“Look,” said Lewenhardt. “Something is moving out there!”

Sanglant dismounted.

“Your Majesty!” protested Captain Fulk

“I’ll walk. The footing looks too tricky for horses.”

“Why go at all? If you’re swept away—”

“I think we have time. The second wave did not approach until we had walked all the way from the old fort. If you have ever sat upon the sea’s shore and watched the waves, Captain, you will have seen they have a rhythm of their own. These great waves need time to approach.”

Fulk had stood firm through many terrible events when others quailed and faltered, and although the prospect of drowning clearly horrified him, he did not fail Sanglant now. “Very well. I’ll come with you, Your Majesty.”

Sanglant grinned and strode forward. The ground was not hopelessly muddy because the tide had come up and receded too swiftly to soak in, but damp ash made the ground slick and debris from the forest caught about their ankles and snagged in their leggings. It was not silent but uncannily still, with no sign of life but their own soft footsteps. The hissing fall of ash serenaded them. Maybe it would never stop raining down. Perhaps the heavens themselves had burned and now shed the soot of their destruction over the earth. The throttling gurgle of the sea faded in the distance as the tide receded back and back beyond the tidal flats, although it was difficult to see anything clearly through the haze. Now and again they caught the scent of rot.

They walked out onto the plain, glancing back at intervals to see the forest, farther away each time, and the troop clustered at the fringe of the trees, obscured by falling ash.

‘Are you sure Lewenhardt saw anything, Your Majesty?” Fulk asked at last. “It could have been the wind. It’s hard to see anything with all this cloud and ash.”

“Hush.” Sanglant held up a hand, and Fulk fell silent, not moving, chin lifted as he, too, strove to hear. But few men had the unnaturally keen hearing that Sanglant possessed, and Fulk could not hear the faint sounds of splashing. “It sounds like a fish flopping half out of water. There!”

A ditch had captured something living that now thrashed in a remnant of seawater. They came cautiously to the edge and stared down into a pit filled with a murky blend of mud, water, and scraps of vegetation. A corpse was fixed between the axles of a shattered wagon, face mercifully hidden by one wheel, legs gray where they stuck out of the scummy surface.

‘Ai, God!” cried Fulk, stepping back in horror.

The tide had trapped a monster from the deeps. Sensing them, it heaved its body fully back into the water with a splash, but it had nowhere to hide. They could distinguish its huge tail sluicing back and forth. At last it reared up out of the mud defiantly, whipping its head side to side and spraying mud and flecks of grass and leaves everywhere. Its hair hissed and snapped at them, each strand like an eyeless eel seeking a meal out of the air. It had a man’s torso, lean and powerful, shimmering with scales. It had a face, of a kind: flat eyes, slits where a nose should otherwise grow, a lipless mouth, and scaly hands webbed between its clawed fingers.