She is his mother.

She felt Maquin’s hand on her arm, saw him gesture that it was time to leave. She didn’t want to go, a wave of empathy for the giant mother and child almost overwhelming her. She had been a Vin Thalun slave, just with different shackles. She wanted to help them.

There was a burst of sound close by, the reeds shuddering about them as Senios tore himself from Maquin’s grip and threw himself forward. Maquin lunged after him, his knife stabbing into Senios’ leg. The two men tumbled down the riverbank, splashing into the water, disappearing in a mass of white foam.

Panic exploded in Fidele. The two men rose to the surface of the river, grappling, spluttering. Senios broke free of Maquin’s grasp and swam away, heading for the far bank. Maquin followed, seemingly oblivious or uncaring that the Vin Thalun warriors from the ship had noticed the commotion and were aiming their spears at the river.

‘No!’ Fidele yelled at Maquin. And he must have heard her, for he glanced up at her, then back across the river to where Senios was being hauled up on the ship by his comrades. Maquin scrambled back to Fidele, grasping at her hand to pull himself ashore. There was a whistling sound as a spear sank into the ground close by, another followed shortly behind.

‘Quickly,’ Maquin snarled, vanishing into the reeds. Fidele paused and looked back, saw the two giants staring at her. For a moment Fidele’s eyes locked with the mother. I am sorry, she thought.

CHAPTER TEN

UTHAS

‘Lift,’ Uthas cried, and a dozen Benothi giants grunted as they took the weight of the cauldron on two long iron poles. For a few moments the cauldron hung suspended over the dais, its resting place for two thousand years, then they shuffled forwards, transferring it onto a huge wain that stood nearby. Its timber frame was reinforced with iron, but it still creaked as the cauldron’s weight settled. Leather straps were tightened and secured to iron rings, fixing the cauldron in place. Then a leather sheet was unfurled and tied tight, hiding the cauldron from sight. The wain had taken nearly two full days and nights to construct, the forges of the Benothi belching smoke as great wheels and axles had been fashioned, using iron and weathered and hardened timber gathered from the huge doors that had hung within the fortress of Murias.

It still stinks in here. Uthas wrinkled his nose. The cauldron’s chamber was still littered with the dead. The Benothi giants had tended to their own fallen, carrying their dead kin from the hall to lay them in a great cairn beyond the gates of Murias, but the stinking tangle of Jehar and wyrm corpses had been left to rot. He looked with disgust at the bodies strewn about him. Some of them appear to have been . . . chewed upon. Uthas looked up, his eyes meeting with Calidus, who stood beside the wain directing his Kadoshim brethren. He let out a long breath and looked away. I don’t want to know.