They drew closer, until they fetched up alongside their warrior companion. Through the latticework of tangled brush, Hanako looked out upon a winged, scaled monstrosity. It favoured one forelimb and bled from a haunch as it staggered clumsily in the shallows. The massive head at the end of its long, sinewy neck was pitching wildly, tilting to one side.

Erelan’s eager words came in a hiss. ‘Blinded in the right eye. I but wait until it makes itself blind to the shore.’

‘Why not leave it be?’ Hanako asked.

Erelan grunted. ‘See that axe – there upon the strand? Torn out from that forefoot?’

Lasa gasped. ‘Oh dear, that weapon belongs to my beloved Ravast!’

‘Look then,’ Erelan continued in a rough growl, ‘to the blood on its maw – the gore slung between fangs!’

‘My husbands have been devoured, and not by me!’

Erelan straightened suddenly. ‘This warrior avenges you, Lasa Rook!’ Leaping up on to a boulder, he readied his mace, and then jumped down on to the pebbled wrack and raced forward.

The monster heard nothing as it slapped at the water. Its blinded eye was turned to the shoreline, and so it saw nothing of Erelan’s furious charge.

The heavy mace struck the beast’s head, just behind the blinded eye. The impact was sufficient to crush its orbital, its flared cheekbone, and one side of the creature’s skull.

Blood sprayed from its nostrils and it lurched away with a drunken stagger.

Erelan struck again, this time with a blow coming from high above, straight down on to the flat of the creature’s head. The mace buried its striking end in the skull, halted only by the weapon’s bronze-sheathed shaft. Pitching suddenly on to its side, the dying beast coughed out a heavy gush of blood. Legs kicked fitfully as Erelan wrenched free his mace. He clambered on to the monster’s back, perching atop one shoulder, and swung a third time. The snap of the bones of the neck was sharp, echoing out across the lake’s waters.

The creature slumped in twitching death.

Hanako set out, Lasa following, arriving on the pebble-strewn beach in time to see Erelan draw out his gutting knife and begin carving into the carcass’s chest.

‘He seeks the hearts,’ said Hanako, ‘in keeping with his warrior’s—’

‘Host to every manly fever,’ Lasa Rook said in a bitter tone, ‘his antics leave us cold. My husbands!’ She fell to her knees at the axe lying on the stones. ‘Ravast, so young, so fresh to my bed! I see the fury of your battle! The bravery of your stand! Who was first to dive down the fiend’s maw? Garelko, too slow as always, too old, in all his creaking ways! Tathenal! Did the beast toss its head in swallowing you down? Like a sliver of flesh? Like a fish down a heron’s gullet? Did you complain all the way? Oh, my heart grieves! Ravast!’