‘It was your seeming impatience that so struck me,’ she replied, drawing a muscled forearm across her mouth to sweep up the mucus and dirt, leaving it to glisten in the fine, almost white, hairs of her wrist. She then lifted and swept back her mass of wavy, golden hair. ‘But that is the curse of youth, after all. Berate me for my insensitivity, Hanako, and we can shudder down into our familiar roles.’

From behind the boulder, Erelan Kreed’s perfidious song ended abruptly. Stones grated underfoot, and then the warrior emerged, dragging the cave-bear’s skin behind him. ‘You complained of the night’s chill, Hanako,’ he said. ‘But now, in the months and perhaps years to come, you will be able to keep warm at night… as you chew the lord’s hide into suppleness.’

Lasa snorted, and so was forced to clean her nose yet again. ‘A suppleness the lord knew well. As well as his own skin. But years, Erelan? More like decades. The lord’s manifestation here, Hanako, is unmatched in my memory. It’s a wonder he managed to find a cavern big enough to home him.’

‘More the wonder that we did not even see it,’ said Erelan, ‘since it lies not twenty paces above us.’

‘And so the boulder that would so hide Hanako’s morning toilet did proffer the lord a most squalid gift, upon the very threshold of his abode.’ Even as she said this, she offered Hanako the breathtaking smile that had already ensnared three husbands.

‘I proffered no such gift,’ Hanako replied. ‘That unleavened loaf now resides in my left boot.’

This comment made Lasa Rook fold over once again, her laughter so intense that she struggled to breathe.

Stepping past Hanako, Erelan slapped a bloody hand down on the young warrior’s shoulder. ‘Next time you decide to wander off, pup, at the very least carry a weapon. You’ve not the claws or fangs to equal a bear. Still, the rolling embrace was a fine mummery to start this day.’ He then thrust something in front of Hanako’s face, making him flinch back. ‘Here, the lord’s lower jaw – it pretty much fell away. You came as close to tearing it off as to make a cutter hesitate to take coin.’

Sighing, Hanako accepted the trophy. He stared down at the jutting canines, remembering how they felt as they scored across his scalp. The thin white rings of the tongue-nest, lined up in parallel rows, were delicate as seashells.

‘As for the tongue,’ Erelan continued, ‘why, we have us breakfast.’ With that, the warrior continued on, stepping round the prostrate form that was Lasa Rook, and crouched down before the hearth. He had tucked the thick severed tongue through his belt, and now he drew it out to settle it atop a stone of the hearth, where it began sizzling. ‘The Lord of Temper’s run out of things to say, ha ha.’