Over the next half-hour, the other squads caught up with him. By the time they left the bamboo behind, he had his whole command with him. Thirty-eight troopers, eager and excited.

Out of the bamboo, they began to pick up the pace. Clouds were streaming across the sky, long white strands at first, clawing their way across the bright cobalt vault. Then the northern horizon began to darken as the rainclouds built up.

The goat was starting to complain and wrench at its leash. Tovakar was having trouble pulling the bolshie animal along.

‘Tether it,’ Slvasta ordered.

The trail ploughed into a strip of dense trees, an easy kilometre wide, which skirted the river. They reached it just as the rain started. Mod-birds were sent on ahead. Slvasta kept the pace fast, following the route that had been trampled down through the trees and undergrowth.

‘Sir,’ Jostol called. ‘Boats!’

Slvasta’s ex-sense picked up the trooper’s mod-bird, seeing through its eyes. A pair of large stream-powered boats were anchored in the lee of a curve. Close to the bank, where big wanno trees hung over the water, they were almost obscured by the bushy weeping boughs. Unless you were really looking, you’d never know they were there. Cargo barges, he thought.

He began issuing orders to the corporals, detailing their approach. The other mod-birds were called back, leaving Jostol’s as their sole sentry to avoid alerting the nest of Fallers. The mod-bird circled high, keeping as unobtrusive as possible. The rain was heavy now, making it difficult to see much. Slvasta could just make out several human shapes, along with mod-horses and mod-apes. They also had some terrestrial horses with them.

Four hundred metres from the water, the squads began to fan out. Slvasta along with Corporal Yannrith, Tovakar, Jostol and five other troopers slowed down as they closed on the mooring point, allowing the others to circle round, surrounding the group of people at the boats.

‘Weapons ready,’ Slvasta ordered when they were a hundred metres from the river. He drew his own carbine, using his ex-sight to check the mechanism was working as his teekay pulled back the loader lever.

‘Well, hello there,’ a strong ’path hailed them cheerfully.

Slvasta flinched. He’d known a wholly secret approach was impossible, but even so he’d hoped they might get a little closer first. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

‘Rangers.’

‘What?’ Slvasta was running now. He sent his ex-sight out, perceiving seven men and one woman standing casually under the great awning of an ancient wanno tree, out of the heavy rain. They weren’t carrying any weapons he could detect.

‘Rangers,’ repeated the man standing at the front of the group. ‘We’re from the Erond county regiment reserve. Just doing what we can to help. And who are you?’

Slvasta cleared the last of the trees. The riverbank was twenty metres ahead of him now, with the two long wooden-hulled barges sitting calmly on the water. Smoke was drifting out of their tall iron stacks.

He approached the group cautiously. ‘Lieutenant Slvasta, Cham county regiment. And we’re assigned to sweep this area.’

‘Didn’t know that. We’ve swept as well as we could, of course.’ The man gave him a smile that was on the verge of mockery. He was tall, probably in his late twenties, with a shock of shaggy blond hair and the greenest eyes Slvasta had ever seen. His raincoat was long and brown, almost like waxed suede, but a lot thinner and lighter; raindrops rolled off it easily. The metal buttons were small and odd, somehow. Slvasta hadn’t seen a coat quite like it before. The man’s accent was foreign, too; he drawled each word.

‘Who are you?’

‘Sorry, should have said. I’m Nigel. This is my wife, Kysandra. And these are my grunts.’

Slvasta pushed back his hat’s soggy, sagging brim to get a better look. ‘Your what?’

‘Grunts: soldiers. Under my command.’

‘I need to know if you’re human.’

‘Fair enough, I’ll drop my shell. Pervade away.’

‘No. That’s not good enough. Fallers have the same organs as we do.’

‘Then how do you suggest we proceed?

Slvasta slipped the carbine’s safety on and let the strap hold it loosely at his side. He drew his knife from its scabbard.

‘Ah,’ Nigel said. ‘If you insist.’

‘Cover me,’ Slvasta told his troopers. By now, the entire mooring area was surrounded by the squads, with troopers taking position behind trunks, their carbines aimed at the rangers from Erond. He walked up to Nigel, feeling a slight ex-sight flow questingly over his stump. ‘Your thumb, please,’ he said.

Nigel held his hand up, thumb extended. Slvasta nicked the skin with the tip of his blade. Sure enough drops of red blood came out of the small puncture. He nodded in satisfaction. ‘Faller blood is dark blue,’ he explained.

‘So I’ve been told,’ Nigel said. ‘Nice confirmation. Fool-proof, even.’

Again Slvasta had the impression he was being mocked. But the man’s thoughts were calm and composed. The only emotional content Slvasta could pick up on was of a serene confidence – which was probably where his own notion of mockery originated from. He did his best to ignore it and beckoned Kysandra forward.

The ‘wife’ held her hand out. Slvasta thought she was around sixteen or seventeen, a sweet-looking girl with plenty of freckles and a mane of thick dark ginger hair, tied into a single tail. He felt sorry for the poor thing, but refrained from comment. Arranged marriages were relatively common out in the countryside, and Nigel’s odd clothes were clearly expensive. Her attitude was a copy of Nigel’s, but with less emotional control. The contempt she felt for him and his troopers was a whole lot easier to ascertain. She was human, too.

‘Gentlemen,’ Nigel gestured the rangers forward. They walked over to Slvasta one by one to be checked.

Slvasta didn’t know what recruitment was like in Erond county, but the rangers looked more like a town’s gang of thugs than troopers. And they made no attempt to hide their scorn of him, a couple of them openly sneering at his stump.

‘All clear,’ Slvasta announced after the last one dripped red blood into the rain. He couldn’t keep his puzzlement from showing. ‘What in Uracus are you doing out here? This is nowhere. We only just arrived.’

‘Chance, really,’ Nigel said. ‘I’m a trader. My boats were in Dural with a cargo of folax. I was looking to exchange it for hethal seed. We saw the beacons light up and volunteered to help sweep. Everybody does what they can, right? The regiment captain in the town sent us upriver.’

A large bird came swooping through the rain to land on one of the boughs above them. The whole bough swayed under its weight. Slvasta had never seen anything like it before. It had broad wings, well over two metres across, and the face was definitely mod. Yet the size and grace was way beyond anything any adaptor he knew had ever produced. ‘Is that a mod-bird?’ he asked.

‘A ge-eagle,’ Nigel said. ‘Yes.’

‘A what?’

‘A type of mod-bird, a very good one,’ Nigel glanced up affectionately at the bird, who stared unblinkingly at Sergeant Yannrith and the troopers round him. Its claws were metal tipped, Slvasta saw.

‘Where did you get it?’

Nigel’s smile was sardonic. ‘A man from Ashwell village used to craft them. But that was long ago and far away from here.’

‘I see.’ Slvasta was aware he was losing face in front of everybody. ‘We’ll need to search your boats.’

‘Of course,’ Nigel said.

Sergeant Yannrith took a squad on one boat, wading out through the shallows. Corporal Kyliki took the other.

‘You trampled down a pretty big track across the countryside,’ Slvasta said. ‘That’s how we found you. What were you carrying?’

‘Just us,’ Nigel said.

‘It looked like you were dragging something. Something large.’

‘A couple of the horses were hitched up to stone boats, yes. We piled them up with our camp equipment. Something wrong with that?’