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three of us.”

Carnival shrugged. “As armies go,” she said, “it’s not so big.”

Ten yards below, one man raised a hand, and the closest of the horde, thirty or so ragged figures, halted behind him. They fixed their tapers among the bones at their feet with slow deliberation, never shifting their gaze from the intruders. All had produced bone-handled blades. Hundreds more climbed the slopes behind, fanned out to flank them in a wash of fire and steel.

Dill caught the scent of burning fat. From the corner of his eye he saw Rachel stiffen.

The man who’d raised his hand focused milky eyes on Dill and spat, “What you want here?” His voice was a wheezing rasp, as though his throat had been punctured. His teeth had been filed to points.

“Who are you?” Rachel asked.

He gave her a cursory glance, then returned his attention to the angel. “What you want here?” Behind him, the others were still spreading out, unhurried and silent, blanketing the slope as far as Dill could see.

Dill’s knees weakened. He knew his eyes would be as pale as those of the man who’d addressed him. Had any reply come to mind then, it would have been unable to escape his constricted throat.

“None of your damn business,” Carnival said.

Rachel flinched.

The man bared his needle-sharp teeth. His gums were swollen and bleeding, but the blood looked old, black. The knife in his hand came up, and for a heartbeat Dill thought he was going to throw it.

Dill would have taken flight then if his muscles weren’t quivering so, but he forced his leaden legs to move and he shifted position to stand between the needle-toothed man and Rachel. She stopped him with a hand and the faintest shake of her head, the muscles at the corners of her eyes tightening.

The knife wasn’t thrown.

Carnival wiped her hands on her leather trousers. “That’s not pitch they’re burning.”

Needle-tooth’s cloudy gaze slid towards her. He barked a command back to his followers in a language Dill didn’t understand. The army stirred behind him. A series of calls bounced back through the masses, and faded like echoes.

“Outcast,” Needle-tooth said to Carnival. “Scarred bitch. He knows you’re here. Wants you alive.”

Carnival smiled dangerously.

“Do I need to remind you,” Rachel murmured, “we are outnumbered?”

“You might be,” Carnival said.

Dill tried to ease himself in front of Rachel. Again she stopped him. A bone beneath his foot snapped and he swayed while catching his balance. Further down the slope, there was movement. Items were being passed forward. Nets?

Needle-tooth sneered at Carnival. “Freak.”

Carnival’s scars darkened. Her wings snapped out, lightning-quick. She snatched the fork from her belt—

—and charged into the army.

Dill didn’t see the net until it was almost upon her. Carnival, however, was quicker. She veered, with astonishing speed, and dived.

Needle-tooth was catapulted back, black blood geysering from his now truly punctured throat. He crashed into three followers with the force of a battering ram, and all four fell into the ranks behind. Two dozen men toppled. The net, meanwhile, landed on bones, sixty feet beyond Carnival.

She crouched, hissed.

Rachel was eyeing Needle-tooth’s body. “He isn’t getting up,” she whispered to Dill. “He’s just been killed—again.”

Carnival pounced. And there was a storm of blood.

Dill had never seen anyone, human or angel, move so fast. Carnival leapt, spun, wings extended flat above her, legs windmilling. Blood flew in arcs from three more throats before she landed. Crouching again, she paused for half a heartbeat, then, like a crossbow bolt, plunged into the nearest knot of opponents. Knives flashed. Carnival ducked inside one, two, three strikes…snaked through a flurry of limbs, her fork flickering…and suddenly there was open space around her.

A ring of fresh corpses crumpled onto the bones.

“Shit,” Rachel said, “she’s just warming up.”

Figures kept massing around Carnival, but she was already moving again. She flitted over the powdery slope as though she weighed nothing. She leapt again, punched her fork upwards between ribs and into the heart of a wild-eyed woman, then withdrew it at once so as to catch a savage down-cut from a man to her left, stopping his knife between the iron prongs. An elbow shattered his face; then the fork licked out and he recoiled, screaming.

The horde roared with bloodlust. Scores of frenzied men and women pressed closer, clawed towards her over the corpses of their fallen, snarling, hungry. Carnival wove among them, a dark whisper, and killed with a speed that continued to leave Dill stunned. Steel clashed with iron, again, again, again. Flesh ripped,