Using his Sky-legs like stilts, Vasin made his ponderous way back towards solid ground, the hunter following behind, spear ready. He set the tribute down on a slimy piece of rock and looked around. The swamp appeared quiet but his instincts told him otherwise. ‘Did you see what it was that grabbed you?’

‘No, my lord. I felt it though, wrapped around my legs. Kept squeezing, it did, every time I stopped moving.’

Vasin jerked his attention back to the tribute. ‘What? Explain yourself.’

‘It held me there. I tried pulling free but I wasn’t strong enough. Wondered about using my torch to burn it off me but I was scared it’d go out. I got tired, but when I stopped fighting it squeezed me so hard I thought my knees were going to pop. I fought then, and that’s the truth. I never fought so hard in all my life!’

More and more of the Ruby hunters were joining him, forming a protective circle around their position.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Vasin. ‘It grabbed you and then forced you to struggle?’

The tribute nodded hurriedly.

‘And it didn’t cut you or bite you or try and drag you under?’

‘No, my lord.’

Was it holding the tribute in place for something else? He knew that things of the Wild sometimes made deals with each other as well as humans. Perhaps this creature ‘owed’ another and was simply trying to repay a debt. But Vasin didn’t believe that. With everything that he’d seen since arriving on House Ruby lands – Quiverhive’s experiment on the Godroad, the escalating number of attacks on Ruby settlements, the strange focus and grouping of the Murkers – he felt sure there was more to this.

And at that moment, there was a change in the air, confirming his fears.

The water began to thrum, softly at first, but he felt the dissonance run up his Sky-legs and across his armour. The sensation was as familiar as it was unpleasant. And it was directly below him.

‘Weeper!’ he shouted.

The hunters began scrambling in their pouches for earplugs but Vasin already knew from the way the water began to boil about them that it was too late.

The first thing to break the surface was the noise, a sharp wailing sound that knifed the ears of all that heard it. Vasin’s sapphire helm mitigated it somewhat, pulling the teeth of the sound such that it was merely unpleasant. His hunters had no such protection, however. They began to add their cries to the Weeper’s, making a chorus of misery, unrehearsed, yet horribly, organically in time.