‘Aye.’ Lykos grinned in return, took another bite from his apple. It was blood red now, the flesh sweet, juice dripping down his chin.

Lykos’ eyes fluttered open.

Where am I?

The swaying sensation gave it away. On a ship. He reached out, gripped the side of a cot and pulled himself up. Pain throbbed in his back but he gritted his teeth and managed to sit upright. He sat there long moments, head in his hands, fighting the pain, the swirling sense of nausea and the fact that he felt weak as a newborn pup.

A door creaked and a figure peered into the cabin, a woman. He blinked, remembering her.

Nella. She had been his woman before his obsession with Fidele. Or one of his women. Something was strapped across her chest, a lump wrapped in linen.

She put a hand upon his head, her face creased with worry.

‘I’m fine, woman,’ Lykos said irritably. Or at least, that’s what he meant to say. It came out strangled and unintelligible. She poured water from a jug, which he drank greedily.

‘Slowly, or you’ll bring it back up,’ Nella scolded him. He waved her away.

Others came through the cabin door – old Jayr, his ship’s healer, Alazon, the white-haired shipwright, and another, a warrior bristling with hilts and iron. Where’s Deinon, my shieldman?

Memories and dreams were starting to blur. The arena, fighting the Old Wolf Maquin, Fidele. She’d put a knife in his back. After that everything was vague. Being carried, half-dragged, from the arena. Then nothing.

No, not nothing. The Otherworld. Calidus. He gave me a task to do.

His stomach growled, complaining about the sudden influx of water or the fact that he felt half starved, he did not know. Probably both.

‘Slow down with the water,’ old Jayr said as his fingers probed at Lykos’ throat, then lifted bandages from his waist, checking the wound on his back. ‘You’re well,’ he sniffed.

That didn’t mean much from Jayr, who pronounced everyone healthy until they were a handspan from death. But that in itself is encouraging, I suppose.

‘Where’s Deinon?’ Lykos managed to get out, his voice a croak.

‘Dead,’ Alazon said.

That hit Lykos like a punch in the gut. Of course they lived and usually died by the sword, but Deinon had seemed invulnerable. And he had been the closest thing to a friend that Lykos had known, his presence always reassuring.

‘The Old Wolf, so men have said,’ Alazon continued. ‘This is Kolai. I appointed him as your chief shieldman until you were able to choose Deinon’s . . .’ He didn’t finish the sentence.

Lykos gave Kolai a perfunctory nod as he looked him over. His age was hard to gauge, his skin weathered and scarred, but Lykos vaguely remembered him, had bet money on him. Another one from the pits. It always ages them on the outside. Thirty summers, maybe.