Sha’ik scowled at the presumption behind that invitation, but then inwardly relented. This is important, after all. I feel it. The heart of all that will follow . ‘Join us, Mathok,’ she said.

He dismounted and strode over.

L’oric addressed him. ‘I have been asked to explain “cold iron”, Warchief, and for this I need help.’

The desert warrior bared his teeth. ‘Cold iron. Coltaine. Dassem Ultor-if the legends speak true. Dujek Onearm. Admiral Nok. K’azz D’Avore of the Crimson Guard. Inish Garn, who once led the Gral. Cold iron, Chosen One. Hard. Sharp. It is held before you, and so you reach.’ He crossed his arms.

‘You reach,’ L’oric nodded. ‘Yes, that’s it. You reach. And are stuck fast.’

‘Cold iron,’ Mathok growled. ‘The warchief’s soul-it either rages with the fire of life, or is cold with death. Chosen One, Korbolo Dom is hot iron, as am I. As are you. We are as the sun’s fires, as the desert’s heat, as the breath of the Whirlwind Goddess herself.’

‘The Army of the Apocalypse is hot iron.’

‘Aye, Chosen One. And thus, we must pray that the forge of Tavore’s heart blazes with vengeance.’

‘That she too is hot iron? Why?’

‘For then, we shall not lose.’

Sha’ik’s knees suddenly weakened and she almost staggered. L’oric moved close to support her, alarm on his face.

‘Mistress?’

‘I am… I am all right. A moment…’ She fixed her gaze on Mathok once more, saw the brief gauging regard in his eyes that then quickly slipped once again behind his impassive mien. ‘Warchief, what if Tavore is cold iron?’

‘The deadliest clash of all, Chosen One. Which shall shatter first?’

L’oric said, ‘Military histories reveal, mistress, that cold iron defeats hot iron more often than not. By a count of three or four to one.’

‘Yet Coltaine! Did he not fall to Korbolo Dom?’

She noted L’oric’s eyes meet Mathok’s momentarily.

‘Well?’ she demanded.

‘Chosen One,’ Mathok rumbled, ‘Korbolo Dom and Coltaine fought nine major engagements-nine battles-on the Chain of Dogs. Of these, Korbolo was clear victor in one, and one only. At the Fall. Outside the walls of Aren. And for that he needed Kamist Reloe, and the power of Mael, as channelled through the jhistal priest, Mallick Rel.’

Her head was spinning, panic ripping through her, and she knew L’oric could feel her trembling.

‘Sha’ik,’ he whispered, close by her ear, ‘you know Tavore, don’t you? You know her, and she is cold iron , isn’t she?’

Mute, she nodded. She did not know how she knew, for neither Mathok nor L’oric seemed able to give a concrete definition, suggesting to her that the notion derived from a gut level, a place of primal instinct. And so, she knew .

L’oric had lifted his head. ‘Mathok.’

‘High Mage?’

‘Who, among us, is cold iron? Is there anyone?’

‘There are two, High Mage. And one of these is capable of both: Toblakai.’

‘And the other?’

‘Leoman of the Flails.’

Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas lay beneath a sheath of sand. The sweat had soaked through his telaba beneath him, packing down his body’s moulded imprint, and had cooled, so that he now shivered unceasingly. The sixth son of a deposed chief among the Pardu, he had been a wanderer of the wastelands for most of his adult life. A wanderer, trader, and worse. When Leoman had found him, three Gral warriors had been dragging him behind their horses for most of a morning.

The purchase price had been pathetically small, since his skin had been flayed away by the burning sands, leaving only a bloodied mass of raw flesh. But Leoman had taken him to a healer, an old woman from some tribe he’d never heard of before, or since, and she in turn had taken him to a rockspring pool, where he’d lain immersed, raving with fever, for an unknown time, whilst she’d worked a ritual of mending and called upon the water’s ancient spirits. And so he had recovered.

Corabb had never learned the reason behind Leoman’s mercy, and, now that he knew him well-as well as any who’d sworn fealty to the man-he knew better than to ask. It was one with his contrary nature, his unknowable qualities that could be unveiled but once in an entire lifetime. But Corabb knew one thing: for Leoman of the Flails, he would give his life.

They had lain side by side, silent and motionless, through the course of the day, and now, late in the afternoon, they saw the first of the outriders appear in the distance, cautiously ranging out as they ventured onto the pan of cracked salts and clay.