CHAPTER TWO
Gord the ogor was explaining his favourite recipe for poached grot kidneys to Khenna Grondsdottr when Drekki came out of the gaol’s grand entrance. Gord was leaning on the arch, towering over Khenna, waving his arms enthusiastically as he described the flavour, making the canvas of his custom arkanaut’s suit creak dangerously as his muscles bulged. From the appalled look on Khenna’s face – she’d gone even whiter than usual – she wasn’t in any hurry to try out Gord’s cooking. Otherek Zhurafon stood a way out from the gate, alert for trouble, his helm on. His role as aether-khemist was perfectly clear from the fluted sampling tubes that made up his helmet’s beard, and the heavy equipment clamped to his pack.
Drekki took up his weapons from the little guard post. He peered suspiciously at the copperhat manning the station, beard bristling, before inspecting the weapons carefully. His three-barrelled pistol, Karon, named for his mother, his arkanaut’s great axe with its built-in harpoon and the runes carved deep in the blade. He demanded Evtorr’s arkanaut gear, and was handed a sack that smelled strongly of fish. Evtorr himself was bundled up under the smelly blanket from his cell between Adrimm and Kedren.
Gord pushed himself up off the metal moustache of the massive ancestor face that made up the gate surround as Drekki came out.
‘You done, boss?’ Gord asked. ‘What you got there? Is it for eating?’ He sniffed. ‘Wor! Smells bad!’
‘No, it’s not for eating, it’s Evtorr Bjarnisson, that’s what it is,’ said Drekki, buckling his pistol back on. ‘And he smells bad because he’s had a bad time. We’ll get him cleaned up.’
‘Evtorr?’ said Khenna in surprise. She looked around at the others. ‘Evtorr Bjarnisson?’
‘The one and the same, lass,’ said Kedren.
‘That’s a turn up for the books,’ said Otherek. ‘And that’s putting it mildly.’
‘How is that possible?’ asked Khenna.
‘Isn’t he dead?’ said Gord. He looked puzzled, then wagged his finger decisively. ‘Nah, he is dead! I saw him fall off the ship.’
‘He isn’t dead. I don’t know how,’ said Drekki. ‘But he’s here, and he cost me a pretty token to buy out of that place.’
‘If he’s dead,’ Gord went on single-mindedly, ‘can I eat him?’
‘No, you can’t eat him!’ Drekki snapped. ‘What’ll his brother say?’
‘I’ll give Evrokk some money for the bits,’ said Gord reasonably. ‘I mean, Evtorr is dead. He doesn’t need no bits any more.’ But then Evtorr moved a few paces, and the ogor’s brow furrowed a little, making his bald head crease. His jaw worked around his tusks. He was struggling to process how a dead duardin was walking about under a blanket.
‘He’s quite clearly not dead, Gord,’ said Otherek. ‘Stop thinking with your gut, it makes you stupid.’
Gord scratched under his belly plate, then reached out to pat the cowled Evtorr, which only made the duardin yelp. ‘Fair enough. Not dead then. Sorry, Evtorr.’
‘And we need to keep him that way,’ said Drekki. ‘Someone else was asking after him a couple of days ago. Someone who was keeping themselves off the aetherscope, so to speak. Someone with legal representation.’ That made them all wary.
‘Who?’ asked Khenna.
‘I’ve got plenty of enemies,’ Drekki said. ‘Take your pick.’ He watched the passing crowds carefully. Barak-Mhornar encouraged a healthy dose of suspicion in everyone.
They were far below the main meztalinigrin,[12] and even further below the skarenoffrigrin,[13] the main avenues that criss-crossed the city surface, and way out from the kazads[14] and floating khazuks[15] that made up the heavily fortified centre. Even down so deep and so close to the edge, the road was wide enough for six carts abreast, artfully made, with arching buttresses fashioned as ancestor helms bearing the weight of the decks above. Their hair and beards gleamed with gold, copper, platinum and aethershine. Out that far from the centre were the factory levels, where the entire city thrummed with industry. Loud, mechanical noises sounded down a street hot with forge-breath gushing from extraction fans.
