Kade frowned, rippling the short strip of hair bifurcating his forehead, but didn’t protest beyond that. His comrades all had shaven heads, the sigils of their tribes shorn into them, down to the dark scalp. The melanochromatic defect common to all Salamanders was yet to manifest, though in time it would blacken their tanned skin to the colour of onyx.

‘We’ll bring them down on us,’ Har’gaan said, glaring at Za’tenga. His reddish irises seemed to flash with embers of anger. ‘You were born into war, but that doesn’t mean you understand it, Za’tenga. They’re circling because they are looking for us. Shoot now and you might as well send up a flare.’

Za’tenga’s retort was barbed. ‘Then what do you suggest? Let them stalk us, wait until we are vulnerable and carry off another like they did Runial? Or shall we cower here, under this rock, until the heat kills us?’

‘I don’t like either of those paths,’ declared Kade, ‘so we had best find another.’

Smoke was thickening in the fire canyon, and flames licking at the edges of Illion’s discovered route were creeping closer.

Har’gaan choked back a wad of sooty phlegm before answering. ‘We advance, reach the edge of the canyon. Illion has got us this far.’

Za’tenga scowled. ‘You’ll kill us all, Har’gaan. Then who will join the ranks of the Fire-born?’ he said, and tramped off after Illion who was already on the move again.

Har’gaan didn’t answer. He had noticed Kade looking at the smoke-wreathed summits of the canyon that flanked the party to either side.

‘What are you staring at?’ he asked, keeping his head low against the choking fog.

The Themian peered intently, but Har’gaan could not see what his keen eyes had picked out.

Kade’s response was to prime his shotguns.

Har’gaan saw only smoke at first, but then he caught the flicker of something through the grey. Heat haze was spoiling focus but a slithering torso, long and segmented, appeared before burrowing out of sight. In the brief reveal, Har’gaan counted four creatures. They were moving down the canyon wall, digging right through it. He knew what they were and the thought chilled him despite the heat inside the fire canyon. Years ago he had watched a herd of sauroch moving through the Pyre Desert, their drovers wrangling the beasts from the back of grav-wagons. Eight men and fifteen sauroch died in minutes, dragged under the sand and devoured. Har’gaan had watched his uncle try to fight one of the creatures off. It coiled its viperous body around a sauroch first, crushing its ribcage, lungs, internal organs, and then bit off the man’s arm before it took him screaming into the dirt and the dark. Har’gaan alone survived.

The drovers never returned to that same patch of desert again.

Serrwyrms, the creatures were called.