‘What's that? Jhogen?’ Comprehension dawned on Coots with a quiet humourless smile. ‘No. Not one of them.’

‘I heard talk in the Guard about giants who live in Stratem. In the East. Toblakai.’

Coots grunted. ‘No, not like them.’

‘The bigger they are, the slower,’ Stalker said, urging them on.

‘That from personal experience, there, Stalk?’ asked Coots, arching a brow. Stalker signed for silence. Making his way through the woods, Kyle wanted to ask Coots more of this giant but the time for that had passed. They moved silent through the trees, reached tended fields cut from the forest edge that led down to a loosely scattered collection of huts and pens that in turn straggled down to a strand of black rock and the grey choppy waters of the White Sea beyond. A biting landward wind stole through Kyle's armour, quilted padding and linen shirts. He pulled his cloak tighter. The gusts seemed to carry the sharpness of the ice that had given birth to it somewhere far out past the western horizon.

Hunched, Coots jogged down between the open ground of the fields. Kyle scanned the scattered huts; not one fire or lamp showed, though white tendrils climbed from some roof smoke-holes. Stalker followed, Kyle brought up the rear. Amid the huts Badlands emerged from behind a stick-pen holding goats. The four of them jogged down to the dark strand where the boat rested slightly aslant, bright against the black water-worn gravel, its single mast tall and gracefully slim.

Badlands pressed a shoulder to the raised stern, feet scraping amid the rocks. He pushed again, gasping. ‘Lad take it! Here's a complication.’

‘Keep watch,’ Stalker told Kyle. The three bent their shoulders to the boat. They strained, breathing in sharp gasps. Their sandalled feet dug into the gravel. Keening loudly, the boat scraped forward a hand's breadth on its log bedding.

Glancing away from their efforts, Kyle was shocked to see two men already approaching. One stunned him by his size, nearly twice the height of a normal man, carrying a spear fully half again as tall as him. The man at the side of this giant of a being, Jhogen or not, was somehow not in the least diminished. Dark, muscular, he moved with an easy grace that captured Kyle's attention. ‘Here they come,’ he murmured, aside. The three cousins straightened from their efforts. The boat had moved a bare arm's span.

As the two closed, Kyle found that he did not feel fear so much as an unaccountable chagrin and embarrassment – as if he were a common thief caught in the act – which, he reflected, was pretty much the truth of it. ‘You surprise me,’ the man said in Talian, motioning to the boat. ‘I didn't think anyone but my friend here could move it.’

‘Yeah, well, we're just full of surprises,’ Stalker ground out, a hand close to his sword.

The man's bright gaze moved to Kyle. ‘Young for the Crimson Guard, aren't you?’

Kyle glanced down; he still wore his sigil. ‘We quit.’

One dark brow rose. ‘Really? I did not think that possible.’

Through this exchange the giant stood straight, arms crossed, though a smile played at his mouth. His startling golden eyes held something like wonder as his gaze roved about them.

‘We need your boat,’ Stalker said.

‘If the Guard is after you, no wonder,’ the man observed dryly.

‘How much do you want for it?’ Kyle asked, surprising himself.

‘It's not for sale.’ The man's eyes were flat though his mouth quirked up in a half-smile. ‘But it is for hire.’

Stalker grunted something that sounded like a long curse of all the meddling Gods.

‘Where are you headed?’ the giant fellow asked in flowing musical Talian. His voice was taut, expectant, almost febrile in its intensity. It was a question Kyle had been giving much thought of late. Where could he possibly head in all the open world? Back to home, Bael lands? Or off to a new land, this Genabackis of which he heard so much among the Guard? But in the end he did not need to wonder; one place, one name, haunted him since overheard accidentally while he hid in the woods. A locale, and a possible mission as well. He addressed the two, ‘Have either of you heard of the “Dolmans”?’

Their reaction startled Kyle. To the man the name clearly meant nothing; his gaze remained flat, though it shifted to his companion. The giant flinched as if gut-punched. A shiver took him like the swaying of a tree trunk and he expended a hissed breath in a long murmuring supplication. ‘Yes,’ he managed, his voice thick with emotion. ‘I know it well. The Dolmans of Tien. It is of my homeland, Jacuruku.’

‘What fee, then, to take us there?’ asked Stalker, his gaze narrow on Kyle.

The man had already half-turned away. He said over his shoulder, ‘You've just paid it. We'll get our supplies then we will leave immediately.’

Though clearly unhappy, Stalker nodded. ‘What's your name?’

‘Traveller. This is Ereko.’

Stalker gave their names. Ereko inclined his head in greetings. ‘Well met, comrades,’ he said grinning now, having regained his composure. ‘We sail shortly into the maw of the Ice Dancer. It is a sea I know well, and judging from this frigid wind, it is readying itself for us.’ The two walked back up the strand.

While Stalker eyed Kyle, Badlands let out a long thankful breath. ‘Payment might still have to be made…’

‘Don't know if I'm looking forward to that scrap,’ said Coots.

Stalker refused to release Kyle. The Dolmans… that the place Skinner mentioned?’

‘Yes.’

‘And his contact. It was in Jacuruku, wasn't it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And now this Thelomen fellow, or whatever he is, says he's of Jacuruku.’

‘Yeah.’

Stalker spun away, disgusted. ‘Dark Lady, someone's meddling here. I don't like it. Too overt. There's going to be trouble. Push-back. I know it.’

‘What do you mean?’

He rubbed his hands on the planks of the boat. ‘A slapping down. A dispersal. Lad,’ he said, turning back, ‘the Gods are just scheming children. One is attempting to build a castle in the sand here. Soon the others will see this, or they have seen it. They'll come and kick it down.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they can't let the schemes of others succeed, Kyle. They each of them only want their own to succeed.’

‘I don't know if I agree with that.’

The tall scout shrugged. ‘Agree or not, that is how it is. In any case, seems we're still working for the Guard after all.’

‘One direction is as good as any other,’ said Coots with a dismissive wave.

‘Except home,’ said Badlands, hawking up a great throatful of phlegm and spitting on to the rocks.

Coots nodded. ‘Yeah. That would be the worst.’

Traveller and Ereko returned quite quickly. Kyle had to kick the cousins awake; they'd lain down on their cloaks and gone right to sleep. The two tossed their bundles in then Traveller waved everyone to the boat. One-armed, Kyle had barely touched the overlapping planks of the sides when the boat took off sliding down the logs; Ereko had merely leant his shoulder to the stern and it fairly flew down the strand. It gave a nerve-grating screech of wood-against-wood then charged prow-first into the grey water. Ereko had continued on with it and now stood in what for him was waist-deep water; Kyle, short himself, suspected it would come up near his shoulders. Traveller pointed to a row of sealed earthenware pots. ‘Those hold sweet-water. Get them aboard.’

Stalker didn't move, but after an ‘Aye, Captain’ from Coots the brothers bent to the task.

‘Those bundles of charcoal,’ Traveller told Kyle, indicating a ready-made pile.

‘Aye,’ Kyle responded without thought. Eventually, Stalker lent a hand to the loading of wrapped dried fish and roots.

Ereko had manoeuvred the boat closer to shore. They climbed aboard, getting wet only to the knees. Ereko pushed off then pulled himself in over the gunwale. He took the side-tiller while Traveller sat at the high prow.