A shrill scream, a flash of black motion, and Paran found himself engulfed in black, oily, smothering feathers. Hooked beak scored lashing pain along his temple, ripping down to take his ear – he felt the grisly snip, the spray of hot blood down onto his neck.

Awareness fragmented to an explosion of bestial rage, rising within him—

Ten paces away, on his knees – too battered to do more than simply watch – Quick Ben stared, disbelieving, as the two figures thrashed in battle. Paran was almost invisible within a writhing, shadow-woven Hound. Not a Soletaken – not a veering. These are two creatures – man and beast – woven together . . . somehow. And the power behind it – it’s Shadow. Kurald Emurlahn.

The Hound’s massive jaws and finger-long canines ripped into the condor, chewing a path up the creature’s shoulders towards the neck. The demon, in turn, tore again and again into the beast – its flanks ribboned and spurting all too real blood.

The earth shook beneath the two beasts. A wing shot up to hammer into a tree. Bone and wood snapped as one. The condor screamed.

The tree’s broken base – knee-high – punched out and then down, pinning the flailing wing, then grinding through the limb as it toppled back, away from the two contestants, crashing in a storm of branches and bark.

Hound’s jaws closed on condor’s neck.

Vertebrae crunched.

The creature’s head flopped back to thud onto the churned forest floor.

The shadows of the triumphant Hound flickered – then the beast vanished.

Paran rolled from the dead bird’s body.

Quick Ben could barely see the man beneath the shredded flesh and blood. The wizard’s eyes widened as the ghastly figure slowly climbed to its feet. The skin along his right temple hung down, away from the bone. Half the ear on that side was gone, cut in a curved line that streamed blood.

Paran lifted his head, met the wizard’s gaze. ‘What happened?’

Quick Ben pushed himself to his feet. ‘Come with me, Captain. We’re taking a warren to a healer.’

‘A healer?’ Paran asked. ‘Why?’

The wizard looked into the captain’s eyes and saw no sign of awareness at all. ‘All right.’ Quick Ben took Paran’s arm. ‘Here we go ...’

Picker pushed her way through the boughs until she came within sight of the forest floor below. No-one in sight. Muddy tracks were all that remained of the Beklites who had passed beneath them half a bell past. She could hear fighting upslope, along the embankment and perhaps beyond.

The explosions of sorcery that had struck the legions at the base of the ramp had not continued – a cause for worry. They’d had a worse scare with the avalanche, but its path had missed them by a hundred paces or more. As if Quick Ben had known where we were. Somehow. Even more incredible, that damned wizard also managed to control the descent of a third of the mountainside. Maybe if a dozen High Mages had showed up to give him a hand, I might believe it.