The body seemed all wrong, somehow—folded into angles normal bones did not allow. It had a long, bony head which stuck out before and behind, and hard, leathery skin which only made the inhuman shape more obvious. The dead creature’s arms were long and might have had an extra joint in them—it was hard to tell because of the darkness, but also because Gyir had made such a bloody mess of the thing. Still, it was the head that was most disturbing, especially the long, bony, beaklike snout, and although the dead creature’s forehead was nearly human, the deep-set eyes might have belonged to a lizard.

The clothes that it wore were disturbing, too. The fact that this monster wore anything at all, much less a full battle-rig, an oily leather jerkin under chain mail, was enough to make Vansen’s stomach squirm and a sour taste rise into the back of his mouth.

A second beak-faced corpse lay a few feet away, the bony head cut almost in half, the clawed, bloody hands still spread as if to ward off the deathblow.

“Perin’s hammer, what are these…things?” Vansen asked. “Were they after us?”

“Don’t know, but Gyir says they’re Longskulls,” Barrick said. “That’s one of the reasons he’s so angry. He’s still suffering from the wounds the Followers gave him, he says, or he would have had all three of them.”

“Longskulls,” wheezed Skurn. “And not ordinary roving Longskulls either, this lot. They belong to someone, they do—can tell it by their wearings.”

Gyir bent and turned the creature’s ugly head with his sword blade so that they could see a mark scorched onto its bony face—a brand, several overlapping, wedge-shaped marks like a scatter of thorns.

“Jikuyin,” Barrick said slowly. “I think that is how Gyir would say it.”

The raven gave a croak of dismay. “Jack Chain? Them do belong to Jack Chain?” He fluttered awkwardly up onto Vansen’s shoulder, almost overbalancing him. “We must run far and fast, Master. Far and fast!”

“The one you talked about?” Vansen looked from the silent Gyir to Barrick. “I thought we had left his territory behind!”

The prince did not answer for a moment. “Gyir says we will have to take turns sleeping and watching from now on,” he said at last. “And that we must keep our weapons close.”

The road was still overgrown, half-invisible most of the time beneath drifts of strange plants or the damage from roots and floods, but the trees were beginning to thin: ragged segments of gray sky appeared on the horizon, stretched between the trunks of trees like the world’s oldest, filthiest linens hung out to dry. Even the rain was lightening to a floating drizzle, but Barrick did not feel a corresponding relief.

What are we running from? he asked Gyir. Not those bony things?

Take care. The fairy reached out a pale hand, pointing at a spot just ahead where the way forward dissolved into tumbled stones and shrubbery. Barrick reined up and the weirdling horse named Dragonfly walked around the ruined section before resuming its trot. Gyir leaned forward over the horse’s long neck again, looking like the figurehead of a most peculiar ship.