“You whose hatred has destroyed Alpèasak, you disown me? I accept that and say that everything that has been between us will be no more. Now it is I who disown you and will obey you no longer.”

She turned her back on Vaintè and saw the uruketo close offshore, called out to the Daughters.

“We leave here. Swim to the uruketo.”

“Kill them, Stallan!” Vaintè screeched. “Shoot them down.”

Stallan turned and raise her hèsotsan, ignoring Enge’s cries of pain, aimed, and fired dart after dart at the swimming Yilanè. Her aim was good and one after another was hit and sank beneath the water. Then the hèsotsan was empty and she lowered it and looked about for more darts.

The survivors had reached the uruketo, the scientist, Akotolp, and a male among them, when Enge turned away. “You bring only death, Vaintè,” she said. “You have become a creature of death. If it were possible I would abandon all of my beliefs just to end your life.”

“Do it then,” Vaintè said mockingly, turning and raising her head so the skin was taut on her neck. “Bite. You have teeth. Do it.”

Enge swayed forward, then back, for she could not kill, not even one so deserving of death as Vaintè.

Vaintè lowered her head, began to speak—but was stopped by Stallan’s harsh cry.

“Ustuzou!”

Vaintè spun about, saw them running towards her waving hèsotsan and pointed sticks. With instant decision she closed her thumbs and clubbed Enge to the ground with her fist. “Stallan,” she called out as she dove towards the water, “to the uruketo.”

This was what Kerrick saw as he ran up the river bank. The dead Yilanè on all sides, the living in the water. A single one standing, looking towards them, a Yilanè he would never forget.

“Don’t shoot!” he called out loudly, then again in Sasku. “That marag is mine.” Then he spoke in Yilanè as he went on, his meaning blurred by his running but still clear.

“It is I, Stallan, the ustuzou who hates you and means to kill you. Do you flee, great coward, or do you wait for me?”

Stallan did not need these taunts, barely heard them. For her the sight of Kerrick’s running figure was enough. This was the creature she hated more than anything else in the world, the ustuzou that had destroyed Alpèasak. She dropped the empty hèsotsan and roaring with rage she charged at him.