Water sluiced from the figure as it heaved itself upright. Red-rimmed eyes scanned the scene, fixing at last on the steps and the gaping mouth of the cave. After a moment, it set out in that direction, leaving deep footprints that the beach hastened to smooth away.

'Do you really think I can't see what's going on in your skull, Quell? You're right there, first in line, with the three of us lying in a row, legs spread wide. And in you dive, worse than a d.a.m.ned dog on a tilted fence post. Reccanto waiting for his turn, and Glanno, and Jula and Amby and Mappo here and Gruntle and probably that d.a.m.ned undead-'

'Hold on a moment,' growled the Trell.

'Don't even try,' Precious Thimble snapped.

They were marching back to the tavern, Precious Thimble in the lead, the other two hastening to keep up. That she was tiny and needed two steps for every one of theirs seemed irrelevant.

'Then again,' she went on, 'maybe that Jaghut will go and jump the queue, and by the dawn we'll all be planted with some ghastly monster, half Trell, half Jaghut, half p.i.s.sy wizard, half-'

'Twins?' asked Quell.

She swung a vicious glare back at him. 'Oh, funny.'

'Anyway,' added Quell, 'I'm pretty sure that's not how things like that work-'

'How would you know? No, me and Sweetest and Faint, we're out of here as soon as we can get our gear together you can collect us somewhere down the road. This d.a.m.ned village can go to Hood, with Bedusk Pall Kovuss Agape in the lead. They're d.a.m.ned wreckers anyway, and if anybody deserves cursing to d.a.m.nation, it's them.'

'I wouldn't disagree there,' said Mappo.

'Stop trying to get under my skirt, Trell.'

'What? I wasn't-'

Quell cut in with a snort. 'You don't wear skirts, Witch. Though if you did, it'd be so much easier-'

Now she spun round. 'What would be, Quell?'

He'd halted and now backed up. 'Sorry, did I think that out loud?'

'You think the curse on this village is bad, you just wait and see what I can come up with!'

'All right, we take your point, Precious. Relax. You three just go, right? We'll get the carriage fixed up and find you, just like you said.'

She whirled about once more and resumed her march.

Gruntle saw the three in the street, closing fast on the entrance to the tavern. He shouted to catch their attention and hurried over.

'Master Quell, your driver is a heap of broken bones back there, but he's still breathing.'

'Well, he should have let go of the d.a.m.ned reins,' Quell said in a growl. 'And now I got to do healing and that takes time. That's just great how am I supposed to fix the carriage? Why can't anybody else do anything useful round here? You, Witch go and heal Glanno-'

'I can't do that! Oh, I can set splints and spit on wounds to chase infection away, but it's sounding as if he needs a whole lot more than that. Right, Gruntle?'

The tattooed warrior shrugged. 'Probably.'

'Don't even try,' she snarled at him, and then stalked into the tavern.

Gruntle stared after her. 'What did she mean? Try what?'

'Getting under her skirt,' said Quell.

'But she doesn't wear-'

'That's not the point,' the wizard cut in. 'You're thinking like a man. That's your mistake. It's all our mistakes, in fact. It's why we're standing out here, three men, no women. If we'd gone and said, why, Precious, we wouldn't even think of it, you know what she'd say then? "What's wrong with me? Am I too ugly or something?" and we'd be in trouble all over again!'

Gruntle glanced bemusedly at Mappo, who, rather cryptically, simply nodded.

Quell straightened his still-wet clothes. 'Lead me to him, then, Gruntle.'

At one end of the corral there was a stable and next to it, a loading platform built of weathered planks that marked one end of a huge, solidly built warehouse. Jula and Amby had helped Glanno sit up, and Cartographer, cut loose from the wheel, was staggering in circles as he plucked and sc.r.a.ped manure off his face, neck, and rotted clothes.

Glanno had reached the eleventh love of his life, some woman named Herboo Nast, '. . . who wore a fox round her neck not just its fur, you understand, the actual animal, paws trussed up in berbraided silk, gamuzzled in leather, but it was the beast's eyes I remember most that look. Panic, like it'd just realized it was trapped in its worst nightlymare. Not that she wasn't good-looking, in that goat-like way of hers you know, those long curly hairs that show up under their chin after a certain age did I mention how I liked my women experientialled? I do. I most certainly do. I wanna see decades and decades of miserable livin' in their eyes, so that when I arrive, why, it's like a fresh spring rain on a withered daisy. Which one was I talking about? Fox, goat, panic, trussed up, right, Herboo Nast-'

He stopped then, so abruptly that neither Jula nor Amby noticed the sudden, ominous silence, and just kept on with the smiles and nods with which they had accompanied Glanno's monologue, and they were still smiling and nodding when the figure that had appeared on the warehouse loading platform the one whose arrival had so thoroughly stunned Glanno Tarp's flapping tongue walked up to halt directly in front of all three, as the horses bolted for the most distant corner of the corral in a drum-roll of hoofs.

'No losses so far and that's good,' said Quell as he and Gruntle walked towards the corral.

'I didn't know you were a pract.i.tioner of Denul,' Gruntle said.

'I'm not, not really, I mean. I have elixirs, unguents, salves, and some of those are High Denul, for emergencies.'

'Like now.'

'Maybe. We'll see.'

