‘I'm looking-’

‘You're looking for the Hooded One, that's what you're doing!’ She dragged the child off. Lurching behind the woman the child glanced back; smiling shyly she raised her crippled arm to point to the river. Silk answered with a sign of the Blessing of the Protectress.

He found the three of them sitting in a line along the muddy shore of the Idryn, fishing. ‘Catch anything?’

None moved. ‘Same as what you're gonna catch,’ said one.

‘Which is…’ said the second.

‘Nothing,’ finished the third.

Sighing, Silk peered about and spotted a young willow with a passable amount of shade. He crouched on his haunches beneath, took out a silk handkerchief and wiped his face. This was not going to be easy. ‘We're going to defend the city-’

‘Wrong. What you're…’

‘Gonna do…’

‘Is lose.’

Silk forced open the fist he'd closed on his handkerchief, pushed it back into his shirt pocket. ‘Look. All that was a long time ago, OK? I'm sorry. We did what we thought was right at the time.’

‘You…’

‘Talkin’…’

To us?’

Old simmering grudges flared within Silk. ‘Hood take you! She would've lost anyway! There was no way Kellanved would've kept his word! They wiped out all the other local cults! Or made them their own. The same thing would've happened here.’

‘Sounds like…’

‘You're askin’ us…’

‘To trust you?’

Silk stared at their hunched backs. Their bloody stiff backs, all of them. ‘Liss is with me. Together we're going to give it everything we have. This is our best chance in the last century. You know that. Even you can sense it.’ Their heads edged side to side as they shared glances.

‘Been that long?’

‘A damned century?’

‘And I haven't caught a damned fish yet?’

Silk straightened and pushed his way out from under the willow. ‘You know where I'll be. The way's open to you now should you choose. With or without you we're going all the way with this.’ When Silk looked up from straightening his shirt and vest he saw that he'd been speaking to no one; the three were gone, sticks and all. Smartarses.

At noon of that same day Hurl sat uncomfortably on her horse as part of the official Hengan emissary to delegates of the Seti tribal high council, or ‘Urpan-Yelgan’, as it was known. She, Sunny and Liss constituted the representatives of High Fist Storo. Or, as the Hengan Magistrates insisted: ‘Provisional military commander of Li Heng, and Interim governor of the central provinces.’ Or, as Storo described himself, ‘everyone's favourite arrow-butt’.

For her part, Hurl thought it far beyond her duty simply to be mounted on a horse. To her mind if there was anything more evil than Jhags on the face of the earth, it was horses. She rode hers with one hand on the reins and the other on her knife – just in case. The day before a rider had approached under a white flag to request a meet. Storo had out and out refused. ‘I've got nothing to say to them,’ he'd complained. Hurl had been stupid enough to say, ‘Someone has to go.’ So, sure enough, she had to go.

Thankfully, the city magistrates thought it beneath their dignity to meet. As Magistrate Ehrlann put it, ‘I wouldn't know whom to address: them, their horses or their dogs…’

Now, Hurl sat uncomfortable and suspicious on her evil horse next to Sunny on his mount amid a veritable host of the malevolent beasts in the form of the 17th Mounted Hengan Horse. Mounted Horse? What a doubly iniquitous conceit!

The meet would take place on the summit of a hillock within sight of the city walls. Ahead, in the distance, lances tufted with white jackal fur could just be made out marking the spot. As they drew close Hurl motioned for the cavalry captain to hold back; she, Sunny and Liss would go on alone. Hurl kneed her mount onward – forward fiend! It cooperated, content perhaps for the moment to lull her suspicions. Sweat ran down from her helmet though the day was cool. A helmet! She couldn't remember the last time she actually wore a damned helmet. Sunny and Liss moved to flank her as the ‘official’ representative. Three mounted figures became visible climbing the opposite gentle slope, three men, two obvious shamans in their furred regalia, long tufted lances, headdresses and full draping fur cloaks. The lead man was harder to place; a soldier, that much was obvious, and foreign, non-Seti. He wore a plain ringed leather hauberk over a quilted undershirt, a battered blackened helmet under one arm. Dominating his figure though, stood the length of a Seti double recurve bow jutting up from a saddle sheath yet reaching fully as tall as he. His grey hair was brush-cut and barely visible over a balding scalp tanned nut-brown. A grey goatee framed a thin mouth that drew down his long face. He nodded to Hurl, who responded in kind.

‘Whom am I addressing?’ he asked in unaccented Hengan.

‘Hurl, representative of Fist Storo Matash, military commander of Li Heng.’

The man's colourless brows rose. ‘Fist, is it? Not endorsed, I should think.’

‘You are?’

‘I am Warlord of the Seti tribes. They have seen fit to place their confidence in me.‘ He indicated the bearded shaman in jackal furs. ‘This is Imotan.’ He motioned to the shaman in ferret furs. ‘Hipal.’

Hurl motioned to her flankers. ‘Sunny. Liss.’

At the name Liss the jackal shaman started. Beneath his tall furred hat his craggy brows drew down. ‘Liss? Liss in truth?’

Liss let out a throaty laugh and slapped a wide thigh. ‘He knows the story! I am flattered. Yes that was me, the seductive dancing girl – lithesome Liss! I've never forgotten the vows of your predecessor all those years ago. “Come to me, Liss,” he begged. “Let me be your first! I will love you forever!”’

The shaman's eyes bulged further and further with every word from Liss. His face darkened almost blood-red. ‘Quiet, woman!’ he spluttered. ‘Will you shut up!’ He glared about as if the hilltop were crowded. ‘Have you no honour? No modesty?’

‘Honour? Modesty? But that was the last thing he ever wanted from me.’ She leant aside to Hurl and whispered in mock soft-voice: ‘How he begged me to throw aside all modesty, then! And he certainly didn't want my mouth closed, then’

‘Do tell,’ Hurl managed, torn between horror and falling off her horse from stifling her laughter. At her other side Sunny's evil grin was as wide as Hurl had ever seen it.

‘I, ah, take it the two of you require no introduction,’ the warlord offered – showing astounding tact, Hurl thought.

‘None at all,’ Liss answered before anyone could speak again. ‘Let me tell you a story. Long ago I was a young Seeress of the White Sand tribe, the youngest and most gifted in ages. And I was a Sun Dancer, too. Perhaps that was when I caught the eye of a certain youth selected to become a shaman of the feared man-jackal? So long ago, wasn't it, Imotan? But at that time I was too young for wooing and marked as sacred as well, a spirit vessel. But what is that to those who think themselves entitled to anything, eh? What did your predecessor long ago care that by seducing me he destroyed my potential as Sun Dancer? I, who called the sun back to the plains at the year's turn, who interceded for the blessing of rain? Never mind the evil of rape that marked my body and my spirit! Do you remember the vow I swore when it was I who was thrown from the tribe, not he? Do you not know the story, Imotan…?’

Both shamans now gaped at the old woman. ‘Surely,’ Hipal sneered, ‘you are not standing by that wild claim! Vessel of Baya-Gul! Patroness to Seers and guide of our Sun Mysteries?’

‘I am she.’

Imotan waved to his warlord. ‘I do not know who this poor deluded old woman is, Warlord. Ignore her ravings. There is a story among our people of such a young woman named Liss from long ago and this may even be she, but all that has nothing to do with our business here today.’