‘They don’t matter.’ He rose like a red monolith, muscles twitching, claws flexed. ‘I don’t matter.’ His legs tensed, eyes narrowed. ‘ You don’t matter!’

His roar split the dust cloud in half as he hurled himself at her. Her ears rang from his fury; she felt hairs on her neck wilt under the heat of his breath as she darted low beneath him. Her spine trembled as his jaws snapped shut, a hairsbreadth over it.

She heard him crash into the foliage, but did not turn to see. Instead, she scrambled across the stones, mind racing with her limbs as she searched for options and found them desperately scarce.

Fighting was impossible, even if she had her bow and knife. Hiding was futile, for his nose guided him as surely as her ears did her. Negotiation … just seemed stupid at this point. With nothing left, she turned to face him as he tore himself free in an eruption of soil and leaves.

And she hurled the Spokesman at him.

He lowered his head, let it smash against his skull. Such blows from a greenshict were legendary, the sticks splitting open heads as easily as they did melons. But no matter what she was, she was not a greenshict. The stick crashed against his brow, clattered harmlessly to the stones.

He stepped over it, his tail flicking behind him to snatch the stick and send it flying into the river, where it disappeared. She watched it vanish with wide eyes, the white of the feather tied to it visible for a long, horrifying moment. She forced herself to tear her eyes from it, forced the fear from her face and replaced it with snarling, white-toothed rage.

‘So what is it, then?’ she growled. ‘Why fight me? You won’t get a scratch, let alone die!’

‘Dying isn’t important … not anymore,’ he growled back. ‘Living is.’

‘You can’t possibly expect me to believe you came up with that all on your own.’

‘I don’t expect you to do anything but die.’ He stalked toward her with more caution than she expected. Or, she wondered, was that hesitation? ‘And I don’t care if I live, either. What’s important is that helives.’

‘Who? Lenk?’

‘I need him.’

She paused, blinking. ‘Uh … for …’

‘ I don’t know!’ His roar was mostly fury, but tinged at the edges with pain. ‘Some lives … are worth more than others.’

‘What of my life?’ She backed away as he continued toward her. ‘I killed alongside you. I fought. I thought you respected that.’

‘Liked, yes. Respected, never.’ He drew back a thin red lip in a sneer. ‘You’re still just a pointy-eared human. Still stupid, still weak, still have to die sometime.’

‘And when did you reach this conclusion?’ she asked. ‘Was it before yet another failed attempt to kill yourself? Or after another failed attempt to kill this stupid, weak shict?’

‘Shut up.’ His ear-frills twitched. His gaze danced from side to side before settling on her. ‘You should have died at sea. I shouldn’t have. I see that now.’

‘And what of Lenk? What if he died there, too?’

‘He lives.’

‘How do you know?’

‘How do you?’

His lunge came swiftly, but it was half-hearted, all fury with no hate to guide it. She darted aside, but did not flee. Perhaps, though, he was giving her the opportunity to do just that? No. He would think that cowardly. The madness that possessed him couldn’t have affected him deeply enough that he would be afflicted with the disease of mercy.

Still, something plagued his strikes, hindered his muscle, smothered his growl. Was he in his right mind, she wondered, or merely distracted?

There was an opportunity she could seize.

‘What of the others, then?’ she shouted, adding her voice to whatever assault kept his ear-frills twitching madly. ‘If Lenk lives, the others might, as well.’

‘I said somelives,’ he snarled, leaning low. ‘He lives because he was strong. The others died because they were weak.’

‘The giant raging sea snake might have also had something to do with it.’

‘It had to be done. The Akaneed was necessary. It was sent for me.’

‘You seem to say that about a lot of things that try to kill you.’ She took another step backward and felt unyielding stone at her back. ‘Since they haven’t, you think maybe whatever’s sending them to you might be mistaken?’

The rage that brimmed in his eyes at the insult was neither fire nor stone. It was a bodily thunder that boiled up through his chest, rumbled in his throat and became a storm behind his stare, vast, unrelenting and hungry for carnage.

‘The Rhegado not make mistakes,’ he growled, fingers tightening around something on the ground. ‘The spirits do not make mistakes.’ He rose, a fragmented stone head from a nearby decapitated statue in his hand. ‘The beast was sent not to kill, but to teach. And I have learned from it. I thought you and the others weak, stupid. I thought you dead. And now …’

His arm snapped, sending the granite skull hurtling like a meteor toward her face.

‘ I’M RIGHT TWICE!’

She dove, felt the impact on the pillar behind her as the head burst into fragments and powder that settled over her like a cloak; she took advantage of its cover, crawling on her belly into the foliage and disappearing amongst the greenery.

Futile, of course; he would sniff her out. But between the futility of hiding and the futility of attacking a seven-foot-tall slab of muscle with nothing but her fangs and harsh language, this seemed modestly wiser.

Still, she couldn’t help but search for other options. Desperately scarce before, every strategy fled at the dragonman’s roar. She heard him clearly, the breaths laden with anger, the feet heavy with hate, his claws twitching impatiently for bones to break and flesh to rend. Above the sounds of his hatred, it was near impossible to hear anything else. But she heard a sound regardless, faint and quiet. Between the flickering of his fury and the rumble of his growls, his nostrils twitched, searched the air.

And found nothing.

He can’t smell me. The thought raced with the beating of her heart. Or is he just drawing it out? No, he’s not that patient. But it makes no sense. Why can’t he-?

The answer came on an invisible cloud of reek, filling her nostrils with knowledge and the pungent stink of roach innards. She glanced up, peered out of the foliage and saw the roach’s corpse loosing its incense onto the sunbeams filtering through the canopy.

And an idea came.

She could barely keep from laughing. The dragonman, the terror of all things that walked on two legs and four, laid low by a stinking bug. He had a weakness after all. And, if one of the many curses about shicts was true, it was that they knew weaknesses could be exploited.

Shicts, she thought with obscene pride, don’t fight fair.

The sole obstacle to capitalising on this pride was the expanse between her and the dead insect, dominated by a mass of red flesh and eager claws.

But that suddenly did not seem so grievous an obstacle anymore. He was onlyflesh and claws … and teeth, she admitted, but she was a shict. She was cunning, she was stealth, she was hunter. These were things the Howling taught her, reminded her of in faint echoes as she fell to all fours and crept about the bush.

‘What’s that?’

She froze.

‘What?’ he growled again. ‘No, I never said I couldn’t learn.’ Gariath sighed, unaware as she pressed on through the brush around him. ‘It’s just that the humans, round or pointy, have nothing to teach me. They know few things: desecration, degradation and indignation.’

He laughed blackly, a sound that made her skin crawl as it never had before.

‘No, it means she thinks she’s claiming some sort of victory here … no, an invisiblevictory,’ he growled. ‘It’s as stupid as it sounds. She pretends she’s avoiding me because she doesn’t deserve to be splattered on the ground. Thatis indignation, something humans claim to possess when everything else is taken from them.