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weed crowthistle, Asr ă thiel was on the verge of thanking him for his offer of protection, before recalling the eldritch prohibition on that form of expressing gratitude.
    ‘Your courtesy is appreciated,’ was all she could manage, shyly, suddenly awkward for no reason that she could fathom. Ridiculously, she almost laughed at the concept of such a small, innocuous object, no matter how unlike other urisks he was, proposing to aid a weathermage. Promises made by immortal entities, however, always held fast, and eldritch protection could be formidable even when offered by a dwarfish domestic creature who walked on the hooves of a goat.
    Giles rapped at the door a second time, and during the ensuing bustle the urisk disappeared. Later, when her thoughts turned to her odd companion once more, it came to Asr ă thiel that it should be no surprise the wight would wish to emigrate now that battle loomed nigh. The quarrels of men would hardly be to the taste of one such as he, who considered himself infinitely superior to the human race, and it was unlikely he would risk accidentally becoming embroiled in them.
    Over the years his companionship had pleased her more than she had ever admitted to herself. They had shared numerous jests. Her confidence in him was such that she had entrusted him with many of her innermost thoughts and feelings. Besides, she would grievously miss his treasuries of knowledge. The erudition of this immortal being seemed boundless; she supposed he had lived long enough to know practically everything. He could describe events of the dim past as if they were still fresh in his memory. He proved himself master of the lore of hidden things. Once, he had described to her the strata buried miles below the surface of the ground, the layer upon layer of clays and shales and sandstones; the fossils held frozen in time within those layers . . .
    Had the weathermage but known it, one of those fossil-bearing layers ran deep beneath The Laurels, its carbonate-rich beds preserving a wide variety of petrified invertebrates. Sporadically other such shale strata stretched underground for many leagues; beneath mountain ranges, rivers and lakes, beyond the Riddlecombe Steeps, all the way to the caverns perforating the Great Eastern Ranges in Slievmordhu.
    From those exact stenchful caverns the last of the Marauders were marching out to make war. They issued forth in no orderly way, not in ranks or files, not marching in step nor organised into battalions and regiments, but in ragged groups or pairs or alone, each making his way as he thought fit. These haphazard crowds had been instructed by their leaders that their only purpose was to attack soldiers who wore the battledress of Narngalis or Grïmnørsland, and to leave the other uniforms alone—for now. Later, when otherkind —the rest of the human race, including their allies—had been weakened and their numbers thinned by their struggle against each other, and their farms and villages left unprotected, when they were at their most vulnerable, then would the Marauders turn upon them all, and rend them. But for now the comswarms must appear compliant.
    The tardiest stragglers amongst them, Scroop and Grak, were reluctant conscripts. They had spent the evening endeavouring to keep a low profile—no simple task, with profiles that resembled barnacle-covered flotsam—and in their efforts to spy on everyone else, they had inadvertently become witness to a large company of trows gliding northwards, flitting almost soundlessly through the twilight like bundles of tattered webs on spindly sticks. The uncanny sight had unnerved them further.
    ‘Shake an ’ind leg, ya misfits,’ their captain bellowed, pinning the stragglers with a baleful eye. ‘Do not think I cannot see youse loitering be’ind, up to ya sly tricks. Youse are comin’ to ’elp us foight, by ’ook or by crook, ya cowards!’
    Unwillingly the pair loped along in the wake of their cohorts.
    ‘Gunna get