Lilla punched him in the jaw and he fell, boneless. ‘Bring him and any meat that’s ready that we can haul alongside the wounded,’ Lilla said.

‘What about the dead?’ someone muttered. ‘We drag his carcass with us but not our kin?’

‘We’re at war,’ Kux said, though her jaw was trembling with suppressed emotion. ‘Strip them of talismans, honour them, and then leave them. There’s no time for more.’

‘Besides,’ Lilla added, searching out Tiamoko in the press and relieved to find him alive. ‘There’s been talk Malel might demand a sacrifice.’ He jabbed the unconscious Axi in the ribs with his sandal. ‘Looks like we’ve found one.’

There was a pause, and then they set to work, taking jewellery and hanks of hair from Tokob and Yaloh dead and placing jade beads on their tongues, payment to see them safely through the Gate of the Ancestors. The dead feeding the jungle that fed the living.

‘Be at peace in the harmony of living and dying. We sustain what sustains us, in the endless circle.’ The same whisper, over and over as each corpse was honoured. ‘We will drum for you. We will dance your spirits through the spiral to rebirth. Rest now.’

‘Let’s go,’ Lilla said softly when it was done and the wounded were on their feet or being supported. The Axi dangled like a dead deer from a long carrying pole slung between two warriors.

Lilla took the tail and Kux the head of the group and they set off with many bitter glances back at the clearing and their dead. The mood was blacker than the clouds and guilt filled Lilla’s chest until he thought he would choke.

They encountered no further ambushes during the march back to the Sky City. A march in which two of the wounded died from the brutal pace they set.

Lilla sent the Paws to rest and then he and Kux dragged Aez up through the city to the council chamber, intermittent sun lightening the limestone streets beneath their feet. He tried to coax the embers of his anger back into flame, but he was too tired.

Both councils were there, seated in a double ring on thin mats, spaces left free for the Fangs. Other warriors took possession of Aez and forced him to kneel at the rear of the chamber, spears poised. Even so, Lilla didn’t much like turning his back on him.

High Elder Vaqix called the meeting to order before they were even properly seated. ‘Kux, Lilla, you return from scouting and from hunting – and from battle. How many warriors have stepped onto the spiral path under your command?’

Lilla winced. ‘Seventeen bodies have returned to the earth, High Elder.’

‘What were you doing so far south?’ Vaqix demanded.

‘We weren’t,’ Kux said before Lilla could. ‘We were inside Tokoban. They should not have been within a hundred sticks of us.’