Faint through the grey gloom, something of the two suns’ light, and that reflected from the moons, reached down – to cast beneath the Hound a score of shadows.

The beast bared fangs the size of tusks, lips peeling back in a silent snarl that revealed blood-red gums.

The Hound attacked.

Onrack’s blade was a midnight blur, flashing to kiss the creature’s thick, muscled neck – but the swing cut only dusty air. The T’lan Imass felt enormous jaws close about his chest. He was yanked from his feet. Bones splintered. A savage shake that ripped the sword from his hands, then he was sailing through the grainy gloom—

To be caught with a grinding snap by a second pair of jaws.

The bones of his left arm shattered into a score of pieces within its taut hide of withered skin, then it was torn entirely from his body.

Another crunching shake, then he was thrown into the air once more. To crash in a splintered heap on the ground, where he rolled once, then was still.

There was thunder in Onrack’s skull. He thought to fall to dust, but for the first time he possessed neither the will nor, it seemed, the capacity to do so.

The power was shorn from him – the Vow had been broken, ripped away from his body. He was now, he realized, as those of his fallen kin, the ones that had sustained so much physical destruction that they had ceased to be one with the T’lan Imass.

He lay unmoving, and felt the heavy tread of one of the Hounds as it padded up to stand over him. A dust- and shard-flecked muzzle nudged him, pushed at the broken ribs of his chest. Then lifted away. He listened to its breathing, the sound like waves riding a tide into caves, could feel its presence like a heaviness in the damp air.

After a long moment, Onrack realized that the beast was no longer looming over him. Nor could he hear the heavy footfalls through the wet earth. As if it and its companion had simply vanished.

Then the scrape of boots close by, a pair of hands dragging him over, onto his back.

Trull Sengar stared down at him. ‘I do not know if you can still hear me,’ he muttered. ‘But if it is any consolation, Onrack of the Logros, those were not Hounds of Shadow. Oh, no, indeed. They were the real ones. The Hounds of Darkness, my friend. I dread to think what you have freed here...’

Onrack managed a reply, his words a soft rasp. ‘So much for gratitude.’

Trull Sengar dragged the shattered T’lan Imass to a low wall at the city’s edge, where he propped the warrior into a sitting position. ‘I wish I knew what else I could do for you,’ he said, stepping back.