‘For Hood’s sake don’t show us,’ Murillio said. ‘You’ve been wearing those slippers for as long as I’ve known you, Kruppe. Poleil herself would balk at what might lurk likely between them.’

‘And well she should! To answer Coll with succinct precision, Kruppe proclaims that anger – nay, rage – has no efficacy against one such as himself, for whom the world is as a pearl nestled within the slimy confines of his honed and muscled brain. Uh, perhaps the allusion falters with second thought ... and worse with third. Kruppe tries again! For whom, it was said, the world is naught but a plumaged dream of colours and wonders unimagined, where even time itself has lost meaning, speaking of which, it’s very late, yes? Sleep beckons, the stream of calm transubstantiation that metamorphoses oblivion into reparation and rejuvenation, and that alone is wonder enough for one and all to close this fitful night!’ He fluttered his hands in a final wave and walked off. After a moment, the mule trotted in his wake.

The two men stared after them.

‘Would that Brood’s hammer connected with that oily pate,’ Coll rumbled after a moment.

‘It’d likely slip,’ Murillio said.

‘Aye, true enough.’

‘Mussels and brains and cheesy toes, by the Abyss, I think I’m going to be sick.’

High above the camp, Crone crooked her weary, leaden wings and spiralled down towards the warlord’s tent. Despite her exhaustion, shivers of excitement and curiosity ran through her. The fissure to the north of the encampment still bled Burn’s fouled blood. The Great Raven had felt that detonation when still over the Vision Mountains far to the southeast, and had instantly known it for what it was.

Caladan Brood’s anger.

Kiss of the hammer, and with it an explosive reshaping of the natural world. She could see despite the darkness, and the sharply defined spine of a basaltic mountain range loomed where no mountains belonged, here at the heart of the Catlin plain. And the sorcery emanating from the blood of the Sleeping Goddess – it, too, Crone recognized.

The touch of the Crippled God. Within Burn’s veins, a transformation was taking place. The Fallen One was making her blood his own. And that is a taste I know well, for it was as mother’s milk to me, so very long ago. To me, and to my kin.

Changes had come to the world below, and Crone revelled in changes. Her soul and that of her kin had been stirred once more to acute wakefulness. She never felt more alive.

Slipping beneath the warm thermals, she descended, bobbing on pockets of cool air – echoes of the traumatic disturbance that had churned through the atmosphere at the eruption of Brood’s fury – then sliding down to land with a soft thump on the earth before the warlord’s tent.

No lights showed within.

Faintly cackling, Crone hopped beneath the half-hitched entrance flap.