‘Live, damn you!’ she screamed at him, a fist pounding his chest. His eyes snapped open. He heard that.

I’m trying, but it’s not as easy as you’d think. In truth just staying focused on her face was proving difficult; a dark nimbus formed around the periphery of his vision, the urge to close his eyes over-whelming. So tired.

A noise grew, filling his head: pounding, rhythmic, growing louder. Hooves? Shadows were all around him now, a flash of hooves stamping. Arms reached down and grabbed Fidele, pulling her away and his head thumped onto the earth.

She fought them, shouting, reaching out, pointing at him.

Then hands were gripping him, lifting him high. A new face appeared, a man, thick black beard on a weathered face. He grinned, which Maquin thought was strange at a time like this.

‘Welcome to Ripa,’ the face said, and then the darkness surged in and Maquin knew no more.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

LYKOS

Lykos stood on deck and stared up at the tower of Ripa. Gulls circled and screeched and absently Lykos spied a sea-eagle, sailing the currents high above the flocks of gulls.

He is like me. Striking without warning. But I did not strike quickly enough. The tower still stands, its walls and gates closed against me.

He tried to focus on strategy, on finding a way to end this, but his mind kept looping back to Maquin and Fidele. For a moment he had not believed his own eyes, not believed that his fortune could be quite so good. Two moons he had waited for word of their capture, had become increasingly frustrated with every passing day. Eventually word reached him that their trail had been found, only for them to disappear again. And then, nothing.

Until today, when he saw them staring straight at him from a sea of undulating grass.

And again they have escaped me.

‘Your boat is ready,’ a voice behind him said. Kolai, his shieldman. Lykos had hand-picked another dozen men, a mixture of pit-fighters and corsairs, more than he had ever felt the need for before. But a knife in the back had convinced him of his mortality. Better too many than too few.

Lykos made his way across the ship’s deck and swung nimbly over the side, climbed down a rope net into a rowing boat bobbing on the swell. The wound in his back was as good as healed, though he could sense a weakness there, an ache when he exerted himself. His twelve shieldmen were already in the boat, half of them sitting at the oars. Each one of them had a grapple hook and rope wound about one shoulder. Kolai dropped into the boat behind him and they set off, cutting across the bay to the harbour.