Coots laid more moss and dried bracken on the modest fire. He hung his big gnarled hands over his knees. ‘Well …’ he rumbled, ‘we kinda had a fight with Stalker.’

‘Stalker?’ Fisher echoed. Then he remembered. ‘Stalker Lost – head of the clan.’

Badlands was nodding. ‘Yeah. He was all for coming back. We had us a falling out over it. Back when we was captured by that crazy mage in the Galatan Sweep.’

Coots looked offended. ‘Wasn’t then. Was when we tried pirating but got chased down by that Elingarth navy convoy.’

‘Was not! Was when you shacked up with that queen o’ them troglodytes!’

‘They wasn’t troglodytes – they just had an aversion to sunlight.’

Fisher raised a hand for a pause. ‘Well, you can’t mean to stay, surely? What are you eating?’

Coots looked to the low soot-blackened stone ceiling. ‘Oh … lizards, salamanders, bats, rats, birds, eggs, mushrooms, roots, frogs, and a cliff-climbing mammal kinda like a marmot.’

‘And a mountain goat,’ Badlands added.

Coots snapped his fingers. ‘Right. Forgot about that. There’s mountain goats on these cliffs too.’

Fisher’s brows rose. ‘Ah. I see. So you’re out hunting mountain goats?’

Badlands nodded. ‘Yeah. And there’s fish in the stream below.’ Fisher glanced over to Jethiss who stood to one side, frowning his confusion. ‘But this Bonewight means to take your bones, yes?’

Coots waved that aside. ‘Not till after spring break-up. That’s when the flood coming down the valley might damage the bridge’s foundations. Least, that’s what Yrkki says.’

‘Yrkki?’

‘Yeah. Yrkki. An’ he’s not a bonewight – he’s a bonewright. He’s real particular about that.’

‘He says he knows my name,’ Jethiss said from the darkness where the glow from the fire barely touched him.

Both Coots and Badlands eyed the Andii for a time. Badlands gave a musing frown, ‘Well, if he says he does, then he probably does.’

‘I want it from him.’

Coot blew out a breath, stretched. ‘Real cagey with what he knows is Yrkki. Been hanging around here for ages. Treats us like we’re equals, though. Funny that.’

Fisher took a breath and sang, low and slow: ‘Set in stone to ward the way, spirit guardians await the day.’

Coots and Badlands blinked at Fisher, then Badlands scratched his scalp beneath his bunched hair. ‘I’ve heard that before. That one o’ yours, Fish?’

‘Not originally. I transcribed it from a much older poem.’

Coots cracked his knuckles one by one. ‘Hunh. So you’re sayin’ Yrkki’s a prisoner himself? Set here to guard the way. Set by who?’

‘By the Jaghut,’ Fisher answered. He kept the rest of his suspicions to himself.

Badlands laughed. ‘Them old stories. Ghost stories. Hobgoblins and ghoulies in the night. All them hoary old ones is all long gone.’

‘An’ who’s he supposed to be guarding against, then?’ Coots asked.

‘The Jaghut’s enemy.’

The brothers lost their smiles. ‘That’s not funny, Fish,’ Coots rumbled.

‘I thought you said they were all gone?’