‘Bastard,’ she hissed, and drew back her foot for another kick.

A war-cry froze her for an instant. Something silver blurred the air over her shoulders and her head toppled from her neck. Blood jetted. Neese screamed. Lyan lunged, turning the blade, and impaled the other sister to the ground through her chest. Kyle climbed awkwardly to his feet.

‘Couldn’t take two damned girls?’ Lyan said.

‘I was on top of things.’

‘They were all over you.’

‘I didn’t want to kill them.’

‘Bullshit.’

A wet cough brought their attention to Neese. She’d turned her head to where the blade lay in the grasses. It glowed with a gold-tinged light, like coming dawn when the moon is still high. ‘We thought …’ she breathed, ‘just stories …’

Kyle limped to the blade, took it up. He raised his gaze to meet Lyan’s staring, wide eyes. Grimacing, he picked up the sheath and hid the blade within, holding it edge down. He wrapped it in a leather belt. ‘Can’t leave them here,’ he said.

‘There’s a pit over there.’

He nodded. ‘I will head east tomorrow.’

Lyan hesitated, cleaned her blade on Neese’s leathers, then bent her head in assent. ‘We will go east tomorrow.’

‘You’re better off—’

‘We’re better off together,’ she cut in, firm.

Kyle chose not to argue the point. There was no way he could stop them from following him if they would. And he was grateful, though twice as worried now. There was no way he would see them killed because of him. He studied the bodies. ‘We should take their gear.’

They journeyed east for three days without catching sight of another human being. On the third day Kyle found his attention wandering to his travelling companions. Dorrin kept up as they jogged through the days until loosing their breath, walked for a time to recover, then set off once more. Kyle had shouldered the other pack and so the lad ran unencumbered. Kyle hoped this was the main reason Dorrin could keep up. Not that he was getting old.

The boy also did exactly as Lyan told him. All without complaint, or face-making, or rebellion, and this struck Kyle as unlike any brother-sister relationship he’d ever heard of. He wondered whether they were in fact mother and son. But nothing in their manner reflected that: he saw no gestures of affection from either, no hugs or touches. Their behaviour to one another was in fact very formal, almost businesslike.

This drove him to say to her, as they walked along, and Dorrin was distant for the moment: ‘You are not brother and sister, are you?’

Lyan bristled at first, taking breath to mount a strong objection. But she seemed to reconsider and subsided, shaking her head. ‘No. We are not related.’

‘Yet you are more than just chance survivors. You have been together for some time.’

‘Yes.’

He simply waited, walking in silence until she sighed and waved as if capitulating. ‘I am his guard. The last of his bodyguard.’