He saw movement at the corner of his eye.

“Crawlies!” came the shout from above him.

He pulled at her, a surge of power from raw fear, and he shouted.

Something caught his feet and pulled.

Favour fought the urge to scream and turned his head, his face full of sand, and there was Daud the Red, pulling his feet. There was a surge, and shout, and Kriax came free of the sand. A shower of arrows fell somewhere off to his right.

Favour got to his feet.

Daud had Kriax.

Favour snapped up his latchet and began to run. He didn’t look to the right or left, and he ran soft footed and very fast. Men were shouting; a woman’s voice, and someone close to him shouted, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck . . .”

It was his own voice.

A crawlie erupted from the sand, just to his right, and he raised the latchet one handed and popped a bolt and ran without missing a stride.

His eyes were on the rocks; the collapsed stone structure of the ancient causeway. He leapt onto the first one, got his feet under him, and leapt to the second, and the third, and then with one surge from his thighs he was up, his hands grabbing the iron-hot edge of the road, and he swung his legs like an acrobat, and got one knee up, and for a moment, just a moment, he paused, unable to do more.

Something rustled below him, a clicking, slithering noise.

In one panicked explosion he got his shoulders up and he was over, rolling on the road, scrambling back.

The crawlie came up, the mandibles searching for him. He could see its eye patches and smell the horrific acid exhalation from its pink-purple gullet, and he was on his back, his hands and feet going like some reversed crab.

He rolled, his latchet still in his left hand, and drew his short sword as he got to one knee, and his cut went into the mandibles almost at the root, and he cut one free even as he covered the other with the steel bow of his latchet.

The thing gave an odd, pitiful mewling cry and slipped away, and Favour stumbled back and saw that the thing’s carapace was studded with arrows, a hundred fletchings protruding from it, and a flood of love, of companionship and fellowship, filled him.

His people had his back. The whole other side of the cut was lined with scouts. An arrow whistled past his head; he ducked.

The crawlie fell away.

Daniel Favour took four or five deep breaths, and then saluted with his sword across the gap, and the scouts roared back.

Then he sheathed his sword. It took him four tries. He stepped back to the edge. The usual feeding pile was already as high as the road surface but evilly silent, the grotesque fishtail of one of the crawlies spasming in death . . .