Kheda stood still to draw the salt-scented air deep into his lungs. The noises around him faded as he closed his eyes and concentrated a steady exhalation to the exclusion of all else. Opening his eyes, a sea-stained tree root immediately caught his eye. Stooping, he picked it up and as he did so, he saw a worm-eaten fragment of a nut palm's trunk cast up beneath an overhang.

'My lord.' Telouet offered him a length of rope, snapped and frayed.

'Good enough,' Kheda nodded. 'It'll all burn.'

'Daish Kheda!'

Surprised by Saril's vigorous hail, Kheda nearly lost his footing on the hostile stone. 'What do you have there?'

The Chazen warlord was hurrying up the beach weighed down with an armful of splintered spars and shattered oar blades, even a few lengths of broken planking, one tarred length blistered and burnt. 'All this should carry some memory of whatever malice propels these invaders,' he said grimly, throwing his burden to the ground with a resounding clatter.

'Telouet, pass me those palm fronds.' Most definitely not wanting to complicate matters by spilling his own blood into the fuel for this fire, Kheda carefully used his dagger to strip back the tough brown stem and tease apart the clustered fibres of the yellow core.

Chazen Saril knelt over a scrap of wood where he'd gouged a shallow hole, a notch cut in one side. He carefully placed a sharpened stick in it, the looped string of a fire bow drawn tight around it. Drawing his hand back and forth slowly at first, he rapidly increased the pace and black dust gathered around the spinning point.

'Now.' Saril kept the stick whirling ceaselessly.

Kheda piled his tinder by the notch in the scrap of wood; it showed the faintest breath of white. As Saril pulled the fire bow away, brushing sweat from his forehead with a shaking hand, Kheda gathered up the scrap of wood, blowing gently into the frayed palm fibres, just enough to coax the nascent flame, not so much as to damp it with the moisture of his breath. A gleam of gold blinked among the pale smoke. Kheda cupped his hands to shelter the tiny fire from inquisitive breezes that could stifle it at birth.

No one needs that kind of omen.

'Here.'

Saril had built a nest of sticks and Kheda tucked the little flame safely inside it. Chazen Saril fed it with powdery scraps crumbled from a rotting branch and then sat back, watching greedy golden tongues licking at the sturdier wood he had brought from the wreckage of his ships.

Kheda saw the Chazen warlord's eyes grow distant, the energy born of having a task to accomplish deserting him.

'We're not here to read the flames,' Kheda told him sharply as he stacked the rest of the fuel around the burning heart of the fire. 'It's the ashes we need.'

Saril looked up with a sudden grin that caught Kheda by surprise. 'Did you ever make the mistake of suggesting dousing an augury fire with water, just to hurry things up?'

'I did,' Kheda laughed. 'But only the once.'

'My father slapped me so hard he knocked me clean off my feet.' Saril sounded perversely amused at the recollection.

Daish Reik wasn't given to beating any of his children, always more inclined to teach through laughter, even when there was only me left to learn such vital lessons for the good governance of the domain.

'This should burn down quickly enough.' Kheda stood and looked back down the shore, pleased to see the Daish ships had organised regular ranks of cook fires, rowers taking a well-earned rest as swordsmen shared the tasks of preparing a meal and ensuring armour and weapons were ready for any battle that might offer itself. Others were spread around the island, silhouetted vigilant against the sky as they perched on the heights of the rock, eyes turned to the south.

There's no real purpose among the Chazen men, even those that aren't injured. Is that just the shock consuming them or some insidious taint from magic?

Kheda looked at Telouet and saw his own thoughts reflected in the slave's dark eyes.

Unharmed and walking wounded, they will be going ahead of Daish men, to face whatever peril lies to the south.

He glanced at the fire but it was still blazing merrily, oblivious of his burning desire to read what counsel might emerge from its ashes.

Atoun's burly figure caught Kheda's eye. The warrior was standing with Jatta and a Chazen shipmaster from one of the heavy triremes, scratching something in the sand with a stick.

Telouet came to stand beside him. 'There's a man with the sense to see this danger weighs heavier in the scales than any concerns about keeping the secrets of his domain's seaways.'

'As soon as we're done here, we need to meet with Jatta and Atoun, and whoever Chazen Saril deems worthy among his shipmasters. We'll take four ships south. We need to decide where best to set the rest, to be sure of the earliest possible warning of any move north by these foes.'

'And to discourage any fleeing Chazen who think they might escape notice long enough to dig themselves into a new home,' scowled Telouet.

'We dare not spread our resources too thinly,' Kheda reminded his faithful slave. 'If we're to drive these people out, we'll need to take a substantial force when we make our main attack.'

So as to have enough men to finish the task, if magic rips the rest to rags of sodden flesh or burns them to charred bones.

'It'll be no easy task feediîg a domain's full force gathered so late in the dry season,' Telouet muttered. 'Where will you muster them? The rains ave due any time after the Greater Moon shows itself; we can't risk losinç half our ships if a squall hits them on a bad shore.'

Will allying myself with Chazen be the right course to protecting my people or am I letting myself be carried off by a current I should have steered well clear of, to be wrecked on an unseen reef? Was Chazen attacked merely on account of lying southernmost in the Archipelago or is there some darker reason for this disaster befalling Saril?

'That's burned enough, isn't it?' The other warlord's voice startled Kheda from his thoughts.

He was surprised to see how quickly the fire had died.

'If we use gloves,' he said cautiously.

Telouet handed him a pair pulled from his belt, heavy leather reinforced with metal plates to foil a slashing sword.

'I don't have any.' Saril looked down at his hands before gazing around as if expecting his lost slave to appear with such things.

'I'll go first.' Kheda wasn't sorry to seize that opportunity. 'You can borrow these.'

Drawing on the thick gloves, he scooped a double handful of charred wood and feathery ash from the edge of the still-smouldering fire, taking a moment to judge the wind before flinging the ashes in a wide arc. In the corner of his eye, he saw all activity down the beach had stopped.

Chazen Saril backed away. Kheda stripped off the gloves and thrust them at him. 'You must throw before we look for signs.'

The Chazen warlord drew them on reluctantly. 'We're both in this together, I suppose.'

Kheda fixed him with a hard look. 'That remains to be seen, as much as anything else, don't you think?'

Saril gathered dying embers between his hands. Heaving a sigh, he tossed the blackened fragments out across the white sand, face tense with apprehension. 'Well? What do you see?'

Kheda walked slowly round the scatter of ash and cinder, searching for some familiar outline, some shape or shadow. 'Is that a sword?'

'More like wishful thinking,' Saril replied dubiously. 'Could that be the arc of a bow?'

'No, not with so many breaks in the line,' Kheda said with regret.

Saril began a slow circuit of the soiled sand, bending to peer more closely from time to time. Coming back to Kheda, he shook his head, bemused and defensive at one and the same time. 'I cannot read anything clearly. I must be too tired, too dazed by all that's happened to be properly attuned to the portents.'