Gruntle, still perched on top of the carriage, narrowed his gaze on the approaching men. Buke and the servant, Emancipor Reese, both looked exhausted, deeply shaken, whilst the sorcerers might well have simply been out on a stroll for all the discomfort in their composure. Yet they were armed. All-metal crossbows, stained black, were cradled on their vambraced forearms, quarrels set and locked. Squat black quivers at their hips showed but a few quarrels remaining in each.

Climbing down from the carriage, Gruntle strode to meet them.

‘Well met, Captain,’ Bauchelain said with a faint smile. ‘Fortunate for you that we made better time since the river. Since Saltoan our peregrination has been anything but peaceful.’

‘So I’ve gathered, sir.’ Gruntle’s eyes strayed to Buke. His friend looked ten years older than when he’d last seen him. He would not meet the captain’s eyes.

‘I see your entourage has grown since we last met,’ Bauchelain observed. ‘Barghast, yes? Extraordinary, isn’t it, that such people can be found on other continents as well, calling themselves by the same name and practising, it seems, virtually identical customs. What vast history lies buried and now lost in their ignorance, I wonder?’

‘Generally,’ Gruntle said quietly, ‘that particular usage of the word “buried” is figurative. Yet you have taken it literally.’

The black-clad man shrugged. ‘Plagued by curiosity, alas. We could not pass by the opportunity. We never can, in fact. As it turned out, the spirit we gathered into our embrace – though once a shaman of some power – could tell us nothing other than what we had already surmised. The Barghast are an ancient people indeed, and were once far more numerous. Accomplished seafarers as well.’ His flat, grey eyes fixed on Hetan. A thin brow slowly lifted. ‘Not a question of a fall from some civilized height into savagery, however. Simply an eternal ... stagnation. The belief system, with all its ancestor worship, is anathema to progress, or so I have concluded given the evidence.’

Hetan offered the sorcerer a silent snarl.

Cafal spoke, his voice ragged with fury. ‘What have you done with our soul-kin?’

‘Very little, warrior. He had already eluded the inner bindings, yet had fallen prey to one of your shamanistic traps – a tied bundle of sticks, twine and cloth. Was it compassion that offered them the semblance of bodies with those traps? Misguided, if so—’

‘Flesh,’ Korbal Broach said in a reedy, thin voice, ‘would far better suit them.’

Bauchelain smiled. ‘My companion is skilled in such ... assemblages, a discipline of lesser interest to me.’

‘What happened here?’ Gruntle asked.

‘That is plain,’ Hetan snapped. ‘They broke into a dark circle. Then a demon attacked them – a demon such as the one my brothers and I hunt. And these ... men ... fled and somehow eluded it.’