Abaddon did not move but held his face and gaze still. There was pain in his side. He could taste blood. He was going to die, but he was not going to give these creatures that looked like men the trophy of victory. If they had come for his life and soul, then they would have to rip it out of him. The takers of the dead had always been there. They lived in the night and stars that circled through Cthonia’s skies. They watched, judged and took the worthy up to the dark to become like them. Some thought them just a story, but whole clans had vanished during the gang wars of recent years and were never seen again. The takers were real.

‘We have been looking for you,’ said the face, ‘for the exiled prince who killed his father rather than murder his oath-companions and become a man.’

Abaddon remained silent. The other figure, still half out of sight, shifted and gave a bark of laughter.

‘You won’t get anything from him, Syrakul. Look at him. He is not a talker. There’s too much anger looking for a way out. That’s why he is here. That’s why he nearly died in those tunnels and got everyone who believed in him killed. He may be a killer, but he is filled with so much fire that he will burn everything he touches.’

The second figure stepped into Abaddon’s blurred sight. This one wore the same grey-white armour as the first and held a comb-topped helm under his left arm. Abaddon’s eye caught the sign of a crescent moon marked on the helm above the right eye. The man’s skin was the black of polished cinder-wood. A close-cropped mohawk of hair ran across his scalp. Wide, silver-grey eyes glittered above a smile. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? You will look upon us and not say a word, even if we reach into you with knives and cut out your soul.’

The first figure, the one called Syrakul, stood.

‘Is my brother right, boy?’ asked Syrakul. ‘Or do you have more than anger flowing in your veins, Abaddon?’

He felt his face twitch at the sound of his name, and his eyes flicked between the pair looking down at him.

‘Yes. We know your name,’ said the figure with grey eyes. ‘We know who you are, and what you have done. We know that you killed almost all the clan of your birth, and that those that remain have hunted you ever since. We know that you killed everyone sent against you, and then found who sent them and did to them what they failed to have done to you. We know all this. We know you are a killer, and a survivor, Abaddon, son of Tarkerradon. What we don’t know is if you have the strength to be more.’