'Mercy? Hah!' She pushed the stopper back into the skin, then tossed it down next to the grave. 'Don't you know who I am?' She grabbed hold of the handle of the shovel, the point of its blade bit once more into the earth.

'Ferro Maljinn!' came a voice from somewhere behind her, 'I know who you are!'

A most unwelcome development.

She swung the shovel again, mind racing. Her bow was lying just out of reach on the ground by the first grave she had dug. She threw some dirt away, her sweating shoulders prickling at the unseen presence. She glanced over at the dying soldier. He was staring at a point behind her, and that gave her a good idea where this new arrival was standing.

She dug the point of the shovel in again, then let go and sprang forward out of the hole, rolling across the dirt, snatching up her bow as she moved, notching an arrow, drawing back the string in one smooth motion. An old man was standing about ten strides away. He was making no move forward, was holding no weapon. He was just standing, looking at her with a benign smile.

She let the arrow fly.

Now Ferro was about as deadly with a bow as it's possible to be. The ten dead soldiers could have testified to that, if they'd been able. Six of them had her arrows sticking out of them, and in that fight she hadn't missed once. She couldn't remember missing at close range, however quickly the shot had been taken, and she'd killed men ten times further away than this smiling old bastard was now.

But this time she missed.

The arrow seemed to curve in the air. A bad feather maybe, but it still didn't seem quite right. The old man didn't flinch, not even a hair. He simply stood, smiling, exactly where he'd always stood, and the arrow missed him by a few inches and disappeared off down the hillside.

And that gave everyone time to consider the situation.

He was a strange one, this old man. Very dark-skinned, black as coal, which meant he was from the far south, across the wide and shelterless desert. That's a journey not lightly taken, and Ferro had rarely seen such people. Tall and thin with long, sinewy arms and a simple robe wrapped round him. There were strange bangles round his wrists, stacked up so they covered half his fore-arms, glittering dark and light in the savage sun.

His hair was a mass of grey ropes about his face, some hanging down as low as his waist, and there was a grey stubble on his lean, pointed jaw. He had a big water skin wrapped around his chest, and a bunch of leather bags hanging from a belt around his waist. Nothing else. No weapon. That was the strangest thing of all, for a man out here in the Badlands. No one came to this god-forsaken place except those who were running, and those sent to hunt them. In either case, they should be well armed.

He was no soldier of Gurkhul, he was no scum come looking for the money on her head. He was no bandit, no escaped slave. What was he then? And why was he here? He must have come for her. He could be one of them.

An Eater.

Who else would wander the Badlands without a weapon? She hadn't realised they wanted her that badly.

He stood there motionless, the old man, smiling at her. She reached slowly for another arrow, and his eyes followed her without any worry.

'That really isn't necessary,' he said, in a slow, deep voice.

She nocked the arrow to her bow. The old man didn't move. She shrugged her shoulders and took her time aiming. The old man smiled on, not a care in the world. She let the arrow fly. It missed him by a few inches again, this time on the other side, and shot off down the hillside.

Once was a possibility, she had to admit that, but twice was wrong. If Ferro knew one thing, and one thing only, she knew how to kill. The old fool should have been stuck through and bleeding out his last into the stony soil. Now, simply by standing still and smiling, he seemed to be saying, 'You know less than you think. I know more.'

That was very galling.

'Who are you, you old bastard?'

'They call me Yulwei.'

'Old bastard will do for you!' She tossed her bow down on the ground, let her arms drop to her sides so that her right hand was hidden from him by her body. She twisted her wrist and the curved knife dropped out of her sleeve and into her waiting palm. There are many ways to kill a man, and if one way fails you must try another.

Ferro had never been one to give up at the first stumble.

Yulwei began to move slowly towards her, his bare feet padding on the rocks, bangles jingling softly together. That was very strange, now she thought about it. If he made a noise every time he moved, how had he managed to sneak up on her?

'What do you want?'

'I want to help you.' He came forward, until he was just over an arm's length away, then he stopped and stood, grinning at her.

Now Ferro was fast as a snake with a knife and twice as deadly, as the last of those soldiers could have testified, had he been able. The blade was a shining blur in the air, swung with all her strength and all her fury behind it. If he had been standing where she thought he was, his head would have been hanging off. Only he wasn't. He was standing about a stride to the left.

She threw herself at him with a fighting scream, ramming the glittering point of the knife into his heart. But she stabbed only air. He was back where he had been before, motionless and smiling all the while. Very strange. She padded round him, cautious, sandaled feet scuffing in the dust, left hand circling in the air in front of her, right hand gripped tight round the handle of the knife. She had to be careful there was magic here.

