My body felt hollow from wanting sleep, but I had a powerful urge to keep going, and to say I had got no keen joy from killing my enemies would be to lie. In fact I was looking forward to next meeting them with a distinct thirst for blood, a raiding warrior again, with a store of fury to spare. I had been slave and coward and sophisticate too long in Eshkorek, and the gilt was wearing thin.

Eventually, I saw a red glow on the black ahead of me.

In an ancient quarry about eight feet below, a fire burned, and around it sat seven men. Two were unmasked skull-heads, the other five wore the ragged gray and saffron livery I recalled as being Nemarl’s. The slave guide was also with them, roasting over the flames on a skewer a couple of ill-skinned rabbits.

I was curious to learn how they would eat these, the households of the two Javhovors, unlike Erran’s, keeping as they did to the pretense of secret stomachs. But I never did learn, for one of the skull captains turned to me, took in my gear and horse, and said, “Well, Skor, we have abandoned the search for tonight. Did you come across Zrenn and Orek and the rest out there, chasing their tails in the dark?”

So it was the cousins of Demizdor who were yet absent, together with two of Nemarl’s men. All others I had accounted for, bar these in the quarry.

“No,” I said. I was smiling in the mask, biting on the feel of violence to come. Seven men for killing. I never thought I should not do it. Even if they wounded me, I would heal. They were babes left in the grass of the lion’s run.

“No? That’s a short sentence for Skor,” a man remarked. “What, no grumbles about the storm and the ride, and a wolf hunt with no wolf to be found?”

“Oh, there’s a wolf,” I said.

And I rode the horse straight over the edge and across the fire at him, striking him down as I passed, wheeling, and leaning to slaughter three more before they realized properly what devil was loose among them.

The Dark Slave had tumbled aside. I took up his skewer, the roasting rabbits still fixed on it, and got another unmasked skull-head through the brains with it as he came for me.

Then someone had stumbled the horse, which crashed over, and I with it. A man of Nemarl’s leaped on me; I twitched aside, and his blade, missing the heart, pinned my right shoulder to the earth. I wrenched up the length of it with a howl of agony and rage, and smashed my fist into his jaw, and as his head snapped back, I stabbed him left-handed in the throat.

He fell on me, stone dead. I got up from under him and worked the sword out of my flesh. Only the slave and I remained. The last skull-head was scrambling from the quarry, yelling for Zrenn (or maybe for his mother; it was hard to be sure). I wished for an arrow or spear to bring him down, but had none, and a knife would not travel far enough.