'Now!' she hissed at him. 'Just get it—'

The axe blade made a clicking sound as it split her head neatly down the middle, all the way to her chin. Blood sprayed out and spattered in Dogman's gawping face, and the witch's thin body slumped down on the stones like it was made of nothing but rags.

Dow frowned as he twisted the haft of his axe this way and that, until the blade came free of Caurib's ruined skull with a faint sucking sound. 'That bitch talks too much,' he grunted.

The Bloody-Nine felt the change. Like the first green shoot of spring. Like the first warmth on the wind as the summer comes. There was a message in the way the Feared held him. His bones were no longer groaning, threatening to burst apart. The giant's strength was less, and his was more.

The Bloody-Nine sucked in the air and his rage burned hot as ever. Slowly, slowly, he dragged his face away from the giant's shoulder, felt the metal slide out from his mouth. He twisted, twisted until his neck was free. Until he was staring into the giant's writhing face. The Bloody-Nine smiled, then he darted forward, fast as a shower of sparks, and sank his teeth deep into that big lower lip.

The giant grunted, shifted his arms, tried to drag the Bloody-Nine's head away, tear the biting teeth out of his mouth. But he could more easily have shaken off the plague. His arms loosened and the Bloody-Nine twisted the hand that held the Maker's sword. He twisted it, as the snake twists in its nest, and slowly he began to work it free.

The giant's blue left arm uncoiled from the Bloody-Nine's body, his blue hand seized hold of the Bloody-Nine's wrist, but there could be no stopping it. When the sapling seed finds a crack in the mountain, over long years its deep roots will burst the very rock apart. So the Bloody-Nine strained with every muscle and let the slow time pass, hissing out his hatred into the Feared's twitching mouth. The blade crept onwards, slowly, slowly, and its very point bit into painted flesh, just below the giant's bottom rib.

The Bloody-Nine felt the hot blood trickling down the grip and over his bunched fist, trickling out of the Feared's mouth and into his, running down his neck, leaking from the wounds across his back, dripping to the ground, just as it should be. Softly, gently, the blade slid into the Feared's tattooed body, sideways, upwards, onwards.

The great hands clawed at the Bloody-Nine's arm, at his back, seeking desperately for some hold that might stop the terrible easing forward of that blade. But with every moment the giant's strength melted away, like ice before a furnace. Easier to stop the Whiteflow than to stop the Bloody-Nine. The movement of his hands was the growing of a mighty tree, one hair's breadth at a time, but no flesh, no stone, no metal could stop it.