“If you disliked them so much, why don’t you leave them for the vultures, like you have these others?” Yulwei swept his arm over the broken soldiers on the ground.

“You bury your own.” She kicked Nasar into the hole. He rolled forward, arms flopping, and dropped into the grave face down. “That’s the way it’s always been.”

She grabbed hold of the shovel and started to heap the stony earth onto his back. She worked in silence, the sweat building up on her face, then dripping off onto the ground. Yulwei watched her as the holes filled up. Three more piles of dirt in the wasteland. She threw the shovel away and it bounced off one of the corpses and clattered among the stones. A small cloud of black flies buzzed angrily off the body, then returned.

Ferro picked up her bow and arrows and slung them over her shoulder. She took the water skin, checked its weight carefully, then shouldered that also. Then she picked over the bodies of the soldiers. One of them, he looked like the leader, had a fine curved sword. He hadn’t even managed to draw it before her arrow had caught him in the throat. Ferro drew it now, and she tested it with a couple of sweeps through the air. It was very good: well balanced, the long blade glittering deadly sharp, bright metal on the hilt catching the sun. He had a knife as well that matched it. She took the weapons and stuck them through her belt.

She picked over the other bodies, but there wasn’t much to take. She cut her arrows from the corpses where she could. She found some coins and tossed them away. They would only weigh her down, and what would she buy out here in the Badlands? Dirt?

That was all there was, and it was free.

They had a few scraps of food with them, but not enough even for another day. That meant there must be others, probably lots of them, and not far away. Yulwei was telling the truth, but it made no difference to her.

She turned and started to walk southward, down off the hill and towards the great desert, leaving the old man behind.

“That’s the wrong way,” he said.

She stopped, squinting at him in the bright sun. “Aren’t the soldiers coming?”

Yulwei’s eyes sparkled. “There are many ways of staying unnoticed, even out here in the Badlands.”

She looked to the north, out over the featureless plain below. Out towards Gurkhul. There wasn’t a hill, or a tree, or scarcely a bush for miles. Nowhere to hide. “Unnoticed, even by an Eater?”

The old man laughed. “Especially by those arrogant swine. They’re not half as clever as they think they are. How do you think I got here? I came through them, between them, around them. I go where I please, and I take who I please with me.”

She shaded her eyes with her hand, and squinted southward. The desert stretched away into the far distance, and beyond. Ferro could survive here in the wilderness, just about, but out there in that crucible of changing sands and merciless heat?

The old man seemed to read her thoughts. “There are always the endless sands. I have crossed them before. It can be done. But not by you.”

He was right, damn him. Ferro was lean and tough as a bowstring, but that just meant she would walk in circles a little longer before pitching on her face. The desert was preferable to the cage before the palace as a place to die, but not by much. She wanted to stay alive.

There were still things to do.

The old man sat there, cross-legged, smiling. What was he? Ferro trusted no one, but if he meant to deliver her to the Emperor, he could have knocked her on the head while she was digging, instead of announcing his arrival. He had magic, she had seen that for herself, and some chance was better than none.

But what would he want in return? The world had never given Ferro anything for free, and she didn’t expect it to begin now. She narrowed her eyes. “What do you want from me, Yulwei?”

The old man laughed. That laugh was becoming very annoying. “Let us just say that I will have done you a favour. Later on, you can do me one in return.”

That answer was horribly thin on the details, but when your life’s on the table you have to take whatever’s offered. She hated to place herself in the power of another, but it seemed she had no choice.

Not if she wanted to live out the week, that is.

“What do we do?”

“We must wait for nightfall.” Yulwei glanced at the twisted bodies scattered about the ground, and wrinkled his nose. “But perhaps not here.”

Ferro shrugged and sat herself down on the middle grave. “Here will do,” she said, “I’ve a mind to watch the vultures eat.”

Overhead the clear night sky was scattered with bright stars, and the air had turned cool, cold even. Down on the dark and dusty plain below, fires were burning, a curved line of fires that seemed to hem them in against the edge of the desert. She, Yulwei, the ten corpses and the three graves were trapped on the hillside. Tomorrow, as the first light crept over the arid land, the soldiers would leave those fires and creep carefully towards the hills. If Ferro was still there when they arrived, she would be killed for sure, or worse still captured. She could not fight that many on her own, even supposing there was no Eater with them.

She hated to admit it, but her life was in Yulweis hands now.

He squinted up at the starry sky. “It is time,” he said.

They scrambled down the rocky hillside in the darkness, picking their way carefully among the boulders and the odd, scrubby, half-dead bush. Northward, towards Gurkhul. Yulwei moved surprisingly fast and she was forced to half-run to keep up, eyes fixed on the ground to find her footing among the dry rocks. When they finally reached the base of the hill and she looked up, she saw that Yulwei was leading her toward the left hand edge of the line, where the fires were most numerous.

“Wait,” she whispered, grabbing his shoulder. She pointed over to the right hand side. There were fewer fires there, and it would be easier to slip between them. “What about that way?”

She could just see Yulwei’s teeth smiling white in the starlight. “Oh no, Ferro Maljinn. That is where most of the soldiers are… and our other friend.” He was making no attempt to keep his voice down, and it was making her jumpy. “That is where they expect you to come through, if you choose to go north. But they do not expect you. They think you will go south into the desert to die, rather than risk being captured, as indeed you would have done, had I not been here.”

Yulwei turned and moved off and she crept after him, keeping low to the ground. As they drew nearer to the fires she saw that the old man had been right. There were figures sitting around some of them, but they were thinly spread. The old man strode confidently toward four fires on the far left, only one of them manned. He made no effort to stay low, his bangles jingled softly together, his bare feet flapped loud on the dry earth. They were almost close enough to see the features of the three men round the fire. Yulwei would surely be seen at any moment. She hissed at him to grab his attention, sure that she would be heard.

Yulwei turned round, looking puzzled in the faint light from the flames. “What?” he said. She winced, waiting for the soldiers to leap up, but they chattered on regardless. Yulwei looked over at them. “They will not see us, nor hear us either, unless you start shouting in their ears. We are safe.” He turned and walked on, giving the soldiers a wide berth. Ferro followed, still keeping low and quiet, if only out of habit.

As Ferro came closer she began to make out the words of the soldier’s conversation. She slowed, listening. She turned. She started to move towards the fire. Yulwei looked round. “What are you doing?” he asked.

Ferro looked at the three of them. A big, tough-looking veteran, a thin, weaselly type, and an honest-seeming young man, who didn’t look much like a soldier. Their weapons were lying around, sheathed, wrapped up, unready. She circled them warily, listening.