The fish seemed to fling its entire body backward.

Karsa lunged closer, closing his legs around the creature’s body just beneath the flanking flippers. The fish twisted away at the contact, but could not drag itself free of Karsa’s tightening grip.

The Teblor reversed his sword and plunged it deep into the beast’s belly, ripped it downward.

The water was suddenly hot with blood and bile. The fish’s body became a dead weight, dragging Karsa downward. He sheathed his sword; then, as he and the fish sank beneath the surface, he reached down into the gaping wound. One hand closed on the thigh of Borrug – a shredded mass of flesh – and the fingers dug in to close around bone.

Karsa pulled the lowlander through a cloud of milky, eye-stinging fluid, then, drawing the body with him, returned to the surface.

Torvald was shouting now. Turning, Karsa saw the Daru, standing in waist-deep water, both arms waving. Near him, Silgar and Damisk were wading their way onto some kind of shore.

Dragging Borrug with him, Karsa made his way forward. A half-dozen strokes and his feet thumped and scraped on a sandy bottom. He stood, still holding one of Borrug’s legs. Moments later, he was on the beach.

The others sat or knelt on the pale strip of sand, regaining their breaths.

Dropping the body onto the beach, Karsa remained standing, his head tilted back as he sniffed the warm, sultry air. There was heavy, lush foliage beyond the strand’s shell-cluttered high-tide line. The buzz and whine of insects, a faint rustle as something small moved across dry seaweed.

Torvald crawled close. ‘Karsa, the man’s dead. He was dead when the shark took him—’

‘So that was a shark. The sailors on the Malazan ship spoke of sharks.’

‘Karsa, when a shark swallows someone you don’t go after the poor bastard. He’s finished—’

‘He was in my care,’ Karsa rumbled. ‘The shark had no right to him, whether he was dead or alive.’

Silgar was on his feet a few paces away. At Karsa’s words he laughed, the sound high-pitched, then said, ‘From a shark’s belly to seagulls and crabs! Borrug’s pathetic spirit no doubt thanks you, Teblor!’

‘I have delivered the lowlander,’ Karsa replied, ‘and now return him to your care, Slavemaster. If you wish to leave him for seagulls and crabs, that is for you to decide.’ He faced the dark sea once more, but could see no sign of the dead shark.

‘No-one would believe me,’ Torvald muttered.

‘Believe what, Torvald Nom?’

‘Oh, I was imagining myself as an old man, years from now, sitting in Quip’s Bar in Darujhistan, telling this tale. I saw it with my own eyes, and even I am having trouble believing it. You were halfway out of the water when you swung that sword down – helps having four lungs, I suppose. Even so ...’ he shook his head.

Karsa shrugged. ‘The catfish were worse,’ he said. ‘I did not like the catfish.’