‘We have duties to attend to,’ the other one muttered, sliding a short spike of dark iron from her belt. ‘Make it quick.’

‘ Sh’shaqk ne’warr,’ he repeated, hefting his Spokesman. You don’t belong here.

If they didn’t understand his words, they understood his intonation as they slid easily into rehearsed defensive stances. Their muscles trembled with constrained fury as they edged close to him, careful and cautious, every movement planned and poised, every inch of their lean bodies speaking of an iron discipline.

That lasted for all of three breaths.

‘ AKH! ZEKH! LAKH!’ Her shriek was accompanied by the metal roar of her spike clanging against her shield as she charged him. ‘ EVISCERATE! DECAPITATE! EXTERMINATE!’

The other one was close behind her, cursing her companion’s recklessness and her own slowness. Naxiaw watched them come, watched the hate pour from their eyes over their shields, their spikes thirsty in their hands. He licked his lips, the stick resting comfortably and silently in his long fingers.

Then, he met their charge.

Tall as they were, they were compact creatures born of rocks, he recognised: too slow, too hard. He was s’na shict s’ha, and he was long. As they rushed, he leapt, his long legs carrying him from the envious earth as their shields went up with their alarmed cries. His long toes curled over the rim of the leading one’s shield, his long fingers caught her by what hair she had, his long arms pulled him up and over her head as her sword whined in a vicious chop that caught only the stench of his feet.

He smiled at the rearmost one’s baffled expression. They always wore it when he did that.

As broad as his smile was, his stick’s was broader, crueller. As he descended to the earth, the stick yearned to show its wooden teeth to her, to offer a brown-and-black kiss.

Naxiaw obliged it.

His stick struck her jaw with a loud crack, sent her staggering backward. He spared enough time to drive the stick’s head into her exposed belly, throwing her farther back. He could hear the other one turning around, hear her spike whining for his blood.

When that whine became a roar, he fell to the ground, heard the spike shriek iron frustrations over his head. He pressed his hands flat against the sand, hurled himself from the earth as his feet curled into fists and legs lashed out like coiled vipers.

He felt skin, then muscle, a shocking amount of muscle. More importantly, he heard her stagger backward, counted off her steps. One, two, three …

Then came the scream, fading as she took one step too many over the cliff face. One moment for a self-satisfied smile, then he was back on his feet, his Spokesman in hand, ready to make a final argument.

The other longface was up, far sooner than he expected, and her weapon was ready. He glowered; she was strong, resilient, but still a kou’ru. All that separated this monkey from the ones below was that she was too stupid to run.

Instead she settled back, waited for him to come to her. He obliged, darting past her thrust, ducking her shield and coming up inside her guard. Half a moment to savour her snarl, another to make sure she could see his large canines.

Then he struck.

The Spokesman had few words for her. It was not a weapon made for long, savoury stabs or vicious, sloppy chops. It spoke in short bursts, rapping against her jaw, then her clavicle, then her arm. Its arguments were sound, though, and reverberated inside her bones, each vibration compounded by the one that soon followed.

Naxiaw had learned well the ways of the Spokesman, heard its arguments voiced to over four hundred kou’ru, watched them all yield to its unwavering wooden logic. This one, he realised, was deaf. She recoiled from each blow, staggered backward, but her muscles did not fail beneath its logic, bones did not shake painfully against her blood. Each sound was solid, firm, where they should be hollow, reverberating.

Like hitting a rock, he thought.

He swung harder, sending her reeling back two steps, then retreated. Now she falls, he told himself. The shock was keeping her upright. Now, she will die. Now, she will fall.

She did neither.

Instead, the longface rolled her neck, letting the vertebrae crack within. She flashed him a smile, her jagged teeth stained with only the most meagre trace of red. All her crimson was in the malice of her narrowed eyes.

‘Well,’ she hissed, ‘aren’t you just adorable.’

She charged. He sprang. This time her hand was in the air, her metal fingers wrapped about his ankle. He had never truly felt the earth until she gave a sharp tug and slammed him down upon it in a spray of sand.

Strong, he thought. His eyes snapped open, body rolled as her spike came down to impale the earth beside him. Too strong. He swung the Spokesman up, and shock rolled down his arm as it kissed her shield. Far too strong. She swung her spike down and his wrist groaned under the strain as he narrowly caught it.

Another quick jerk and he was back on his feet, her turn to savour his baffled expression, his turn to see her jagged teeth. In a snap of her neck, his entire world became her teeth as she drove her head against his face. He felt bones snap under the thin flesh of his nose, blood spurt out in a great slobbery kiss.

‘Ha!’ she cackled. ‘ CRUNCH.’

Even as he reeled back, his own crimson trickling down upon the earth, he could not help but smile. Her own smile was undiminished, even as his blood painted her face in a spattering red mask.

They always looked that way, right before it started to burn.

Her grin turned to angry befuddlement, then to anger proper, and then back to shock as her smile grew wider, skin stretching tight about her face. He savoured each twitch, each expression, each moment before it invariably ended the same way it always did …

‘It burns,’ she grunted. ‘It … it burns!’

His venom-laced blood went to work with hungry zeal. Her grunt twisted to a shriek as she dropped her sword and began to claw at her face. The skin was drawn tight now, growing redder as the blood sizzled beneath the purple flesh. Her metal fingers raked wildly, drawing out great gouts as she sought to rip the poison out from under her flesh.

The long-faced creature collapsed to her knees and he saw his opportunity.

His knee led his leap, driving her gauntlet deeper into her face and knocking her to the ground. Her neck was a twisting snake, writhing as she ignored the blow and continued to shriek into her hand.

The s’na shict s’haknew how to kill snakes.

His foot was up and curled into a fist in one breath, then down again in one crunching, choked gurgle. The longface ceased to writhe, ceased to shriek, but her hand did not leave her face. Just as well, Naxiaw thought; he had seen the seething red mass beneath those digits before. It had lost its appeal after he had earned his first feather

There was little time for it, anyway. His ears pricked up again, sensing the sound of metal scraping up sand, cursing from behind.

Oh, right …

‘Clever, clever …’ He turned and saw that the longface’s voice matched the anger painted on her face. ‘But cleverness doesn’t spill blood.’

He had barely noticed her hand without the large iron spike or heavy metal gauntlet that had been lost in her near-fall. He continued to ignore it right up until it slid behind her back and came out in a flash of jagged metal, the weapon flying from her hand and chased by her shriek.

‘ THIS DOES!’

The strike was too fast to dodge; he could only angle his shoulder. Even that wasn’t enough to stop the pain. The blade carved through with a beaming iron smile, ripping through green flesh and drawing great gouts of red. He shrieked, staggered backward, clutching his shoulder as the Spokesman collapsed to the earth, at a loss for words.