shadow of the white-haired one. Perhaps the opportunity to discover what they were about and whether they might be of use was now.
She quickly retracted that thought as they slid short, stabbing spikes of iron from their belts. Exchanging a momentary scowl with motives unreadable, they turned and began to stalk off towards opposite ends of the beach. Like narrow-faced hounds, they swept the shore with hard stares, searching.
But for what?
Horror’s icy fingers suddenly seized her by the throat, her breath dying with the sudden realisation: it didn’t matter what they were searching for, so much as what they would find. And, if their eyes were for more than just looking menacing, they would undoubtedly find tracks.
Her tracks.
If they didn’t think to search the forest after that, she would have been shocked. However, an old adage involuntarily came to her mind: the Gods frequently offered gifts in threes. Given that she had already been handed giant purple men-women in addition to giant black fish-things, it would seem a shame if they both didn’t try to kill her.
Her options were so slim as to be an emaciated wretch begging for food.
Running was clearly futile; deserted islands tended to leave very little room for evasion. Fighting them was similarly discarded; neither longface’s unyielding muscle seemed to suggest that a staff’s blow would have any greater result than a stern talking-to.
Clearly, then, she reasoned, someone else would have to do the fighting.
She glanced up and down the beach and frowned; each one of the longfaces had departed in the same directions her companions had. If she didn’t find them first, the females undoubtedly would. Then she might never find out if they were friend or foe before the others decided to eviscerate or burn them alive.
That was, of course, if they didn’t simply gut her companions first.
Then again, she thought, rubbing her jaw where Gariath had struck her, maybe that’s not so bad. She growled, giving herself a light thump to the head. No, no, no. Stop thinking like that. Don’t end up like them.
She would stick to the forest, she imagined, skirt the trees to keep out of their sight until she could find Dreadaeleon or Gariath. Even if the longfaces were allies to be won, negotiations would go much easier accompanied by four hundred pounds of red muscle or one hundred pounds of fire and lightning.
The sole question remaining, then, was why there was so much activity atop Irontide’s battlements.
She wouldn’t have noticed it had it not been so prominent. The crown of white was now alive, the Omens writhing and hopping about, emitting all manner of chattering jabber that carried over the waves. The sight of them, their countless bulbous eyes shining like ugly, unpolished jewels, made Asper’s stomach roil; they had been bad enough when they stood still.
And yet, it wasn’t until she noticed a distinct empty space that she truly began to worry as another question crept intrusively into her mind and onto her lips.
‘Where’d the big one go?’
Her question was answered in the chattering of teeth that filled the air behind her, carried on a cloud of acrid fish reek. She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up, kissed by a wisp of salt-laden, hot breath. The fear came over her in a cold blanket, freezing muscles that begged her to run, paralysing a neck that shrieked at her to turn around.
Heat returned to her as she heard something behind her speak in a guttural mimic of her own voice.
‘Where’d the big one go?’
She whirled, eyes going as wide as the eyes staring into hers. Two bulbous blue orbs stared at her, unblinking, from an old crone’s face. Asper’s lips pursed for a moment, unable to find the words to form a prayer holy enough to ward against what she saw.
The creature’s eyes stared at her from where the chin ought to have been, the hooked nose curving sharply above them like a long, fleshy horn. Breathlessly, the priestess stammered, trying to form a curse, and her words were echoed back to her from a pair of jaws creaking open upon the creature’s forehead.
Trembling hand clenching her pendant, she muttered a word.
‘Run,’ she gasped to herself, ‘run.’
‘Run,’ her own voice replied from the creature’s jaws.
Legs refusing to obey, she all but collapsed backwards out of the foliage and onto the beach, arms swiftly dragging her away from the creature. The Omen was not deterred, and leapt from the underbrush in a great flap