She closed her eyes, whispered as softly as she could.

‘You came after me, Lenk.’

‘What’s a “Lenk”?’

Iron on iron.

Her eyes snapped open, spied a leering face in the water: long, hard, purple. She whirled about just in time to see the boot’s toe coming up to kiss her jaw.

It was cold enough to freeze his lungs, dark enough to weigh his eyelids shut with gloom. Lenk thought he was drawing in deep, steady breaths, but found the air thick and oppressive enough that he couldn’t be sure.

Dead?

In the gloom, a voice on a warm and fevered wind whispered. That wasn’t right, Lenk thought; the sensation here should be cold, not hot.

‘ You’re safe … not quite dead.’

The voice should not be nearly so comforting.

‘ Yet.’

There it was.

Yet?

‘ We’ve got time.’

I can’t see.

‘ For the better, one would think.’

I feel sand.

‘ A warm and pleasant beach.’

I can’t move my hands.

‘ They are bound.’

What happened?

Something without words answered.

Echoes of a panicked sorrow sounded in his mind, the question ‘why’ resounding off the walls of his head, accompanied by muttered self-deprecations and a thousand ‘should haves’. Through the thicket of noise, he could see himself: sitting, alone, the crowds of Owauku dispersed, not a slender body in sight, as he stared into a cup of mangwoblankly.

I remember that part, not the bit that ended with me here, though.

‘ Wait.’

They came flooding into the valley, sweeping through the fog of his mind and into memory: purple-skinned, long-faced, iron-voiced. He saw himself look up, saw them through eyes not his own.

Another emotion: fury without echoes, a long, keening wail of rage as he launched himself at them. The first at the pack, the first that would die, recoiled, stunned at the sudden assault. She looked to her cohorts for assistance, found his hands wrapped around her throat a moment later. She did not fight back as he drove her to the ground and slammed her head against the earth, over and over; she stared at him, aghast, the breath to voice her fear not found.

‘ What?’ one of them grunted. ‘ Do they all do that?’

‘ It’s getting back up!’ another shrieked.

He had risen, leaving the creature motionless beneath him. He lunged at another, reaching out hands. She met him with hesitant challenge, eyes wide over her shield as she raised it before her. He spoke words that were not from his tongue, reached out on hands that felt like ice wrapped in skin the colour of stone.

What happened then?

He felt cold all of a sudden; the voice shifted to something frigid and sharp.

‘ This happened.’

They looked worried.

‘ They were right to feel fear.’

They don’t fear anything, I’m told.

‘ They fear us.’

That can’t be right. Were those my hands?

‘ Hands of the willing.’

But were they mine?

‘ Are yours?’

My head is hurting. It probably wouldn’t do that if I were dead.

‘ Not dead.’

Are you sure?

‘This one isn’t moving,’ a voice, distant and harsh spoke. ‘Give it a kick.’

A blow erupted against his ribs. He felt a scream tear through his throat.

‘ Yes.’

His eyes snapped open, blackness replaced with a blinding flash of red. His breath returned to him slowly, his sight even more so. When both finally came to him easily, his vision was a field of purple, broken only by the milky white eyes and the deep frown scarred into a long face.

‘Yeah,’ the netherling grunted, flashing a jagged sneer. ‘It’s still alive.’ She peered intently at him. ‘And it turned back to pink.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘You want me to kill it?’

‘It strangled a low-finger earlier,’ another voice snarled in reply. ‘Not worth killing over that, really.’ The sound of a black chuckle emerged over iron sliding from a scabbard. ‘Still …’

The sound of grating metal brought his attention to the shore. Longfaces gathered there in a knot of iron and purple muscle, some watching Lenk, some hauling a boat hewn of black wood onto the shore. One emerged from the crowd with a snarl and a sword, only to be stopped by a sudden iron gauntlet cracking against her jaw. She staggered, then stalked back into line, herded by the scowl of a larger female.

‘No one kills anyone,’ the larger female grunted, ‘until the Master says so.’

A collective sigh of disappointment swept the gathered females, including the one standing over Lenk, who quickly lost interest in him and stepped back to rejoin her companions. His attention swayed on them, his focus lost as he felt his eyes rolling in his head, desperately trying to retreat back into his skull and plunge him into a soothing dark.

He might have heeded their wishes, as his head swivelled from them on a rubbery neck to survey the beach, but shutting his eyes to the sight that greeted him quickly became impossible.

If the skeletons could still make noise, he reasoned, they would be screaming. Their mouths gaped open, bone-white jaws turned skyward, black eye sockets vast and empty. And, he further reasoned, the screams that emerged from their colossal maws would have shook the earth.

They lay on the sand in dozens, titanic hills of arching spines and reaching claws, held fast to the ground by chains that refused to release, heedless of the rust that threatened to break or the fact that their prisoners were long dead. They lay in silent agony, bound, heads stoved in, ballista missile shafts jutting from empty eye sockets and temples, screaming.

They were Abysmyths, he recognised, from their titanic fishlike skulls. They were giant Abysmyths. What could they have to scream about? What could have caused them such pain? What had pulled them to the earth?

‘ Something cruel and pitiless,’ the voice uttered with a warm whisper. ‘ They died screaming.’

Ah.

‘ And we made them scream,’ it laughed coldly.

What? We killed them?

‘ You didn’t have to.’

But …

‘ We did.’

You’re not making sense.

‘ More important problems.’

He blinked, suddenly aware of his hands tied behind his back, suddenly feeling the agony in his flank, suddenly hearing the sounds of very violent, very muscular women with very sharp swords. So taken by the ancient carnage on the beach was he that he almost forgot he was probably going to die.

Against that, he supposed he should consider himself lucky he noticed Dreadaeleon, similarly bound beside him, at all.

‘Awake,’ the boy noted with a characteristic lack of concern. ‘Good.’

‘What’s going on?’ Lenk asked.

‘Difficult to figure out, is it?’ Dreadaeleon’s sigh was heavy enough to bludgeon Lenk. ‘The convenience of the longfaces’ arrival following the fact that we were plied with copious amounts of unregulated alcohol? The fact that the only things tied up on this beach have pink skin instead of green?’

Even with his head swimming, it was obvious to Lenk that the unpleasant situation had done nothing to temper Dreadaeleon’s snideness, but that was all that was obvious. His thoughts were too scattered for comprehension, let alone retort. Punching, he thought, would have been suitable, if not for the obvious.

‘We were betrayed, Lenk,’ Dreadaeleon said, ‘and if you ask by whom, I swear I’m going to vomit on you.’

The temptation to ask anyway was banished as Lenk caught a shiver of movement from the corner of his eye.