The Tiste Edur lowered his head to the clay and closed his eyes. ‘Then I am as good as dead in any case. None the less, I appreciate your breaking my chains. You need not remain here, though I would know the name of the warrior who showed me what mercy he could.’

‘Onrack. Clanless, of the Logros.’

‘I am Trull Sengar. Also clanless.’

Onrack stared down at the Tiste Edur for a while. Then the T’lan Imass stepped over the man and set off, retracing their path. He arrived among the catfish. A single chop downward severed the head of the nearest one.

The slaying triggered a frenzy among the others. Skin split, sleek four-limbed bodies tore their way free. Broad, needle-fanged heads swung towards the undead warrior in their midst, tiny eyes glistening. Loud hisses from all sides. The beasts moved on squat, muscular legs, three-toed feet thickly padded and clawed. Their tails were short, extending in a vertical fin back up their spines.

They attacked as would wolves closing on wounded prey.

Obsidian blade flashed. Thin blood sprayed. Heads and limbs flopped about.

One of the creatures launched itself into the air, huge mouth closing over Onrack’s skull. As its full weight descended, the T’lan Imass felt his neck vertebrae creak and grind. He fell backward, letting the animal drag him down.

Then he dissolved into dust.

And rose five paces away to resume his killing, wading among the hissing survivors. A few moments later they were all dead.

Onrack collected one of the corpses by its hind foot and, dragging it, made his way back to Trull Sengar.

The Tiste Edur was propped up on one elbow, his flat eyes fixed on the T’lan Imass. ‘For a moment,’ he said, ‘I thought I was having the strangest dream. I saw you, there in the distance, wearing a huge, writhing hat. That then ate you whole.’

Onrack pulled the body up alongside Trull Sengar. ‘You were not dreaming. Here. Eat.’

‘Might we not cook it?’

The T’lan Imass strode to the seaside edge of the wall. Among the flotsam were the remnants of countless trees, from which jutted denuded branches. He climbed down onto the knotted detritus, felt it shift and roll unsteadily beneath him. It required but a few moments to snap off an armful of fairly dry wood, which he threw back up onto the wall. Then he followed.

He felt the Tiste Edur’s eyes on him as he prepared a hearth.

‘Our encounters with your kind,’ Trull said after a moment, ‘were few and far between. And then, only after your ... ritual. Prior to that, your people fled from us at first sight. Apart from those who travelled the oceans with the Thelomen Toblakai, that is. Those ones fought us. For centuries, before we drove them from the seas.’