly up till they formed a wedge at his back. They kept their hands close to their guns.

“Nefarian Serpine is a guest,” said the talkative Necromancer. “He has provided us a service in the past, and so he is under our protection. I’m afraid I can’t let you through.”

“If you side with our enemy,” said Pleasant, “you become our enemy.”

To his credit, the Necromancer didn’t seem all that intimidated by a walking skeleton with guns on his hips. He gave Pleasant another smile. “That’s a rather simplistic view of things, isn’t it? There’s really not much room for manoeuvring around that little philosophy. I prefer, personally, to take each moment as it comes, and to treat every obstacle as an opportunity to do something different. It makes life interesting.”