Hugh Cook: The wizards and the warriors

'I don't think it's safe,' said Hearst.

'I'll be the judge of that,' said Miphon.

He turned and clambered up the steep slope, and Hearst, weary with long leagues of marching, did not bother to call him back. The day was too hot and lazy for anyone to imagine danger on the stalk. Hearst concentrated on catching fish.

Three more snail-baits were taken in quick succes sion. Hearst gutted Blackwood's fish – there were five of them by now – slicing from vent to gills, drawing out heart-red organs and thick intestines packed with fragments of barnacles. He scaled them, lightweight fish armour spraying up where his knife skimmed the skin. Then he cut off the head and tails.

After baiting his hook with a bit of fish, Hearst threw a handful of guts, heads and tails into the water. They fell away into the depths, leaving threads of blood near the surface. Hearst threw in his line after them. He got no bites except the tiny infuriating nibbles of the little, thieving fish.

Late in the afternoon, Hearst pulled in his line and wound it up.

'We'll come back by night,' said Hearst. 'When the tide's in. The bigger fish might start feeding then.' 'Good,' said Blackwood.

And Blackwood gathered together handfuls of black snails and dumped them in a splash-fed pool above high water mark, where he would be able to lay his hands on them easily by moonlight. He threw a couple of hammer stones into the same pool. Then the two climbed to the top of the Elbow.

Miphon had garnered a brace of lizards, each as long as a man's forearm. They cooked the lizards and the little, little fish over a small, hot fire which gave no smoke to betray them to the watching world.

'We're going fishing tonight,' said Hearst.

'Are you?' said Miphon.

'There'll be bigger fish by night,' said Hearst. 'All fishermen know that.' iil take your word for it,' said Miphon. 'Myself, I'd rather sleep.'

Hearst and Blackwood got a little sleep themselves as the last of the daylight faded; they woke to the light of the moon's declining quarter. The moon rode battle-high, with streamers of black cloud sliding through the sky on a high airstream; down near the sea, the night was calm, but there was a low swell, and as Hearst and Blackwood climbed down to the point they could hear the swells breaking on the rocks, and the glutinous shifting of masses of water within the sea cave.

Hearst stood on the rocks and relieved himself, an arc of urine spattering into the sea, kicking phosphorescence to life in the water. Phosphorescent creatures gleamed on the rocks as each slow, lazy sea-surge rode home leisurely to end in an echoing thud in the depths of the sea cave.

The two men, shadows to each other in the night, broke open snails and baited their hooks.

T should have saved one of those little fish,' said Hearst. 'That's the best bait.'

'You can have the first one I catch,' said Blackwood.

Soon after, Blackwood handed Hearst a small fish. It quivered in his hand, struggled as the hook went home. Live bait. Hearst swung his line once, twice, three times, then cast it out into the darkness. It fell. The line snaked away as the small fish sprinted in panic. Hearst felt life sing along the line as his bait carried the hook into the depths.

Then the line went weightless. It swayed away sideways into the night. Pulling on the line, Hearst felt a leisurely power bearing his bait-fish away. He yanked on the line to drive the hook hard home. The answer was a sudden jerk that almost had him in the water. The line pulled taut. Cordage burnt through his hands. He swore. Then the line broke.

A larger swell rocked through the dark sea, splashed spray onto the rocks they were standing on, and boomed thunder inside the sea cave. Black clouds swallowed the moon. Something gleamed under water, big, white, far down, turning, gone – what was it? Another wave slammed home against the rocks.

'Come on,' said Hearst. 'Let's get back to the campsite.'

Later that night, waiting for sleep, he thanked his 505 fates for what had been, in its own way, a perfect day. He knew the dangers that lay ahead: the Dry Pit, the Marabin Erg, and, if they survived that, eventually a battle with the Swarms themselves. He knew the odds favoured his death: he doubted that he would live to see another spring. And so he savoured what was left to him, and found it sweet. As Saba Yavendar said:

My feet wear down the last of the road Through scarabshard cities, through shufflerock hills, Through grey timedwindled mountainscapes.

Insects feed at my sweat Till a cavemouth swallows me to its shelter.

My goatskin outglubs the last of its bub, And fills the cup to less than belly-centre:

Yet I drink, for I will not refuse the cup Simply because the wine lacks the brim.

There must have been a storm far out to sea, because for days big swells broke on the shores of the Tongue, each swell rising glass-green as it reached the shallows near the shore, then breaking to churning white spray with a boom of thunder.

As the three trekked north along the sands, the tideline now was littered with shells, and occasional clumps of black seaweed, some with thick clusters of fat pink barnacles clinging to them. Now and then they encountered signs of human life: charred timbers that had once been shaped with axe or adze, and had met fire before the sea brought them to this resting; a fishing float marked with a weather-rune; the cork-buoyed haft of a broken harpoon.

Halfway between the Elbow and the cliffs of Seagate, they found a beachside tree covered with blood-red blossoms. It was, said Miphon, a tree known to some of the peoples of the Ocean of Cambria as yanzyonz, meaning 'autumn fire'. The travellers rested in the shade of the tree; bees were at work in the blossoms.

'Honey,' said Blackwood, listening to the bees.

'That would be nice,' said Hearst.

'These things can be arranged,' said Miphon. 'If you don't mind waiting.'

'But,' said Hearst, 'you've lost your…'

'This doesn't need magic,' said Miphon. 'Watch.'

And he caught one of the nectar-seeking bees, tore pieces from its veined wings, then released it. The injured bee could fly hardly faster than walking pace. Miphon followed it, knowing it would lead him straight to the hive.

'I'm going to dig shellfish,' said Blackwood.

'Enjoy yourself,' said Hearst.

Left alone, he decided to gather some firewood. In his search, he discovered, not far from the shoreline, a low bank of old shells, long ago bleached white by the sun. Many were calcined, cracked by heat; there were banks of such shells all along the Chameleon's Tongue, where groups of people had camped for weeks at a time, feeding on shellfish, sometimes cooking them in bulk to take inland. The heap of discarded shells could have been there for years, decades or centuries.

Unbidden and unexpected, a memory surfaced. It was one of the memories of the wizard Phyphor, who, thousands of years before, had stood on the shores of the harbour of Hartzaven, at Seagate, watching a small sailing craft making for the shore.

Phyphor had said: is that them?'

And his companion, one Saba Yavendar, had said, yes, yes, that's them, that's the party come to negotiate for the Dareska Amath – Hearst remembered.

Remembered the Dareska Amath, as seen through Phyphor's eyes. A wild people, yes, much given to laughter and boasting, fond of improbable stories and outrageous dares, a tough and hardy seafaring folk, eager for the challenge of an audacious venture into the Deep South. Those were his ancestors, and… they were nothing like the people who now lived on Rovac.

The Dareska Amath had been quick to anger and quick to forget; the Rovac had developed the capacity for a sour, unrelenting hatred that nothing could appease. The Dareska Amath had possessed a sardonic sense of the ridiculous which tempered their excesses; the Rovac cultivated an overbearing arrogance and a fanatical sense of honour which destroyed their sense of proportion.