‘The ingenious kind, Captain – Bluepearl loaned me the spell, but I can’t describe it, can’t write it down and show you, neither. Words and meanings hang around in the air, you know, seep into suspicious minds and trigger gut instinct. There’s nothing to blocking it if you know it’s coming – it only works when you don’t.’

Scowling, Paran turned to Quick Ben.

The wizard shrugged, ‘Shank wouldn’t cough himself to the front of the line if he wasn’t sure of this, Captain. I’ll sniff the Seerdomin out as he’s asked. And I’ll have a few back-ups in case it goes sour.’

Bluepearl added, ‘Spindle will hold back on a sharper, Captain, with the mage’s name on it.’

‘Literally,’ Toes threw in, ‘and that makes all the difference, Spin being a wizard and all.’

‘Yes? And how often has it made the difference in the past, Toes?’

‘Well, uh, there’s been a bad string of, uh, mitigating circumstances—’

‘Abyss below,’ Paran breathed. ‘Quick Ben, if we don’t knock that sorcerer out we’ll be feeding roots a drop at a time.’

‘We know, Captain. Don’t worry. We’ll stamp him out before he sparks.’

Paran sighed. ‘Toes, find me Picker – I want all these longbows trundled out and issued to everyone without a munition or spell in hand, twenty arrows each, and I want them to have pikes as well.’

‘Aye, sir.’ Toes climbed to his feet. He reached for one large, mummified toe strung around his neck and kissed it. Then he headed out.

Bluepearl spat onto the ground. ‘I feel sick every time he does that.’

A bell and a half later, the captain lay alongside Quick Ben, looking down on the middle stepped trail, where the glint of helms and weapons appeared in the late afternoon’s dull light.

The Pannions had not bothered to send scouts ahead, nor was their column preceded by a point. A degree of overconfidence that Paran hoped would prove fatal.

In the soft earth before Quick Ben, the wizard had set a half-dozen twigs, upright, in a rough line. Faint sorcery whispered between them that the captain’s eyes could only register peripherally. Twenty paces behind the two men, Shank sat hunched over his modest, pebble-ringed circle of ritual; six twigs from the same branch that Quick Ben had used, jabbed into the moss before the squad mage, surrounding a bladder filled with water. Beads of condensation glistened from these twigs.

Paran heard Quick Ben’s soft sigh. The wizard reached out, hovered an index finger over the third twig, then tapped it.

Shank saw one of his twigs twitch. He grinned, whispered the last word of his ritual, releasing its power. The bladder shrivelled, suddenly empty.

Down on the trail, the Seerdomin sorcerer, third in the line, buckled, water spraying from his mouth, lungs filled, clawing at his own chest.