He felt the knuckles connect with his jaw, even if he didn’t see them.

Perhaps he was still dizzy from his previous awakening, he thought. That’s why this was so easy for the longface to beat him so savagely. Perhaps this one was just particularly strong, or perhaps they had all been stronger than he suspected. Or had he always been weaker than he thought?

By the fourth blow, and the torrents of glistening red pouring from his nose, his thoughts shifted to something else.

Sword, he told himself. Need my sword. The head … where is it? Sword, head, sword, head … someone …

‘ We need no one,’ the voice rang across rime.

‘ No one will come for you,’ the voice hissed across fever.

And they, too, faded, with every blow the longface rained on him. His neck felt like a willow branch, his head like a lead weight. His arms were impotent as he tried to shield himself from her attacks. He felt bruises blossoming under his skin, cuts opening on his brow, his jaw. Eyelids fluttering, he stared at the longface as she stared back, appraisingly.

‘Huh,’ she said. ‘Don’t stop to talk before you kill ’em and they just fold right up, don’t they?’

She might have had a point, as the only words he could muster were vain pleas — whether to her or someone else, anyone else, he didn’t know — through blistered lips and a tongue swelling with coppery taste. She didn’t seem to be listening, in any case, as she knelt down before him and pulled a jagged, short blade from her belt and brought it down in a vicious chop.

He caught her arm as a tree branch catches a boulder. His wrist threatened to snap under the pressure, trembling as she strove to bring the blade down towards his soft throat, which twitched so invitingly.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lenk took a quick, despairing stock. Dreadaeleon lay fallen. Gariath was still far over the edge. Denaos was dead, Asper likely with him and Kataria …

Kataria was standing there, not twenty feet away.

She was scrambling across the deck hurriedly, pausing only to snatch up a fallen bow and a pair of arrows. Her eyes were on the companionway at the opposite end of the ship, ignoring Sheraptus hurling curses and fire at the sky, the Librarian spewing frost back at him.

She didn’t even see Lenk.

‘Kat!’

Not until he screamed, anyway.

She skidded to a halt, looking at him with worrying confusion. She seemed to recognise him in another instant and frowned, either at him or his situation, he wasn’t sure.

‘Kat! Help!’

His plea for aid twisted in his throat and became a shriek of agony as the longface’s blade came crashing down into the tender meat of his shoulder. He fought back against her still, but even as he kept the blade from biting deeper into his flesh, the jagged teeth sawed at him. His ears were filled with the sound of each sinewy strand snapping under it so that he was only scarcely sure he was still screaming.

‘ KATARIA!’

‘ Gone,’ a voice said sorrowfully.

It was right. He saw, in fleeting glimpses, the shict cringing, then turning and fleeing into the confines of the companionway. She didn’t even look behind her. She hadn’t even heard him.

‘ She did,’ a voice hissed angrily. ‘ She betrayed us.’

‘ Betrayed you,’ another said. ‘ Abandoned you.’

‘What now?’ he gasped through blood and tears. ‘What …?’

‘ Fight back.’

‘ Give up.’

With a blade in his shoulder, his companions gone and the very reason he came to this ship of blood vanishing into shadow, one option seemed much more tempting than the other.

He never got to make the choice, however, as Dreadaeleon staggered to his feet and, from there, staggered into the longface. Kneeling as she had been, she toppled over with a grunt of surprise, releasing the blade and focusing her attentions and fists on the boy.

He, however, was just as focused on her. And only one of them had crimson light in their eyes.

His hands, pitifully scrawny, clutched her throat, indomitably thick. The word, soft in his throat, went unheard through her snarling. The blue electricity that raced down into his fingertips, however, demanded her attention.

Crackling became sizzling became sputtering as her snarling became screaming became frothing convulsion. Her teeth all but welded together as the lightning coursed from his fingers into her body, snaking past purple skin and into thick bone. As though she were some blackening bull, Dreadaeleon fought to hold on as she seized violently on the deck, his fingers digging into flesh growing softer, eyes turning to red spears as they narrowed.

When it was finally over, he slid his fingers from well-cooked meat, wisps of smoke whispering out from ten tiny holes. He clambered off, exhausted, but not spent as he looked to Lenk accusingly.

‘You could have fought back,’ he said angrily.

‘No point …’ Lenk said. ‘She’s gone, she’s gone.’

‘Who? Asper?’

‘Kataria.’

‘Oh … well, yeah, why wouldn’t she? She’s a-’

‘Yeah,’ Lenk said, reaching up to clutch his bleeding shoulder. ‘Yeah.’

‘So … what now?’

Lenk made no reply, but an answer came to him as a great red hand appeared at the railing. They heard the grunt, saw Gariath haul himself up and over onto the deck. He spotted them just as quickly and rushed over, panting heavily, ignoring the battle raging between the two wizards.

‘Up,’ he snarled. ‘Get up.’

‘What’s the problem?’ Dreadaeleon asked.

‘Big problem,’ Gariath muttered. ‘ Bigproblem.’

‘Where’s Togu?’

‘Dead, maybe? I don’t know. Now get up. We’ve got a big problem.’

‘You’ve said that already but-’

There was the sound of a distant voice shouting commands in a deep, rolling tongue, audible even over the carnage on the deck. They looked out to see the ocean alight with a swarm of fireflies, dozens of little orange dots reflected upon the waters.

‘Are those …?’

At another distant command, the fireflies rose. One more and they flew. By the time Lenk and Dreadaeleon realised the lights were no insects, they heard nothing but the shrieking of shafts and the sizzling of fire.

‘Get down!’ Gariath snarled, shoving the two of them behind the mast.

The arrows came plummeting, singing mournful dirges accompanied by crackling fire. Sheraptus glanced up just in time to throw his hand out, the air rippling as the missiles struck an unseen wall and went quivering. Those females surrounding him that had not noticed in time to bring shields up became smouldering porcupines in an instant.

The entire ship seemed to shudder with the sound of heads biting deeply into wood and flames snarling angrily as they passed through sails. After an eternity of waiting, Lenk dared to peer around the mast.

Across the sea, he saw them, their green faces and yellow eyes aflame as they lit fresh arrows. Their tattoos of red and black were stark against the firelight, causing them to resemble ghouls fresh from a grave, rotted wrinkles and throbbing veins bright on their dire expressions.

Shen, he recognised. Three long canoes full of Shen. Drawing arrows back.

‘That …’ he whispered, ‘that is a problem.’

Gariath shook his head. ‘No, moron. I said we had a bigproblem.’

‘That’s notbig?’ Dreadaeleon said, astonished.

He was answered as the sound of a distant horn rose from the canoes.

And in the next moment, the horn, too, was answered.

In the eruption of the sea and the violent vomit of froth, a resonating roar tore through the sea and ripped into the sky. Combatants and companions alike were thrust to the deck as the ship rocked with the force of a violently disturbed wave. Black against the night sky, a creature rose into the air, a great, writhing pillar topped with two menacing yellow eyes.