‘Yes.’ He looked to Dorrin. The lad nodded vigorous assent. ‘Yes we can.’

‘Good. We Silent People do not. These are yours, then.’

‘Ah, may I ask … how did these come into your possession?’

The old man was untroubled by the question. ‘Foreigners bring them from their houses that float. They land them and try to ride through our lands – but they still do not escape our blades.’

Kyle blew out a breath. ‘I see. Well … we thank you for the gifts. They will aid us greatly.’

‘Very good. Fare well, then. Remember us to the ancients. Prove your worth and bring honour to us all.’

Kyle inclined his head. ‘I will try. Fare well.’

The old man walked away. Lyan already had a hand on the neck of the biggest of the three, a broad roan. ‘That one’s mine,’ Kyle called.

‘No she ain’t. I’m heavier than you in my armour, so she’s mine.’

Kyle just shook his head. He wasn’t about to argue with her over that subject.

* * *

Aiken was out hunting birds when he saw the smoky ochre cloud to the south. A storm, but one unlike any he’d seen before. He shouldered his bow and ran for the village.

When he arrived many of the elders were already out peering to the south. They were quiet, and to Aiken they appeared strangely troubled by a mere storm. He found his mother standing before their hide and pole hut. ‘A storm!’ he announced, excited. He’d always enjoyed storms: the lighting and thunder of gods battling overhead.

‘I see, little grub,’ she answered distractedly, her gaze still to the south. ‘Get inside.’

‘But Mama!’ She clenched his arm and thrust him within. ‘Mama!’

A warband ran past the hut, led by Hroth Far-seer. They ran with their knives in their hands.

‘Who is it?’ he asked, now wondering if perhaps he should be afraid.

‘Stay within,’ his mother barked. She pulled her blades from her belt, and ran.

A rumbling and crackling reached him, as of thunder, and a dark wall burst over the hut obscuring almost all the light. Dust washed within, choking him. Of course! A dust-storm! He’d seen one of these before. But what was there to fear? Save the animals wandering lost?

Footfalls sounded all about, sifting and thumping. He heard the crack and grating of weapons clashing, gasped breaths, hisses of pain, and the grunt of mortal blows taken. He stared out of the opening, now an ochre curtain of shifting and gusting dust. Blurred shapes ran past, wrestled, duelled.

He recognized the outline of his own, and was chilled by the hoary shapes they battled: cloaked in wind-blown rags, skeleton thin, some bearing armour of animal bones.

The demons of his people’s legends. The demons of dust. Come for them at last, as their oldest myths warned.