Alone. Again, again, again.

No matter how many spirits he found, how many rocks he stomped, how many soft pink things he surrounded himself with. They would leave him, all of them, leaving him with nothing, nothing of weight, nothing of meaning.

Except that word.

‘Again, again,’ he whispered, smashing his fist against the bone impotently with each repetition. ‘Alone again and always … always and again …’

‘ Again …’

It was not him who spoke this time, nor was it the grandfather’s voice. It certainly was not the scent of either of them that filled his nostrils and drew his head up. His lip quivered at the odour: pungent, iron, sweaty, familiar.

Longface.

The creature appeared farther down the ravine, black against the assault of sunlight, but unmistakable. Its frame was thick, tall, laden with the contours of overdeveloped muscle and the jagged ridges of iron armour. A thick wedge of sharpened metal was slung over its shoulder as a long-jawed face scanned the rocks. He recognised the sight immediately, his eyes narrowing, lip curling up in a quiet snarl.

Female.

‘And again and again and again,’ she snarled, her voice grating. ‘Until you tell me what I want to know, you green filth.’

‘ Shi-neh-ah! Shi-neh!’ the creature at her blood-covered feet spoke a language he did not understand. ‘ Maw-wah!’

At a glimpse, it resembled something akin to a bipedal lizard … or it had been bipedal before both its legs had been crushed. It now strained to crawl away on long, lanky arms, leaving the sands of the cliff they stood upon stained red. Over the corpses of other creatures, identical to it but for their severed limbs, split chests and lifeless eyes, it crawled towards Gariath.

It caught sight of him, looked up. Its yellow eyes were wide, full of fear, full of pain, trembling with a life that flickered like a candle before a breeze. It reached out a hand to him, opened its mouth to speak. He stared back, anticipating its words to the point of agony.

They never came.

‘I don’t have timeto learn how to speak yourlanguage.’ The longface seized the creature’s long tail, hauled it up with one hand. ‘You have exactly two breaths to learn how to speak overscum!’

‘ MAW-WAH! MAW-WAH!’

The sounds of its shrieking mingled with the sound of claws raking against the sand stained with its own life, straining to find some handhold as it was hoisted up by its tail. Gariath saw its eyes wide as it looked to him, saw the pleading in its eyes, the familiar fear and pain that he had seen in so many eyes before.

‘ RHE-’

One breath.

Her thick blade burst out the creature’s belly, thick ribbons of glistening meat pouring out. She paused, twisted it once, and dropped the creature. The blade laughed a thick, grisly cackle as it slowly slid from the creature’s flesh.

Gariath continued to stare at the creature’s eyes, at its mouth. He saw only darkness. Heard only silence.

‘Hey.’

It was the sheer casualness with which she spoke that made him look up to the longface. Her expression was blank, unamused and only barely interested in him. She slammed the blade down, embedding it in the sand as she dusted blood-flecked hands together.

‘They come in red?’ she asked. Narrowing white eyes at him, she snorted. ‘No. You aren’t one of them, are you?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘You want to fight, yeah?’

He wasn’t sure why he nodded.

‘That’s fine,’ she said again as she sat upon a rock with a grunt. ‘Just give me a moment.’

He wasn’t sure why he waited.

‘What are they?’ he asked, at last.

‘Those Green Things?’ she replied with a shrug. ‘They don’t have names, as far as I know. They don’t need names.’

‘Everything has a name.’

‘You?’

‘Wise-’ He paused, grunting. ‘Gariath.’

‘Dech,’ she said, slapping her shoulder. ‘Carnassial of Arkklan Kaharn, chief among my people, the netherlings and-’

‘I know what you are,’ he replied. ‘I’ve killed a lot of you.’

‘No fooling?’ She grinned at him. ‘Yeah, I’ve heard of you. The Ugly Red One, they called you. You cut open a lot of warriors, you know. I knew a few of them.’ Her lips curled back, the grin evolving from unpleasant to horrific. ‘You’re good at what you do.’

‘You’re calm about that.’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ she asked. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to kill you, but it’s not going to be personal or anything. It’s just what I do. It’s what you do. Just like dying was just what those warriors did.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Yeah, I don’t blame you. A lot of overscum have trouble understanding it, which is why they’re always rushing around. They don’t know what they’re supposed to do.’ She gestured to the eviscerated lizard-creatures. ‘Take These Green Things. We got plenty of them back at our base. Slaves. Some of them try to fight against us, some of them pray to some kind of sky-thing, some of them beg for mercy, some of them try to run, some of them talk about how things were …’ She looked up at him. ‘And some of them cry. Big, slimy tears come pouring down their faces when we kill one of them. That’s what baffles me.’

‘They mourn.’

‘Why?’

‘To honour their dead.’

‘The dead don’t care.’

‘They do.’

‘You talk to them?’

‘Sometimes,’ he replied.

‘Huh … well, they shouldn’t. What do they got to ask for once they’re dead?’

‘Honour. Respect.’

‘You and I both know that’s … what’s the word? Shnitz?’ She shrugged. ‘If you believed that, you wouldn’t have watched this ugly thing’ — she kicked the eviscerated corpse — ‘do what he did.’

‘He didn’t do anything. You killed him.’

‘Ah, see, this is where the overscum stop learning,’ she said, smirking. ‘You all talk about death like it’s a sole decision. It takes two to die. The person with the sword does the least amount of work.’

He furrowed his eye ridges.

‘See,’ she elaborated, ‘these dumb things are quick. I only caught them because there was no other place to run.’ She gestured to the river rushing beneath the cliff. ‘Now, when I grabbed one, the others could have run away. They all stood and fought, though. They made the decision to die.’

She looked up at him disdainfully. ‘You could run now, too. I’ve killed plenty today. I can kill you later, if you want.’

‘You could run, too,’ he replied.

‘No, I couldn’t. There’s nothing for a female but death. I kill or I die.’ She spat on the ground. ‘You?’

He stared at her, unblinking. He closed his eyes. Darkness. He inhaled sharply. Quiet.

‘Nothing,’ he replied.

‘Didn’t think so,’ she said. She rose from the rock, pulled her blade from the sand and slung it over her shoulder. ‘You ready, then?’

He nodded. She furrowed her brow at him.

‘No weapon?’

‘Unnecessary.’

‘Don’t know what that means.’

‘It means-’

‘Don’t care, either.’

She howled, iron voice grinding against jagged teeth as she rushed him. Her blade came out in an unruly swing, adding its metal groan to her roar as it clove the air, hungry for Gariath’s neck, or torso, or head. A blade that big couldn’t be picky.

He ducked, more from reflex than desire, and dropped to all fours, meeting her rush with horns to her belly. It was impossible not to shudder at the blow, not to marvel at the rock-hard muscle he pressed against as he shoved, driving her back only one minuscule, agonising step.

As he extended his last weary breath, his muscles giving out at the futility and his mind fighting hard to remember a time when this had been easy, it was impossible to think of a reason to keep going … and even more so to keep from listening to her long, loud laugh.

‘Come on,’ she whined. ‘How are you going to kill me this way?’