Nothing mattered. Mantuas, quick-witted, loud-mouthed Mantuas, was dead, drowned in a sucking mudpool. It happened so fast. Even Hunric, who could track his way through a Staccian blizzard, hadn’t seen it coming. There hadn’t been a thing they could do. Slithering on their bellies, poking branches; Mantuas, take hold, take hold! He couldn’t free his arms from the muck, could only blink, desperately, as it covered his nostrils. He sank fast. Turin had turned away when the mud reached his eyes. By the time he dared look, only a few locks of hair lay atop the burbling muck.

Farewell, Mantuas.

A good job they’d turned the horses loose.

Lord Satoris might be wroth, but Lord Satoris should have known. This was the place that had engendered him. Had it been fair, once? Hunric said old trackers’ tales claimed as much. Well, it was foul, now. All the muck and foetor that fouled the Verdine River crawled straight from the stinking heart of the Delta.

“Hold.” Ahead of him, Hunric paused, probing the watery passage with a long stick he’d cut from a mangrove tree. “All right. Slide along here.”

“I’m coming.” Turin followed his lead, slogging through waist-deep water along the edge of a clump of mangroves. His waterlogged boots were like lead weights on his feet, slipping on the slick, knotted roots that rose above the swamp. Only fear of snakes kept him from removing them. A few feet away, a basking lizard blinked at him and slithered rapidly in his direction, flicking a blue tongue. “Gah!” Turin recoiled, flailing his arms as the heavy pack strapped across his shoulders overbalanced him.

“Steady!” Hunric caught his flailing wrist, bracing him. “It’s just a lizard, lad. It won’t harm you.”

“All right, all right, I’m all right!” Turin fought down his panic and shook off the tracker’s hand. Was his gear secure? Yes, there was his sword, lashed sideways atop his pack. He reached behind him, felt the reassuring bulk of the supplies he carried. There was gold coin there, Lord Vorax’s gift, useless in this place. Arahila willing, the bannock-cakes were secure in their oilcloth wrappings and they would not starve just yet. “All right. Let’s go.”

“Here.” Hunric scooped a handful of muck from the bottom of the swamp. “Plaster it on your skin. It will help keep the gnats off.”

He pushed away the proffered hand, dripping mud. “I don’t want it on me.”

“Turin.” There was a despairing note in the tracker’s voice. “Don’t make it harder. I’m sorry about Mantuas, truly. I don’t know the terrain and the Delta is harder than I thought. I’m doing my best.”

“Hunric?”

“Aye?”