It was also busy. They were close to the port districts, so the road was full of people going about their business, and in Barak-Mhornar, that often meant business of the most dubious nature. Duardin of all sorts thronged the way: rich merchants in silks and ostentatious clothes, their beards styled outrageously; arkanaut crews stumping by, weary from long voyages and keen to sample the delights of the city. Citizens heading home from their shifts, grey-skinned from lack of daylight and dirty with oil. There were men among them, and the occasional aelf, and other beings of strange and exotic lineage. A riot of colour, and hard to keep an eye on any one person because of it, though already Drekki had noticed a number of looks at the blanketed Evtorr that he did not like one little bit.
‘I don’t like this one little bit,’ said Drekki. ‘If I were going to get someone out from a gaol like this when I couldn’t legitimately do so, I’d wait until that someone left another way, then pounce. We need to get back to the ship, double quick.’
‘We should stay on the road,’ said Khenna. ‘Stay in full view.’
‘Not been to Mhornar before, have you?’ Kedren said darkly. ‘They’ll knife you in the back in sight of the crowd if they think they can get away with it, and trust me, they’ll find a way to get away with it.’
‘We’d be safer taking a back route,’ said Drekki, peering about. ‘A shortcut. Somewhere out of sight.’
‘Oh, nipping into a secluded alley won’t make a knifing any more likely. Good idea,’ said Kedren sarcastically. Nobody paid him attention.
‘I know a way,’ said Adrimm.
‘You do?’ said Drekki.
‘There’s a back way down there, past that curried goat stand.’ Adrimm pointed.
‘There’s nothing down there,’ said Kedren.
‘That’s why it’s such a good route,’ said Adrimm smugly.
‘You sure?’
Adrimm nodded. ‘Sure as chins are hairy. It’s a service door. Goes into the guts of this place. Access for endrineers. Right out in the open, but locked.’
‘You’d need an endrineer’s pass key for that, my lad,’ said Drekki.
‘You would, wouldn’t you?’ said Adrimm airily.
Drekki gave Adrimm a long, appraising look. The arkanaut had spent more time in Mhornar than most of them. He had attended the academy there, where he’d secured the second-highest grade in his year, a fact he loved to repeat.
‘All right,’ said Drekki. ‘Show us the way. Gord, take Evtorr’s gear and clear us a path.’
‘Aye aye, captain,’ Gord said. He slung the sack over his shoulder. It was crammed with heavy equipment, but to him it was nothing.
They set off, Gord’s gut pushing through the crowd and leaving a wake for the duardin to follow in. Otherek walked directly behind the ogor, his arm about Evtorr’s shoulders, whispering words of encouragement.
‘How’d you know it’s there?’ Kedren asked. He wasn’t trusting at the best of times, and Mhornar brought out the doubting side of his nature even more.
Adrimm looked a little less smug. ‘Um, I’ve been in this gaol before. As a customer, you might say.’
‘You know a quick way up from this level because you’ve been here once?’ asked Khenna.
‘I’ve been here a few times,’ said Adrimm. ‘More than a few times, actually,’ he added sheepishly.
‘You got caught? More than once? In Mhornar? You’re a worse criminal than you are an arkanaut!’ said Drekki.
‘It wasn’t a proper crime. It was drunkenness’ – his voice dropped – ‘and, er, fourth degree grumbling.’
‘Was this while you were securing your famous grade here, or did that happen later?’ Otherek asked innocently.
Drekki was laughing along with the others, when a tug at his arm had him instantly stop. He turned, hand dropping to the butt of his pistol, relaxing when he saw that a young duardin had fallen into step with him. He was very poor, if his threadbare clothes were honestly worn, and not some sort of cunning disguise. You could never be sure in Mhornar, but Drekki thought him harmless, because nobody in disguise would wear a beard so patently fake. It was full and woolly, and you could see the gap where very clearly the whiskers did not spring from the skin.
‘Hey, oldbeard, you need a crewmate?’
‘Go away, beardling,’ said Drekki.
‘I’m not a beardling!’ said the lad. ‘I’m forty-six!’
‘You’re not forty-six,’ said Drekki. He tugged the false beard down. Elastic snagged on the lad’s ears. Beneath the chinwig, the boy had barely the start of the real thing: a soft, downy fuzz on his lip and cheeks, and where his beard would one day tumble most proudly from the chin, it was bald and a little shiny, with a scattering of acne.
‘You’re a beardling sure as sure,’ said Drekki. ‘I’ve never seen such a bad false beard. As my assessment was correct, I repeat, go away.’
The boy did not go away. Drekki continued to walk.