'There is no need to get angry. I am here to help.'

'Fuck your help,' she hissed back at him.

'But you need it, and badly. They are coming for you, Ferro. There are soldiers in the hills, many soldiers.'

'I'll outrun them.'

'There are too many. You cannot outrun them all.'

She glanced round at the punctured bodies. 'Then I'll give them to the vultures.'

'Not this time. They are not alone. They have help.' On the word 'help' his deep voice dropped even lower.

Ferro frowned. 'Priests?'

'Yes, and more besides.' His eyes went very wide. 'An Eater,' he whispered. 'They mean to take you alive. The Emperor wants to make an example of you. He has it in mind to put you on display.'

She snorted. 'Fuck the Emperor.'

'I heard you already did.'

She growled and raised the knife again, but it was not a knife. There was a hissing snake in her hand, a deadly snake, with its mouth open to bite. 'Ugh!' She threw it on the ground, stamped her foot down on its head, but she stamped on her knife instead. The blade snapped with a sharp crack.

'They will catch you,' said the old man. 'They will catch you, and they will break your legs with hammers in the city square, so you can never run again. Then they will parade you through the streets of Shaffa, naked, sitting backwards on an ass, with your hair shaved off, while the people line the streets and shout insults at you.'

She frowned at him, but Yulwei did not stop. 'They will starve you to death in a cage before the palace, cooking in the hot sun, while the good people of Gurkhul taunt you and spit on you and throw dung at you through the bars. Perhaps they will give you piss to drink, if you are lucky. When you finally die they will let you rot, and the flies will eat you bit by bit, and all the other slaves will see what freedom looks like, and decide they are better off as they are.'

Ferro was bored with this. Let them come, and the Eater too. She wouldn't die in a cage. She would cut her own throat, if it came to that. She turned her back on him with a scowl and snatched up the shovel, started digging away furiously at the last grave. Soon it was deep enough.

Deep enough for the scum who'd be rotting in it.

She turned around. Yulwei was kneeling down by the dying soldier, giving him water from the skin round his chest.

'Fuck!' she shouted, striding over, her fingers locked around the handle of the shovel.

The old man got to his feet as she came close. 'Mercy ...' croaked the soldier, stretching out his hand.

'I'll give you mercy!' The edge of the shovel bit deep into the soldier's skull. The body twitched briefly then was still. She turned to the old man with a look of triumph. He stared back sadly. There was something in his eyes. Pity, maybe.

'What do you want, Ferro Maljinn?'

'What?'

'Why did you do that?' Yulwei pointed down at the dead man. 'What do you want?'

'Vengeance.' She spat out the word.

'On all of them? On the whole nation of Gurkhul? Every man, woman and child?'

'All of them!'

The old man looked round the corpses. 'Then you must be very happy with today's work.'

She forced a smile onto her face. 'Yes.' But she wasn't very happy. She couldn't remember what it felt like. The smile seemed strange, unfamiliar, all lop-sided.

'And is vengeance all you think of, every minute of every day, your only desire?'

'Yes.'

'Hurting them? Killing them? Ending them?'

'Yes!'

'You want nothing for yourself?'

She paused. 'What?'

'For yourself. What do you want?'

She stared at the old man suspiciously, but no reply came to her. Yulwei shook his head sadly. 'It seems to me, Ferro Maljinn, that you are as much a slave as you ever were. Or ever could be.' He sat down, cross-legged on a rock.

She stared at him for a moment, confused. Then the anger bubbled up again, hot and reassuring. 'If you came to help me, you can help me bury them!' She pointed over at the three bloody corpses, lined up next to the graves.

'Oh no. That is your work.'

She turned away from the old man, cursing under her breath, and moved over to her one-time companions. She took Shebed's corpse under the arms and hauled him over to the first grave, his heels making two little grooves in the dust. When she made it to the hole she rolled him in. Alugai was next. A stream of dry soil ran over him as he came to rest in the bottom of his grave.

She turned to Nasar's carcass. He had been killed by a sword cut across the face. Ferro thought it was something of an improvement to his looks.

'That one looks a good sort,' said Yulwei.

'Nasar.' She laughed without amusement. 'A raper, a thief, a coward.' She hawked up some phlegm and spat into his dead face. It splattered softly against his forehead. 'Much the worst of the three.' She looked down at the graves. 'But they were all of them shit.'

'Nice company you keep.'