'Broken legs-'

'Doesn't need legs to drive the carriage, does he? Besides, he might decline my services.'

'Why would he do that?'

'Healing expenses cut into his share. He could come out of this owing the Guild rather than the other way round.' He shrugged. 'Some people refuse.'

'Well,' said Gruntle, 'he said to get you, so I don't think he's going to refuse, Master Quell.'

They reached the low stone wall and then halted.

'Who in Hood's name is that?' Gruntle asked, squinting at the tall ragged figure standing with the Bole brothers.

Quell grunted, and then said, 'Well, and it's just a guess, mind you, but I'd say that that's the Provost's wife.'

'He's married to a Jaghut?'

'Was, until he buried her, but then the yard collapsed into the sea, taking her with it. And now she's back and I'd wager a trip's profit she's not in the best of moods.' And then he smiled up at Gruntle. 'We can work all this out. Oh, yes, we can work all this out, now.'

This confidence was shattered when Jula and Amby Bole suddenly took it upon themselves to attack the Jaghut. Bellowing, they flung themselves at her, and all three figures lurched about as they struggled, clawed, scratched and bit, until finally they lost their footing and toppled in a multi-limbed ma.s.s that slopped heavily in the muck.

Quell and Gruntle scrambled over the wall and raced for them.

Glanno Tarp was shrieking something, his words unintelligible as he sought to crawl away from the sc.r.a.p.

From the Jaghut woman sorcery erupted, a thundering, deafening detonation that lit up the entire corral and all the buildings nearby. Blinking against the sudden blindness, Gruntle staggered in the mud. He heard Quell fall beside him. The coruscating, actinic light continued to bristle, throwing everything into harsh shadows.

Glanno Tarp resumed his shrieks.

As vision returned, Gruntle saw, to his astonishment, that both Boles still lived. In fact, they had each pinned down an arm and were holding tight as the Jaghut woman thrashed and snarled.

Drawing his cutla.s.ses, Gruntle made his way over. 'Jula! Amby! What are you doing?' What are you doing?'

Two mud-smeared faces looked up, and their expressions were dark, twisted with anger.

'A swamp witch!' Jula said. 'She's one of them swamp witches!'

'We don't like swamp witches!' added Amby. 'We kill kill swamp witches!' swamp witches!'

'Master Quell said this one can help us,' said Gruntle. 'Or she would have, if not for you two jumping her like that!'

'Cut her head off!' said Jula. 'That usually works!'

'I'm not cutting her head off. Let her go, you two-'

'She'll attack us!'

Gruntle crouched down. 'Jaghut stop snarling listen to me! If they let you go, will you stop fighting?'

Eyes burned as if aflame. She struggled some more, and then ceased all motion. The blazing glare dimmed, and after a few deep, rattling breaths, she nodded. 'Very well. Now get these two fools off me!'

'Jula, Amby let go of her-'

'We will, once you cut her head off!'

'Do it now, Boles, or I will cut your your heads off.' heads off.'

'Do Amby first!'

'No, Jula first!'

'I've got two cutla.s.ses here, boys, so I'll do it at the same time. How does that suit you?'

The Boles half lifted themselves up and glared across at each other.

'We don't like it,' said Amby.

'So leave off her, then.'

They rolled to the sides, away from the Jaghut woman, and she pulled her arms loose and clambered to her feet. The penumbra of sorcery dimmed, winked out. Breathing hard, she spun to face the Bole brothers, who'd rolled in converging arcs until they collided and were now crouched side by side in the mud, eyeing her like a pair of wolves.

Clutching his head, Master Quell stumbled up to them. 'You idiots,' he gasped. 'Jaghut, your husband's cursed this village. Tralka Vonan. Can you do anything about that?'

She was trying to wipe the mud from her rotted clothes. 'You're not from around here,' she said. 'Who are you people?'

'Just pa.s.sing through,' Quell said. 'But our carriage needs repairs and we got wounded-'

'I am about to destroy this village and everyone in it does that bother you?'

Quell licked his muddy lips, made a face, and then said, 'That depends if you're including us in your plans of slaughter.'

'Are you pirates?'

'No.'

'Wreckers?'

'No.'

'Necromancers?'

'No.'

'Then,' she said, with another glare at the Boles, 'I suppose you can live.'

'Your husband says even if he dies, the curse will persist.'

She bared stained tusks. 'He's lying.'

Quell glanced at Gruntle, who shrugged in return and said, 'I'm not happy with the idea of pointless slaughter, but then, wreckers are the sc.u.m of humanity.'

The Jaghut woman walked towards the stone wall. They watched her.

'Master Quell,' said Glanno Tarp, 'got any splints?'

Quell shot Gruntle another look. 'Told you, the cheap b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

At last the sun rose, lifting a rim of fire above the horizon on this the last day of the wrecker village on the Reach of Woe.

From a window of the tower, Bedusk Pall Kovuss Agape stood watching his wife approaching up the street. 'Oh,' he murmured, 'I'm in trouble now.'

In the moments before dawn, Kedeviss rose from her blankets and walked out into the darkness. She could make out the shape of him, sitting on a large boulder and staring northward. Rings spun on chains, glittering like snared stars.

Her moccasins on the gravel scree gave her away and she saw him twist round to watch her approach.

'You no longer sleep,' she said.

To this observation, Clip said nothing.