‘All right! I am a beardling, but only just. I’m thirty-five soon, and that’s old enough to join a guild as a prentice. Honest! I just look young for my age. My beard’s coming in!’
‘Then go join a guild,’ growled Drekki.
‘Nah, it’s not for me, I’m looking for adventure in the skies. I thought I’d start as soon as I could, you know? Get experience early.’
‘Right, and hanging around on the road accosting innocent wayfarers and badgering them is your way to do that, is it?’ said Drekki. ‘Try the academies. If you really are thirty-five, and you can pass the musterpress, get your arkanaut’s grade, then we can talk. So, bye-bye, laddy, see you in about six years.’
‘I can’t get in,’ said the woebegone lad. ‘They won’t let me. No money to take the exams, see.’ He danced around from foot to foot even while he was walking. Though adult duardin tended to the stolid side, beardlings could have a surprising amount of nervous energy, before they learned to harness it to a trade. ‘I’m a hard worker, captain. I promise! And I learn fast.’
‘I bet you say that to every skycaptain you meet. How many people do you approach?’
‘Some,’ said the boy. ‘But you’re special, because you’re–’
Trokwi peeped a warning. Drekki slapped his hand onto his money pouch just as the beardling was about to filch it.
‘Aye, and you’re a cutpurse too. Hop it.’
The beardling smiled as if he had done nothing wrong. ‘I was just showing you what I can do–’
‘I’ve had enough. Get out of here!’ Drekki shoved him hard into the crowd. The crew closed ranks, and hustled Evtorr along.
They reached the curried goat stand, almost losing Evtorr, who stopped dead and started to sing a little song, and who would only move once Otherek had had a stern word. Then Gord took a sharp left towards the counter as soon as the smell hit his nose, threatening to break up the little party. Drekki shoved the ogor hard in the small of his back.
‘Get on, Gord!’
The ogor grunted and moved on. The vendor on the stand looked disappointed. Ogors spend big on snacks. Evtorr walked past, face poking out from under the blanket, and gave him a cheery wave.
‘I’m dead!’ he said loudly.
‘Grungni’s grundeez, we’ve got to get him off the street,’ said Drekki.
‘We’re through here,’ said Adrimm. He approached a nondescript service doorway half-hidden behind a large iron cutout on wheels of a stylised duardin head, complete with a resplendent beard picked out in gleaming bronze. A runic slogan arched over the top read: Kolpin Etrik’s Beard Oil! For shine, volume, and sheen!
‘Gord, move that so it covers the whole door.’
‘Right-o, captain,’ Gord said, and dragged the advertisement closer to the goat stand, giving the crew a space behind both in which to hide. Just as Adrimm had said, there was a door set into the wall, heavy, metal, with a rubber seal right the way round. A heavily ornamented double lever worked sliding bolts at top and bottom. A central unit held the lever locked. This was styled as an ancestor face, with the slot of a mouth about a finger’s width high in the middle. The eyes glowed red beneath louring brows, indicating that the door was locked.
Adrimm grabbed the door handle, and drew out a metal rectangle from his thigh pocket. It was very thin, decorated with fretwork, and when it was tilted to the light, Drekki could see the cogs of a delicate mechanism inside. Adrimm flipped up a crank from the surface, ingeniously cut so that it lay flat when not in use, and turned it carefully. A slider set the clockwork in motion.
‘So you do have an endrineer’s key,’ Drekki said. ‘My, today you are full of surprises, Fair-weather.’
‘Aye, captain,’ he said, slotting it into the door lock. ‘Just don’t ask where I got it from.’ He grinned triumphantly, and depressed the handle.
It didn’t budge. The door’s lock lights remained resolutely red.
‘And?’ said Drekki.
Adrimm frowned.
‘Well, I was going to ask all about it,’ said Kedren. ‘But seeing as it doesn’t work, I won’t bother.’
‘It’ll work!’ said Adrimm.
Drekki peered around the goat cart and looked back down the street. Three duardin in the copper-trimmed armour of the Mhornar daywatch were pushing against the flow of the crowd, looking out for something. Or someone. They carried stout truncheons with aethershock modules, and pistols holstered on their hips.
‘Hurry up,’ Drekki said. ‘Zanazultoppi!’[16]
‘There’s nothing we can’t handle,’ said Kedren. ‘I’ll have no qualms at bashing coppers. They’re sure to be corrupt round here.’
‘With respect, master smith, it’ll cause a big rumpus if we do,’ said Khenna.
