Jezal winced. No jokes, please no jokes, but Finnius only chuckled. 'They didn't tell me you were funny. Reckon that's a bonus. At least until we kill you. Where's the other one, eh? The Navigator?'

'No idea,' growled Bayaz, 'unfortunately. If anyone dies it should be him.'

'Don't take it too hard. We'll catch up with him later.' And Finnius laughed an easy laugh, and the men around them grinned and fingered their weapons. 'So if you'd be good enough to give your arms to those fellows ahead of you, we can get you trussed up and start back towards Darmium before nightfall!'

'And when we get there?'

Finnius gave a happy shrug. 'Not my business. I don't ask questions of the Emperor, and you don't ask questions of me. That way, no one gets skinned alive. Do you take my meaning, old man?'

'Your meaning is hard to miss, but I am afraid that Darmium is quite out of our way.'

'What are you,' called Finnius, 'soft in the head?'

The nearest man stepped forward and grabbed hold of Bayaz' bridle. 'That's enough of that,' he growled.

Jezal felt that horrible sucking in his guts. The air around Bayaz' shoulders trembled, like the hot air above a forge. The foremost of the men frowned, opened his mouth to speak. His face seemed to flatten, then his head broke open and he was suddenly snatched away as though flicked by a giant, unseen finger. He had not even time to scream.

Nor had the four men who stood behind him. Their ruined bodies, the broken remnants of the grey tree trunk, and a great quantity of earth and rocks around them were ripped from the ground and flung through the air to shatter against the rocky wall of the gorge a hundred strides distant with a sound like a house collapsing.

Jezal's mouth hung open. His body froze. It had taken only a terrifying instant. One moment five men had been standing there, the next they were slaughtered meat among a heap of settling debris. Somewhere behind him he heard the hum of a bowstring. There was a cry and a body dropped down into the valley, bounced from the sheer rocks and flopped rag-like, face down in the stream.

'Ride, then!' roared Bayaz, but Jezal could only sit in his saddle and gape. The air around the Magus was still moving, more than ever. The rocks behind him rippled and twisted like the stones on the bed of a stream. The old man frowned, stared down at his hands. 'No…' he muttered, turning them over before him.