She was on a broad mud flat, perhaps a raised floodplain. A clutch of dilapidated huts and shacks lay about. White smoke rose from a few smoke-holes. Great chunks of flat ice dotted a shore of black gravel. She lurched down to the shore. To the south rose the tall ice cliffs of the channel they had just navigated – or failed to navigate. She studied it and was dismayed to see that she was on the south shore. The wrong shore.

For some obscure reason this one further development was too much for her. She felt an uncontrollable urge to howl. She splashed out up to her knees in the frigid waters then collapsed, her face in her hands, and shuddered in spasms of weeping. She felt disgust and revulsion at everything: the cold, the touch of the grimy clothing, her sweaty clinging hair. She splashed the clean frigid water over her face and squatted there until she was utterly numb.

The coarse physicality of it all nauseated her beyond explanation. Gods! She’d come back to this?

Footsteps crunched in the gravel of the strand. She closed a fist on the grip of the dagger and raised her eyes a touch to peer over one forearm: it was Bars in his leathers, a mail coat over one shoulder. He extended a hand. ‘Knew you were about.’

She felt as if a death sentence had been reprieved. She clasped his hand, rising. The mail coat was hers and he handed it over. ‘Thank you,’ she told him. She was surprised by how much his massive presence reassured her. Any others?’

‘Gwynn’s here. Lean and Keel.’

She stared, horrified. ‘That is all?’

‘No. The Brethren say K’azz is on the north shore with others.’ She nodded at his words. The Brethren, of course. ‘Then we must rendezvous.’ Bars did not answer and she turned from peering across the channel. He was watching her with a strange expression in his dark sad eyes, something like worry. ‘Yes? What?’

‘We must go on?’

‘Yes. We must. We have come too far. Paid too high a price for anything else.’

‘Do you really think there are answers to be found here, Shimmer?’

‘K’azz does. He knows the truth – and I swear I will get it from him.’

The big man heaved a troubled sigh, eyed the north shore. ‘Well, then … we’d best be going.’

She peered about: rowboats and launches lay pulled up on the strand. ‘Gather the others. I’ll secure a boat.’

Bars offered a mock salute and crunched off across the gravel. Shimmer headed to one of the larger launches.