‘She’s right, the aim is not to be seen,’ said Drekki. ‘We fight them, more will come, we will be arrested. The people after Evtorr might not have succeeded in bribing the prison guards, but your street copper’s another matter. I know,’ he added, smoothing his moustaches, ‘for I have bribed more than a few.’
‘Am I trouble?’ asked Evtorr.
‘You might be, because you’re dead and you are talking,’ said Gord carefully. ‘Not normal.’ He adjusted his belly plate over his ogor-sized aerosuit. ‘Do you know what? I am going to get some goat. All this standing about is hungry work,’ he announced. Before Drekki could stop him, Gord had covered the distance between the door and the counter in a single stride, much to the joy of the proprietor.
The copperhats were getting closer, though thankfully slowly. The citizens of Mhornar were not inclined to give the coppers an easy time.
Evtorr was chuckling to himself now, looking at the tips of his fingers and wiggling them.
‘I’ve got five of these worm things on each of my hands! Look at them go, aren’t they funny?’
‘Get on with it, Adrimm,’ Drekki said, pulling Evtorr gently back into the lee of the goat stand.
‘I am! I am!’ said Adrimm. He pulled the key out and wound it again, blew into the workings, then slotted it back into place. ‘Grimnir’s flaming beard, I think they’ve changed the code cogs!’
‘Skybeard nonsense,’ said Kedren. ‘What’s wrong with a runelock?’
‘I’ll have four of them,’ Gord was saying, pointing at piles of pasties, ‘and six of them.’
‘Wiggly worm things!’ giggled Evtorr.
‘What’s up with him?’ said the beardling.
‘He’s not feeling…’ Drekki’s head swivelled sharply. ‘I thought I told you to get lost!’ he said.
‘You did,’ said the lad innocently. ‘But I can’t get lost. I know this place like the back of my hand.’
Drekki raised his hand. ‘I should box your–’
Khenna stepped between them. ‘You heard the captain, get along now.’
‘Get!’ said Drekki.
‘Be kind, captain,’ said Khenna. ‘He’s just a beardling.’
‘They’re coming, Drekki,’ Kedren warned. He loosened his rune axe in its belt loop. Drekki’s hand strayed to the butt of Karon. A duardin in the street had decided to be helpful, and was standing in conversation with the watch, pointing in Gord’s direction.
‘Who’s coming?’ said the lad, hopping up and down to see.
‘Go away! Adrimm, hurry up…’ Drekki said.
‘Curse it, curse it,’ Adrimm said. He gripped the key’s edge between his fingertips and wiggled it. He made a little noise of frustration, then there was a clunk and the red aetherlamp by the lock flashed green. ‘Aha! We’re in,’ he said.
He opened the door. The duardin piled through. Gord came after, his free arm heaped high with aromatic paper bags. The lad made to follow, but Gord turned round and shook his blockish head. The lad gulped, and took a step back. Gord nodded, then bent almost double to back through the door. He did it surprisingly elegantly, but then he was used to confined environments.
Adrimm eased the door closed.
‘Can you stop them coming through?’ Drekki said.
‘If I break this off in here,’ said Adrimm, waving the metal wafer about, ‘but it cost a fort–’
Kedren grabbed the pass key from his hand, jammed it into the slot halfway, and sharply bent it down, snapping it in half. Tiny cogs pattered onto the floor.
‘There we are then,’ said Kedren. ‘Thanks, Adrimm.’
‘Hey, that cost me a whole voyage’s worth of shares!’
‘Skybeard nonsense,’ Kedren said emphatically.
‘That beardling could give us up,’ said Khenna. ‘Maybe we should have dragged him in here.’ She put her ear to the door.
‘Quiet, everyone,’ said Drekki.
Everyone fell silent. There was a loud chewing sound from behind. Drekki gave Gord a hard look.
‘Do you mind?’ Drekki said.
The ogor swallowed, and put the half-eaten pasty into a pouch.
‘Sorry, captain. I’ll save it for later.’
‘What can you hear?’ Drekki whispered.
Khenna screwed up her face. ‘The beardling… He’s talking to them. He’s…’ Her eyes widened in surprise. ‘He’s sending them down the street!’
‘Good lad,’ said Drekki. ‘See, Kedren, that’s two good turns we’ve had in Mhornar today already. Cheers the heart. Now, let’s get going.’ He shoved at Evtorr, who was counting the rivets in the wall, finger wavering over each one. ‘Otherek, do keep him moving.’
