The creature straightened and turned round. He held a struggling brother in each hand. The giant dragon skull lowered to regard Jethiss more closely. The otherworldly deep ocean-blue flames seemed to brighten in its empty sockets ‘Your name would only make you weep,’ he boomed in his basso voice.

‘No!’ The word seemed torn from Jethiss. He thrust out his hands as if refusing to accept what he heard. Darkness flew at the Bone-wright. Ink-black folds seemed to coalesce from the surrounding night to enmesh it. It threw the brothers free to claw at them.

‘What is this?’ Yrkki bellowed. ‘Galain?’

Jethiss thrust out his hands again and the monster tottered backwards, flailing. The folds and scarves of night appeared to be yanking it back into the ravine. The naked talons of its feet slid and gouged at the dirt as it slid. ‘None shall remember your name!’ it boomed as the black folds enmeshed its skull and it fell backwards, bone legs kicking, to disappear over the cliff’s edge.

Jethiss slumped to the dirt. Fisher ran to pick him up. Badlands joined him and threw the Andii over his shoulder. ‘Run!’ the man yelled, spraying blood from a split lip. They ran. Coots came behind, weapons out, covering their retreat.

They climbed a switchback trail that led to a knife-sharp ridge of rotten rock. The far side sloped down into a high mountain valley. It was a dark night but Fisher could make out a stretch of woods below. Badlands set Jethiss down in the hollow of two large leaning halves of rock, then sat rather heavily. Fisher eased himself down next to him. Badlands felt at his mouth. ‘I think I lotht a damned toof!’

Coots came to stand over them. ‘You’re always okay ’cause you land on your head.’

‘Same as you ’cept it’th your ath!’

Coots gestured to Jethiss, who lay unconscious. ‘How’d your friend do that?’

‘I don’t think even he knows,’ Fisher answered.

Coots grunted his acceptance, then rubbed the wide bulge of his stomach. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said, peering about. ‘I’m gonna hunt something up.’ He walked off into the dark.

‘Better be thoft and thewy!’ Badlands called after him, then groaned and cupped his mouth.

Fisher tucked a roll of bedding under Jethiss’s head. ‘I’ll take watch, if you like,’ he told Badlands.

The brother waved a negative. ‘Naw. You thweep. My mouth hurths.’

Fisher nodded, edged down further into his seat against the rock, tucked his hands under his arms, and let his chin fall. After the exhausting rush of the encounter with Yrkki, sleep came quite quickly.