'I could make some steel arrowheads if we can find something like ironstone.' Naldeth looked thoughtfully around.

'Which would use a lot more magic and might well catch a dragon's curiosity,' Risala said instantly.

Kheda carefully bent the bow, drawing the newly fletched arrow to his chin. 'Let's see what these people can come up with.' He let fly and the shaft soared over the lizard skin to clear the thorn barricade entirely and vanish into the distant thistly plants. The gathering hummed with excitement.

Perhaps they think there's magic in the feathers to make the arrow fly more true.

Kheda turned to the stooped hunter and offered him the bow. Everyone else immediately fell silent.

The stooped hunter licked his lips, blinking rapidly. His hands shook as he picked up a naked arrow. He mimicked Kheda's action in drawing the bow but lowered it awkwardly without loosing the unfletched shaft. Taking a deep breath he drew a second time and shot. The shaft

flew across the enclosure to fall short of the lizard skin. The hunter looked at Kheda, plainly chagrined.

Kheda grinned back and nodded emphatic approval, pleased to see the man's face clearing. 'I think they've got the idea.'

Several of the other hunters shuffled closer, patently eager to try this new weapon themselves.

Naldeth looked at them with amusement. 'Where did you learn to make bows like that, Kheda?'

'My father taught me and my brothers,' the warlord said with a pang. 'He said we never knew when we might find ourselves without the trappings of privilege, so we needed to know how to keep ourselves alive with no more than a sharp knife and sharper wits.'

'A man of some forethought,' Naldeth said approvingly.

'Or one who foresaw you'd have need of such knowledge.' Risala challenged Kheda with a brief glance.

'Can you both help them make more bows, while I see if we can fashion any kind of arrowheads?' Kheda went back to the dead mage's hut. The wild men and women followed readily enough, though none would go inside. Kheda passed out handfuls of wood, leather and grass. Risala immediately had to stop the eager hunters layering them together without soaking the leather first. The women laughed as they sat in a loose circle, twisting fresh lengths of cord from the grasses they had commandeered.

Finally convinced she had made her meaning clear, Risala sat back on her heels and glanced up at Kheda as she wiped sweat from her forehead. 'These people may lack knowledge but they don't lack wits or dexterity.'

'No,' Kheda agreed. 'Naldeth, can you make us some more of those bone needles without catching a dragon's attention, please?'

'Oh yes.' Naldeth hurried off towards the hearth with a few curious savages trailing after him.

Kheda turned to the stooped hunter and, drawing his own dagger from its sheath, he tapped it with one finger before tapping his own chest. Sheathing the steel, he tapped the hunter's bony breastbone and held out his empty hand expectantly.

Curiosity flickered across the man's brow as he delved in the folds of his ancient, stained loincloth to retrieve his crude knife of black stone. Seeing the fineness of the edge, Kheda couldn't resist trying it on the dark hairs dusting his forearm. The razor-sharp stone shaved his skin clean. He nodded his approval, then, raising his elbows and shrugging his shoulders, he mimicked trying to break the tip off the end. The hunter reached involuntarily for the knife before he realised Kheda wasn't actually damaging it. He frowned, trying to understand.

Kheda reached down and picked up a rough arrow shaft, holding the black-stone knife to it so that the tip jutted over the end of the wood. The hunter's face cleared and he nodded rapidly. Clapping his hands, he barked brisk instructions to someone at the back of the crowd.

'Let's hope they've got that idea.' Beyond the old men huddled round the stooped hunter, Kheda watched two men each carrying a bundle of spears rounding up a gaggle of lads. One waved an arrow shaft, self-evidently explaining what they would be seeking. With the hunters vigilant for any threat, they disappeared out beyond the thorn barrier. 'Now what I need is a good big gourd and a long forked stick.'

'What for?' Naldeth returned with a handful of long bone splinters pierced with smooth holes. Risala took them from him and set to work instructing the eager bow makers.

'Snakes.' Kheda frowned. 'How do you suppose we might identify the most venomous?'

'What do you want venomous snakes for?' Naldeth asked with misgiving.

'Are you any kind of shot with a bow?' Kheda watched the stooped hunter summon a few of his particular cronies and loftily allow them to try their hand with the first bow. One hit the lizard skin, to mingled envy and admiration.

'No,' said Naldeth tartly. 'I've generally found magic more effective.'

'Then it'll just be me and Risala with poisoned arrows.' Kheda challenged the distaste on the young mage's face. 'You don't think the cave dwellers and the tree dwellers will flee all the faster from the arrows if they see their strongest hunters dropping dead when they're hit?' He saw that the savages were readily understanding Risala as she showed them how to sew the damp leather tightly around the wooden staves. Eager hands reached for the bone needles. 'I don't want to kill any more of these people than we have to, Naldeth, and the best way to ensure that is to kill off anyone we can identify as a leader as early as we can. The sooner the battle ends, the fewer will die.'

The wizard sighed. 'I suppose I'm still not used to Aldabreshin ways of waging war.'

'I told you, we wage war hard because that's the way to keep wars short.' Kheda found the disdain in Naldeth's face was rousing his anger. 'Every warlord knows that the most effective defence is relentless aggression. That doesn't mean we relish it. And we find that knowing that no quarter will be given to them does tend to discourage hotheads from starting a fight in the first place.'

'These people don't know that,' Naldeth objected.

'Then they'll learn and I imagine they'll learn fast.' Now that he had allowed himself to vent his temper, Kheda found he was disinclined to stop. 'So I'll crush the heads of this land's venomous snakes to make poisons for my arrows, and if I had time and the right herbs, I'd bury the corpses in a jar to ferment with the venoms, to make a paste ten times more deadly than the snake's own bite.

I'd show these people how to make scorpion pots to throw at their enemies, if they had clay, if I had the words to make them understand me and I knew which of this land's crawlers had the most lethal sting. When we retake the Zaise, you can have your ruby egg to work your magic and drive off the dragon while I'll take those barrels of naphtha and ground oil and that sulphur and resin and make sticky fire, just like we do in the Archipelago. That should show those tree dwellers across the river that these people are a force to be reckoned with, without a wizard to hide behind or a dragon to feed with their dead.'

'You think you have the right to show them such things?' Naldeth wasn't about to yield. 'All principles of warfare agreed in the north condemn sticky fire or any weapon like it as utterly immoral. Quite apart from anything else, such stuffs are hideously dangerous for friend and foe alike.'

'You expect me to believe that none of your barbarian war-captains has ever succumbed to temptation?' scoffed Kheda.

'There are cases recorded,' Naldeth admitted readily enough, 'mostly detailing how whoever was using the vile stuff was attacked by every other local army, including those he thought were his allies.'

Risala looked up from helping with the bow-making to interrupt the mage. 'Velindre says that's less from fear of the sticky fire and more because the only safe way to use such stuff is to have a wizard on hand. And any barbarian war-captain suspected of drawing magic into a battle can expect to have his throat slit by his own men before his enemies can reach him to do it.'