They were in a narrow corridor that ended at flights of stairs heading up and down.
‘Up, I take it,’ said Kedren.
‘Aye,’ said Adrimm, pushing his way to the front. ‘That’s the way to our docks.’ He sniffed loudly. ‘We’d best hope they don’t have trail hounds, the reek that goat is giving off,’ he moaned.
‘I hope they do!’ said Gord happily. ‘I like trail hounds. They are very tasty.’
The stairs took them a few levels up, before coming to an end at another door. This one was locked by a wheel. Adrimm spun it. As it opened, the door let in the sharp, misty air that clung perpetually to Barak-Mhornar.
‘Come on, it’s a bit of a trek still, but we should pass unseen. Poor district, this one. No one will care. I’d put your helms back on, mind,’ he said, unhooking his from his belt and locking it into place on his head.
‘What about Evtorr?’ Kedren asked.
‘He’ll be all right,’ Otherek said. ‘Air’s a bit thin, but it’s breathable.’
‘Yeah, it’s the smell from the privies I want to avoid,’ said Adrimm.
He led them out onto a maintenance walkway. It was of the sort that criss-crosses the outer surfaces of all sky-ports, to allow endrineer crews to do their work keeping the massive cities airborne. It was out of sight beneath an overhang of hissing pipes that ran just above the top of Gord’s head. To the left was a wall of metal, scabbed with corrosion, with here and there a junction box or confluence of conduits or pipes, all overpainted several times to protect them from Ulgu’s perpetual damp. Above them, the thin slit-windows of the factory dormitories stretched up several storeys. Waste pipes and chutes were coated thickly with sewage. A couple of bits of grey washing flapped on racks propped out from the wall. To the right of the walkway was a chain-link guard that fenced it off from top to bottom. Beyond that was nothing but the grey, depthless, clammy fogs of the Realm of Shadow. An aether-ship puttered by, sending heavy water droplets into a swirling dance. Navigation lights shone through the murk, but of its hull or globes they could see nothing.
‘I don’t like this,’ said Kedren, eyeing the mist dubiously. ‘Anything could be out there.’
‘Best not to think about it too much,’ said Adrimm. He and the other arkanauts were easier with the fogs than Kedren was, all of them having spent time in the mother-barak during their lives, but even so, they kept alert. The mists sometimes harboured megalofins, ready to snatch a careless duardin from the decks.
‘I’ll get me detectors on,’ said Otherek, ‘just in case.’ He spun the housing over his right eye, bringing a thermally sensitive lens into place. ‘No one’s sneaking up on me.’
They hurried along, the fog muffling the clang of their boots on the catwalk. The noise of the giant aether-endrins holding the city in the sky throbbed through the fog, all pervasive, and directionless. From the dormitories above came the sound of an argument, and music played on an aether-box. Adrimm reached a gate that blocked the way, peered about to make sure he was unobserved, then clipped the padlock holding the gate closed with a pair of compact bolt cutters slipped out from his harness.
Not far past the gate, the walkway came to a large hexagonal platform. Locked boxes of aethermatic machinery lined the edges. A staircase zigzagged up the side of the port, the top of it lost in the cloud.
‘Up we go again,’ Adrimm said. He picked up the pace, and the small party of duardin clattered upward.
They passed several landings. Close to the stairs, the walls were bare; no windows there. The hexagonal platform vanished into the mist after the fourth, so that neither the top nor the bottom of the staircase was visible.
It was then that matters took a turn for the worse.
Otherek let out a sudden cry that emerged loud and metallic from his speaking tubes.
‘Ware!’
He tackled Adrimm hard to the deck. The arkanaut’s helm rang off the stairs, just as a brace of small crossbow bolts hissed through the place he had stood. One hit the guardrail with a glassy ting! The other vanished into the fog.
‘We’re under attack!’ roared Drekki, opening fire with Karon in the direction the bolts had come from. A dark, slender shape leapt out of the way of the bright aethershot, before vanishing into the fog. ‘Skuru-elgi!’[17] Drekki said. ‘Back to back!’
Everything happened at once. Mist boiled up from the stairwell, thickening, taking on the appearance of a lumpen humanoid. The duardin gathered into a group, guns facing outwards. Gord blasted at the fog beast with his handcannon, punching a wide hole right in its forehead, much to his surprise.
