Kheda wiped drops of red stickiness from his eyes and pursued the man. Another enemy interposed himself, jabbing with a spear. This one was alert enough to stay beyond reach of Kheda's deadly blade, darting forward to threaten him with the spear's blackened point before scurrying backwards. Kheda joined in the dance, blinking away blood. The savage matched his every move. Out of the corner of his eye, Kheda saw a second attacker slip sideways to come round behind him, club slowly lifting.

Kheda took a pace backwards, pulling his dagger from its sheath. Stepping forwards, he threw the knife full at the spearman's chest, startling him into an incautious leap backwards. Striking breastbone or a rib, the dagger had given the man little more than a flesh wound. The shock

was enough, though, as he looked down to see what had happened. Kheda dodged past the murderous point of the bloodstained spear just as the crushing club swept down behind him with a draught that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Kheda cut the spearman's head half from his shoulders with a scything stroke of his sword, spinning around in the same movement to meet the man with the club. The savage recoiled, his second stroke faltering. Kheda rolled his hands to send the flat blade between the man's ribs and the savage staggered, bloody froth bubbling in his mouth.

Kheda ripped his sword backwards and the savage fell away dead. The one half-beheaded behind him was dead too. Kheda slipped as he wheeled around to see how the battle was going. There was so much blood that even this dry earth needed time to soak it up. A village spearman, one of many now climbing nimbly down the rocks to join in this battle, jumped the last stretch. He nodded grimly at Kheda as he scooped up the dead tree-dweller's club from the bloodied, muddied ground. A tree dweller ran towards them and then hesitated, fatally, unable to decide whether to attack Kheda or this new enemy. The village warrior's brutal club smashed into his head. The attacker fell without a sound, one whole side of his face grotesquely distorted.

Sword at the ready, Kheda took stock as best he could, ducking down briefly to recover his thrown dagger. The village spearmen's yells were turning from defiant to triumphant as they slaughtered the tree dwellers in the ravine, still more of their own climbing down the rock face to come to their aid.

How do I take control of this situation?

Village spearmen were emerging from the tangled nut trees, dragging dead and dying tree dwellers by their hands or feet. Where one moaned and struggled, a club

put paid to his efforts and the warrior dragged him mercilessly onwards. A few of the attackers came walking out of the thickets, heads bowed between their upraised arms. The village warriors drove them on with vicious jabs from their spears, inflicting fresh wounds in their backs and legs.

As they passed by him on either side, Kheda realised the wild men of the village were taking all the dead and injured to the open space beyond the mouth of the ravine, their own included. Where the tree-dwellers' dead were simply dumped in a broken confusion of limbs and bodies, injured wild men from the village were carried carefully and laid gently down on the bare earth. Friends knelt to offer solace with a handclasp or a forehead pressed against the wounded man's, sweat and tears mingling.

Kheda watched as a kneeling spearman drew a knife of black stone from some fold in his loincloth and expertly slit the throat of the wounded man lying in his embrace. A broken shaft jutted from the man's belly, bright with lifeblood and dark with ordure from his ripped bowels. Anguish twisted the spearman's face as he waited, unmoving, for his friend's blood to stop flowing down his chest and arm.

I feel your pain. I wish I could tell you you 've done him the only service left to you. There would be nothing I could do for him even if I had every instrument and ointment known to Aldabreshin healers.

Kheda turned away to see that the prisoners were offered no such mercy. A spearman condemned one captive to an unnecessarily painful death with a cruel thrust deep into his belly. That prompted a murderous frenzy. Already noisy with flies, the air in the confines of the ravine grew rank with the stench of slaughter. All the bodies, friend or foe, were tossed onto the growing heap of carrion. A shadow crossed the sun and Kheda's blood

ran cold. He looked up to see rusty-feathered birds with the keen eyes of predators circling overhead, barred tails fanning wide.

'Kheda!' Naldeth waved from the lip of the ravine, perilously exposed on an outthrust rock. 'What are they doing?'

'Are you sure they're all dead, the tree dwellers?' Kheda's voice cracked as he tried to shout back, his mouth as dry as the sandy ground.

Risala appeared beside the young mage and began climbing rapidly down the rock face.

'They're all gone,' Naldeth yelled. 'Dead or fled.'

All the same, Kheda searched the tangled nut trees for any sign of movement as Risala descended. She ran towards him, her complexion ashen with distress. 'You're hurt!'

Kheda looked down to see that his trousers were foul with blood. 'No, I'm not wounded.' His parched throat failed him.

'Here.' Risala thrust the brass water flask she had brought into his hands.

'What are they doing?' Velindre had joined Naldeth on the precipice.

Kheda let his head hang for a moment, then uncapped the flask and drank. The water was sweet and fresh and whatever enchantment had made it had conferred some lingering cool.

Time was when I would have died of thirst before drinking any water touched by magic.

'Kheda!' Naldeth shouted down at him again.

'Where's the dragon?' Kheda looked up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and instantly regretting it as he tasted some dead savage's blood.

Blue magelight swirled around both wizards before Naldeth could answer. Velindre walked composedly down

from the heights on a stair of sapphire radiance, Naldeth following more slowly with an uneven gait. The village spearmen instantly threw themselves to the ground, hands outstretched and faces pressed into the dust.

'How can we tell them not to do that?' Naldeth looked exasperated.

'Where's the dragon?' Kheda repeated.

'It's gone to ground somewhere deep in the earth.' Velindre looked suspiciously down and around. 'It's a cursed clever beast. It was—'

Kheda waved her words away. 'Naldeth, if you want to let these people know you're not the kind of ruler they're used to, you had better do something about this.' He waved his bloody hand at the carnage. 'They're piling up the dead and killing off the wounded and if that black beast doesn't turn up, surely some other dragon will catch the scent of so much meat. Are either of you ready to cope with that?'

'This is vile.' Naldeth paled beneath his ruddy tan as he looked at the pile of corpses.

'Yes it is, but it's all these people know,' Kheda said mercilessly. 'What are you going to do about it?'

'Me?' Naldeth's mouth hung slack with dismay.

'Can't we just make a break for the ZaiseV Risala clung to Kheda's hand despite the blood clotted around his fingernails. 'If the dragon has gone and the tree dwellers are here, there won't be anything between us and the ship—'

Kheda saw the wizards exchange a swift guilty glance that told him they were thinking the same thing as him. 'Apart from the mage in the beaded cloak? And we can't leave these people like this. We started this, all of us, when we chose to come here—'

A squawk interrupted him as one of the rusty-coloured birds darted down to tear at a dead man's open wounds.

Another landed to peck at the unseeing eyes of the slain with its vicious hooked beak, cawing with pleasure.

'I can do something about that,' snarled Naldeth.