tossed the head aside where it rolled under an empty vendor’s cart.
Temper pulled his gaze from where the head had vanished. ‘Yeah. Damned disgusting all right.’
‘Please do not think they belong to Shadow. They are trespassers. Like you.’
‘Like me?’ Temper eyed the thing. It resembled an Imass warrior, though taller and slimmer. He wondered why it had stepped in. ‘Who do I thank for my life?’
The being inclined its head a fraction. Temper heard dry flesh creaking like leather. ‘Edgewalker.’
‘Temper. So, what now?’
Edgewalker gestured a skeletal hand to the shops and houses lining the way. ‘You’d best remain inside. The dwellings will be respected, mostly’
‘Sorry, but I can’t do that.’
Edgewalker shrugged ever so slightly. ‘Then I wish you better luck.’
‘Many thanks.’ Temper backed away. The being, who or whatever it was, remained where it stood. At the end of the street Temper paused to peer back but he, or it, was gone. He gave his own shrug and started on, heading for a public well he knew to be nearby. He had to wash this filth from himself.
At the broken fountain dedicated to Poliel, Temper rinsed bucketful after bucketful of freezing cold water over his head. He then jogged onto Toe Way, but before long he slowed and looked about. Shouldn’t Stone Lane be right ahead? He squinted into denser patches of night. The rows of houses and shop fronts did not look familiar. Something tonight seemed to be tricking his sense of direction, causing him to even doubt where he’d just been.
He drew off his helmet again, pushed back his wet hair, and wiped the remaining cold water from his face. Had he somehow turned around? But where? The way twisted between the uninterrupted rear walls of shops and houses. A shockingly brisk breeze gusted at him and he heard the rasp and creak of numerous branches lashing in the wind. Yet the island was practically deforested. The surge of the surf . . . where had it disappeared? These last months he had worked, eaten, and slept to its reassuring beat. Was the heavy mist obscuring it? Yet the winds were fierce tonight; contrary.
He started up a cobbled rise. No matter the twists and turnings, up led to Mock’s Hold, and that had to be the mercenaries’ target. There couldn’t be anything else to interest them on the island.
After a number of turns the ground levelled and Temper lost his way in a maze of narrow lanes he’d never before come across. Scarf-thin wisps of cloud scudded overhead and the full moon, a pool of suspended mercury, dazzled his vision. Only Mock’s Hold squatting high upon its cliff, silver and black in the monochrome glare, reassured him that he was indeed still on Malaz. Otherwise he would have sworn he’d wandered into another town, another country.
Dry hot air tickled the nape of his neck and he rubbed at it; his hand came away gritty with sand. Sand? Where in the world had that come from? He stood still, rubbing the grains between thumb and forefinger as he looked about. Hadn’t the moon just been to the left of the cliffs a moment earlier?
A deep bull-like snort reverberated up the narrow lane behind him – the distant cough of an animal scenting spoor. Then came a grinding of claws over stone. Temper swallowed, backed against a wall. Automatically his hands moved to check his weapons. A door stood to his right and he hammered at it. No answer. He pounded the sturdy planks again. A voice spoke, but in no language Temper had ever heard before.
‘Open up,’ he growled.
The voice croaked again and this time Temper recognized a word: hrin. Hrin? Hadn’t someone once told him that was an ancient word for revenant?
His mouth dried from a new sort of fear – the dread of one’s senses corroding. This was his worst fear of the Warrens: the way they could twist the mind. A physical enemy he could face, but insanity? How do you fight that? Old Rengel’s warning echoed: ’The bloodshed summoned it. Fiends and worse rule this night!’
He turned and ran. Flint cobbles jarred under his feet. Boarded shop fronts passed, blind and forbidding. From far away a bell rang mutely, as if from a ship at sea. He stopped, listening. The third bell of evening. To the left a lane curved steeply downwards, the roofs of warehouses just visible beyond – the waterfront, Temper realized, but shrouded in fog. While he watched, the dense bank rose