‘I hit it! Did you see? I hit it!’
The thing roared, and reared back.
‘It’s not real! It’s an illusion. Tricky aelf magic. I’ll sort that right out,’ Otherek replied hotly, swinging down his atmospheric anatomiser funnel from its mount on his backpack. It was a huge, heavy thing, of moulded metal plates strongly riveted. A handle upon the back allowed him to aim it at the fog monster. He blasted the illusion with a golden aether-effusion. The creature melted back into water vapour, but by then other shapes were forming in the fog around them, and some of them were certainly solid. The trouble for the duardin was telling which was real.
In short order, all the duardin were blasting away with their pistols.
‘I can’t see a damn thing!’ Drekki shouted, still firing with Karon, her three-bullet spreads shredding mist monsters right and left. More crossbow bolts fizzed through the fog, clattering off the arkanauts’ thick armour plating. Lightning danced through the beasts, lighting up their gaping mouths and eyes.
‘Typical aelves, skulking in the fog,’ said Otherek.
‘There’s one!’ Kedren shouted, directing his friend. The khemist pointed his anatomiser. A roll of aether washed away the mist forms, revealing, for an instant, a pale-skinned aelf squatting on the guardrail on the other side of the stairwell. Drekki fired immediately, catching the aelf in the shoulder with a burning aether-bullet. The aelf dropped his dagger in pain, and clamped his hand to the wound. Khenna turned her gun on him, but he leapt away, chased back into the fog by the streaking light of her aethershot.
Kedren stared into the mist impotently. He clutched his rune axe in his right hand, but he had no gun, having left his bulky blunderbuss on board the Aelsling. ‘You thagi aelf funters! Come out and fight fair!’
Otherek scanned the fog, using the tools of his trade to penetrate weather and glamour with equal ease. ‘There are five of them,’ he said. ‘Show your faces, you elgi cutthroats,’ he shouted, ‘or I’ll roast you in the mist!’
A spray of throwing blades clattering off his helm was the aelves’ answer.
‘Have it your way!’ Otherek twisted the dial on his anatomiser. ‘Steady, lads, this might make you a bit dizzy!’
With a gushing roar, the anatomiser blew out a huge cloud of atomised aether. It billowed in all directions, blasting apart the mist monsters it engulfed, and clearing the fog out of the stairwell completely. One of their assailants was caught in the blast, slipped, and fell down the stairs. He recovered fast and jumped to his feet.
‘Now there’s something I can deal with!’ Kedren shouted happily, and threw his rune axe. It buzzed through the air between Khenna and Gord, smacking into the chest of the aelf with the sound of splintering ribs. He fell down with a shrill cry.
The last three aelves were revealed. The wounded one had fled, leaving two dagger- and pistol-bow-armed Shadowstalkers and some sort of Mistweaver in a mirrored mask.
‘Rarg!’ roared Gord, whose choice of war cries had never been broad. The aelves let off a blizzard of crossbow bolts as the ogor charged at them. One grazed Khenna’s wrist, cutting the heavy fabric of her suit and eliciting a sharp gasp of pain. Three clattered off Gord’s belly plate. Two more lodged in his shoulder with soft, wet thwacks. Gord plucked them out, and lumbered up the stairs, roaring his head off and loosing another shot from his handcannon. Another surprise: the ogor had remembered to reload.
This was too much for the aelves. A flourish of the Mistweaver’s staff sent a screen of thick fog across the stairs. When it cleared a moment later, the aelves were gone.
Drekki toed the dead aelf.
‘Now then, now we know for sure that we’re being followed. I wonder who sent these fellows after us?’ He looked back to Evtorr, who was cowering under his blanket in a corner of the landing. ‘And why do they want Evtorr so much?’
The others were warily scanning the mist. Khenna flexed her wrist and winced.
‘Are you all right there, arkanaut?’
‘It hardly got through my flight suit, captain,’ she replied. ‘No damage. It’s only a scratch. I’ll have to patch the canvas though.’
‘Right you are.’ Drekki looked back into the fog. ‘Come on. We’d better get moving. They might come back.’
Gord scratched at his shoulder wounds as they walked past the dead aelf. For a moment, it looked like he’d pick up the corpse ‘for later’, as he liked to say.
‘Don’t even think about it, Gord,’ said Drekki. ‘You don’t know where it’s been.’