Where the slaves were, there the master would be. He lifted his torch and turned toward the stern of the ship.

There, on his high seat, sat the king. Gazing out over hounds and horse and women. His teeth grinning out through shriveled skin. A gold circlet still lay on the bald skull. Stepping closer, Shef stared into the half-preserved face, as if looking for the secret of majesty. He remembered the urge of Kar the Old, to keep things his, to have them under his hand forever rather than live without them. Beneath this king’s hand there was a regal whetstone, the ensign of the warrior-king who lived by sharpened weapons alone. Shef’s torch suddenly went out.

Shef stood stock-still, skin crawling. In front of him there was a creak, a shifting of weight. The old king lifting himself out of his chair to settle with the invader who had come to take what he had hoarded. Shef braced for the touch of bony fingers, the awful teeth in the dried leather face.

He turned from his place and in the pitch-black walked back four, five, six paces, hopefully to the point where he had first descended. Was the blackness just perceptibly reduced? Why was he shaking like a common slave? He had faced death above—he would face death here in the darkness.

“You have no right to the gold now,” he said into the blackness, groping his way back to the high seat. “Your children’s children’s child gave it to me. For a purpose.”

He groped till his fingers found the torch, then bent over while he worked his flint and steel and tinder out of their pouch, strove to catch a spark.

“Anyway, Old Bones, you should be glad to give your wealth to an Englishman. There are worse than me who would take it from you.”

Torch alight again, he propped it against a rotting timber, stepped up to the seat with its grisly occupant, put his arms round the body and lifted it carefully, hoping the remains of flesh and skin and cloth would hold the crumbling bones together. Turning, he laid it down to face the women’s bodies in the well of the boat.

“Now you three must fight your own battles down here.”

He took the gold circlet from the skull and pressed it down on his own head. Turning back to the empty chair, he picked up the whetstone, the scepter that had lain under the king’s right hand and tapped its solid two-foot weight meditatively into one palm.

“One thing I will give you for your gold,” he added. “And that is vengeance for your descendant. Vengeance on the Boneless One.”

As he spoke, something rustled in the dim darkness behind him. For the first time Shef recoiled with shock. Had the Boneless One heard his name and come? Was he trapped in the tomb with some monstrous serpent?