'The hunted don't have the luxury of choosing their companions. ' She stared at Nasar's bloody face. 'You take what's offered.'

'If you disliked them so much, why don't you leave them for the vultures, like you have these others?' Yulwei swept his arm over the broken soldiers on the ground.

'You bury your own.' She kicked Nasar into the hole. He rolled forward, arms flopping, and dropped into the grave face down. 'That's the way it's always been.'

She grabbed hold of the shovel and started to heap the stony earth onto his back. She worked in silence, the sweat building up on her face, then dripping off onto the ground. Yulwei watched her as the holes filled up. Three more piles of dirt in the wasteland. She threw the shovel away and it bounced off one of the corpses and clattered among the stones. A small cloud of black flies buzzed angrily off the body, then returned.

Ferro picked up her bow and arrows and slung them over her shoulder. She took the water skin, checked its weight carefully, then shouldered that also. Then she picked over the bodies of the soldiers. One of them, he looked like the leader, had a fine curved sword. He hadn't even managed to draw it before her arrow had caught him in the throat. Ferro drew it now, and she tested it with a couple of sweeps through the air. It was very good: well balanced, the long blade glittering deadly sharp, bright metal on the hilt catching the sun. He had a knife as well that matched it. She took the weapons and stuck them through her belt.

She picked over the other bodies, but there wasn't much to take. She cut her arrows from the corpses where she could. She found some coins and tossed them away. They would only weigh her down, and what would she buy out here in the Badlands? Dirt?

That was all there was, and it was free.

They had a few scraps of food with them, but not enough even for another day. That meant there must be others, probably lots of them, and not far away. Yulwei was telling the truth, but it made no difference to her.

She turned and started to walk southward, down off the hill and towards the great desert, leaving the old man behind.

'That's the wrong way,' he said.

She stopped, squinting at him in the bright sun. 'Aren't the soldiers coming?'

Yulwei's eyes sparkled. 'There are many ways of staying unnoticed, even out here in the Badlands.'

She looked to the north, out over the featureless plain below. Out towards Gurkhul. There wasn't a hill, or a tree, or scarcely a bush for miles. Nowhere to hide. 'Unnoticed, even by an Eater?'

The old man laughed. 'Especially by those arrogant swine. They're not half as clever as they think they are. How do you think I got here? I came through them, between them, around them. I go where I please, and I take who I please with me.'

She shaded her eyes with her hand, and squinted southward. The desert stretched away into the far distance, and beyond. Ferro could survive here in the wilderness, just about, but out there in that crucible of changing sands and merciless heat?

The old man seemed to read her thoughts. 'There are always the endless sands. I have crossed them before. It can be done. But not by you.'

He was right, damn him. Ferro was lean and tough as a bowstring, but that just meant she would walk in circles a little longer before pitching on her face. The desert was preferable to the cage before the palace as a place to die, but not by much. She wanted to stay alive.

There were still things to do.

The old man sat there, cross-legged, smiling. What was he? Ferro trusted no one, but if he meant to deliver her to the Emperor, he could have knocked her on the head while she was digging, instead of announcing his arrival. He had magic, she had seen that for herself, and some chance was better than none.

But what would he want in return? The world had never given Ferro anything for free, and she didn't expect it to begin now. She narrowed her eyes. 'What do you want from me, Yulwei?'

The old man laughed. That laugh was becoming very annoying. 'Let us just say that I will have done you a favour. Later on, you can do me one in return.'

That answer was horribly thin on the details, but when your life's on the table you have to take whatever's offered. She hated to place herself in the power of another, but it seemed she had no choice.

Not if she wanted to live out the week, that is.

'What do we do?'

'We must wait for nightfall.' Yulwei glanced at the twisted bodies scattered about the ground, and wrinkled his nose. 'But perhaps not here.'

Ferro shrugged and sat herself down on the middle grave. 'Here will do,' she said, 'I've a mind to watch the vultures eat.'

Overhead the clear night sky was scattered with bright stars, and the air had turned cool, cold even. Down on the dark and dusty plain below, fires were burning, a curved line of fires that seemed to hem them in against the edge of the desert. She, Yulwei, the ten corpses and the three graves were trapped on the hillside. Tomorrow, as the first light crept over the arid land, the soldiers would leave those fires and creep carefully towards the hills. If Ferro was still there when they arrived, she would be killed for sure, or worse still captured. She could not fight that many on her own, even supposing there was no Eater with them.

She hated to admit it, but her life was in Yulwei's hands now.