The force they’d been tracking wasn’t alone. The force they’d encountered had fled – back to its friends. Two, maybe three hundred Tokob and Yaloh warriors spread across a clearing – a full war party – and Sarn had led them straight into it. Fighting broke out immediately and Ilandeh threw herself into it, shouting orders to tighten up again. Where they could, her pod obeyed, falling into close formation to protect each other.

Ilandeh heard the distinctive sound of a blowpipe and leapt to one side – no idea if she was moving into or out of the dart’s path. Nothing hit her so she kept moving, adrenaline speeding her limbs and smothering her hurts. She slipped beneath the flashing edge of a hatchet and ripped upwards into an armpit with her spear. Her attacker spun with the movement of his weapon and avoided the blow; she flowed into the next attack, letting the spear’s momentum carry it and her forward, the butt rising to catch her opponent in the back as he turned and shoving him off balance. She brought the spear back down again in an overhand blow, the haft slamming into the top of his shoulder.

The hatchet was too short and he couldn’t get close. She whirled around him and sank the spear tip into his arm, his arse, his thigh, none of them killing strikes as he managed to parry the full force of her blows, the hatchet’s stone head chipping pieces out of her spear haft as they attacked and counter-attacked. An arrow hummed between them and both ducked on instinct, but no more followed it and Ilandeh thrust again. The Yalotl countered, but the crack of wood on wood was high and wrong, and the hatchet’s head flew off the broken handle. He threw it at her and tried to grab for her spear; he got a hand on it, and pushed it wide and then jerked it back, free hand flailing for her. Ilandeh let go. The Yalotl stumbled back, unbalanced, and she kicked him in the thigh, where she’d grazed him with the obsidian.

He growled and began to swing the spear at her; Ilandeh spun in the same direction, just ahead of its arc, and punched him in the side of the neck; she kept going until she was at his back and snaked her right arm around his throat, grabbing the biceps of her left to complete the lock. She drove her right foot into the back of his knee, wrenching upwards at the same time. There was a grinding crunch and a pop, and his neck came apart in her arms.

Ilandeh held him up as a shield as she quartered the clearing. Most of her command was down: only fifty or so still fighting hard, and while their formations were holding, they were outnumbered two to one at least. She couldn’t untangle the mess Sarn had dropped them in.