“Neria,” Konrad said. “She looked a little like Lulah. Small, strong, rarely a smile on her face. She came to meet us down at the beach, and she arrived armed with all her raider weaponry. They used swords like us, and bows and arrows sometimes, but their favorite weapons were their throwing knives and stars. She had a belt of knives around her waist, straps of stars around each shoulder and down across her breasts, and more strapped to her thighs. As she came along the beach, the youngsters of the village ran to her, shouting in a language we had not yet heard them speaking. But I'd heard those words before. They sounded like waves hitting rocks, and it was the sea-banter of the raiders.

“We prepared to fight, though we knew this would not be much of a battle.

“The raiders were incredible warriors. We Mancoserians know how to fight, but our enemy is normally a seethe-gator. Strong enemies, cunning and vicious and powerful, yet they are animals, and they're all similar in how they fight. You could learn to fight seethe-gators by listening to elders and their experiences. Raiders were different, because each raiding party had its own methods, and sometimes even its own aims. Some came just to kill because they liked killing. Others came to steal Mancoserians for slaves, or to take women to rape, or men to work repairing their boats.

“One time, seventy years before I was born, a raider party landed and drove quickly inland, hitting a settlement that no longer exists today. But it was not the raiders who wiped it from the map, it was us. We fought back, so the telling goes, and when the raiders threatened to slaughter everyone in the settlement, we attacked, killing everything that moved—raiders and Mancoserians alike—chasing the last of the raiders back to the coast and pinning them to their boat with iron spars before sinking it. Some say that boat still sails, crewed by wraiths. It was one battle won, at terrible cost, but it led to three more lost, because the raiders grew more vicious with each attack that followed.

“How do you fight such an enemy? How can you hope to defeat people like that?” He drank, and Nomi could see that his eyes were glistening. It could have been the root wine, but she thought it more likely to be the story still to tell.

Konrad walked around the fire, turned and went the other way, as if trying to warm both sides.