‘No … no, no. No!’ Lenk swept up to it, cradling it in trembling hands as though it might break at any moment. ‘No … she … she’d never leave this behind. She always wears them.’

‘ Wore them.’

‘ Shut up! YOU SHUT UP!’ Lenk snarled, bashing his fist against his temple. ‘This can’t be it. She wouldn’t have left this. She … they …’ He swallowed hard, a lump of boiling lead tumbling down his throat. ‘All …’

‘ Dead.’

The word was given a sudden, heavy weight. It drove him to his knees, pulled the sword from his hand, crushed the blood from his face like dirty water from a sponge.

‘Dead …’

‘ Dead,’ the voice repeated. ‘ Another blessing you will come to realise in time.’

‘Please …’ Lenk gasped, his voice wet and heavy in his throat. ‘Please don’t say that.’

‘ She would have killed you, you know.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘ She said as much.’

The voices flashed through his mind, as hot and tense as his fevered brow. All he had left to remember them by — her by — was the scorn that had dripped from her lips when they last spoke. The memories, the pleasantries, faded into nothingness and left one voice behind.

‘ I want to feel like myself.’

‘ And you can only do that by ignoring me?’

‘ No, I can only do that by killing you!’

It continued to ring, cathedral bells of cracked brass. He clenched his skull, trying to stop it from echoing inside his head. He could not let go of the noise. It was all he had left.

‘Kill you …’ he repeated to himself. ‘Kill you … kill you …’

‘ She would have,’ the voice replied. ‘ But that’s not important now. Now, we must rise up, we must-’

It faded, drowned in a flood of logic and reason that swept into Lenk’s brain on a hatefully reasonable tone.

Of course she would have, he thought. She’s a shict. You’re a human. Theylive to kill us. This voice, familiarly cynical and harsh, he realised was Denaos’ own, seeping up from some gash in his mind. What, you thought she’d give up her whole race for you?

Maybe it’s a blessing, a voice like Asper’s said inside him. The one favour the Gods will show you. You don’t have to worry about her anymore, do you? You don’t have to worry about anything …

Well, it’s just logical, isn’t it?Dreadaeleon asked, more decisive and snide than ever. Put two opposing forces in the same atmosphere and one destroys the other. You can’t change that. It’s just how it works.

Your life only became more meaningless when you centred it on her, Gariath growled. You deserve to die.

‘I deserve it …’

‘ Self-pity is also a …’ The voice paused suddenly, its tone shifting to cold anger. ‘ What are you doing?’

‘I deserve it.’

Lenk reached up and took the feather, the last action he took before he rose without compulsion from his body. He turned to stare out over the sea, clutching the white object close to him. Then, his feet beginning to move with numb mechanic, he walked toward the hungry, frothing sea.

‘ What are you doing?’ The voice’s demand didn’t penetrate the numbness in his body. Whatever eyes it had, it must have seen the shore looming up. ‘ Stop! This is not our purpose!’

‘You were right,’ Lenk said, a smile creeping across his face. ‘She’s dead. They’re all dead. We’ll be together again, though. Companions forever.’

‘ Listen to me. LISTEN. Something is wrong.’

‘It’s over.’ The young man shook his head. ‘I can’t do this anymore. Not without them. Not without her.’

‘ Sacrifice isn’t noble if it hinders everything else. We have much to do. What of purpose? What of vengeance?’

No more words. No more arguing with them, any of them. His willpower seeped out of his leg on weeping pus. Hope could no longer carry him. Futility could no longer fuel him. Surrender, the promise of an end to the blood and the pain, drove him forward, inevitably toward the sea.

‘ Resist,’ the voice commanded. ‘ Fight. We are stronger.’

No more words. The waves rose up to meet him. He would never stop walking until his lungs burst with salt and his flesh was picked clean by hungry fish.

‘ You do not get to die here,’ the voice uttered, cold and commanding. ‘ That is not your decision.’

No more words.

He felt a sudden, overwhelming cold, his fever coursing out of him on a frost-laden breath. His legs locked up beneath him; ice water coursed through his veins and sent him to the ground.

‘ I won’t let you.’

So close to release, Lenk reached out with fingers trembling to grasp the earth and pull him into sweet, blue freedom. Freedom from Miron, from Greenhair, freedom from anyone and everything that had made him think she should have died for leather and paper.

‘Why …?’ He felt his tears as ice on his face as his body trembled and folded over itself. ‘I can’t do this. Just let me die … I want to …’

‘ It does not matter what you want,’ the voice replied, unsympathetic. ‘ All that matters is what you must do.’

The pounding in his head faded, freeing his ears to the sound of feet scraping against sand, alien voices rising over the sandy ridge. Alien, but familiar.

‘ Hake-yo! Man-eh komah owah!’

‘ And what you must do … is hide.’

‘But I-’

‘ You don’t get to make that decision.’

He could barely feel the sand beneath his feet or his spine bending as he plucked up the sword. He barely noticed; his entire willpower, what didn’t ooze out of him, was concentrated in his fingers as he held desperately onto the feather. He wasn’t even aware of moving behind the sandy dune until he was finally there, his numb body forced to the earth as whatever force moved his legs suddenly gave out.

No sooner had his belly pressed against the dirt than the first green scalp came rising over the opposite ridge. A pair of wide, amber eyes shifted across the wreckage. A satisfied snort emerged from a long, green snout. Two long, clawed feet slid down the sand and into the valley, their tracks concealed by the long tail dragging behind it.

That the creature didn’t notice his presence spoke more of its inattention than his subtlety. Even amidst the beach scrub, a head of silver hair couldn’t have been hard to spot. He lay still; his body bore obedience for only one voice.

The lizardman turned about, cast its glower over the ridge and snarled.

‘ Nah-ah. Shii man-eh.’

‘ Shaa?’ came an indignant hiss from beyond the dune.

Three additional green bodies came clambering over the ridge. Lenk took greater note of them now, particularly the clubs studded with jagged teeth and savage machetes hanging from their loincloths. A decidedly vicious improvement from the sharpened sticks they had carried last night, but that only brought a grim smile to Lenk’s face.

Their weapons were so sharp, so brutal-looking. They could eviscerate him in the wink of an eye, end the suffering in a horrific chop and smattering of red and fleshy pink chunks on the sand. It would be so quick, so easy.

His felt his leg spasm on the sand.

Despite his mounting excitement, he thought it odd that they hadn’t carried those tools last night. Even more curious was the fact that they seemed taller than before, their lanky musculature packed tightly under taut green flesh. Tattoos as ferocious as their weaponry ran up and down their bodies in alternating hoops, jagged bands and cat-like strips of red and black ink. Still, it wasn’t until Lenk noticed the space under their long snouts that the realisation dawned upon him.

‘Beardless,’ he whispered. ‘These aren’t the same ones.’

‘ These are warriors. Look at the way they move.’