‘No you don’t. Arathan will be with her. Together, they will return to Kurald Galain.’

Haut scowled. ‘Prophecy now, too?’

‘No,’ Hood replied, ‘I will send them on their way home by a more prosaic pronouncement. My boot to their backsides.’

* * *

The nameless leader of the Seregahl clawed through his tangled beard, forcing out twigs and old flecks of food that drifted down on to his chest. ‘A voice roars in challenge,’ he said in a caustic rumble. ‘It aches in the skull. In my skull. In the skulls of my companions. We are not like the other Toblakai. We have come into power. Others of our kind worship us, and rightly so. The Thelomen and Thel Akai fear us—’

There was a snort from just beyond the pallid light of Hood’s hearth.

As one, the eleven Seregahl turned at the sound, various visages twisting in various ways. Haut stifled a sigh and then grunted. ‘Don’t mind her,’ he said to the Seregahl leader. ‘A curious Thel Akai. Seems in the habit of following you lot around, in case you haven’t noticed.’

The leader bared his yellow teeth. ‘Oh, we have noticed, captain. Though she’d rather hide like a coward in the gloom.’

The vague, hulking figure in the darkness seemed to shift slightly. ‘I but await one of you to wander off,’ she replied. ‘Then I would challenge that one, and kill him. Instead, you find courage only in your pack. I name you bullies and cowards.’

Haut rubbed at his face and swung round to face the Thel Akai woman. ‘Enough, Siltanys Hes Erekol. Choose another time for such challenges. Hood has need of these Seregahl.’

‘Yet Hood sits there and says nothing.’

‘Nonetheless.’

After a long moment, the Thel Akai named Erekol made a motion that might have been a shrug, and then stepped back into the gloom, and moments later was gone from all sight.

The Seregahl leader was still grinning. ‘Many are our challengers. We dispense with each in our own time.’

‘Ah,’ murmured Hood from where he sat by his fire, ‘then it is true, then, what Siltanys Hes Erekol had to say. Unwilling to disassemble this glowering pack so delighting in its strut and raised hackles.’

The leader scowled. ‘We are an army. An elite company. We fight as one. Let Erekol collect up more of her kind and then choose the field. We will slay her and every fool with her. But you, Hood, what reason this mocking and insult? Have you not proclaimed us your vanguard? Have you not recognized our ferocity?’

‘I have doubts,’ Hood replied. ‘Many formidable warriors have now joined my… legion. Many are worthy of taking the vanguard.’

‘Gather them up,’ the Seregahl leader growled. ‘In sufficient number to stand before me and my kin. This will answer your doubts.’