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his father's assassin and struck that he realised he'd made one of those awful mistakes that are still toe-curlingly embarrassing to think about years later. Somehow he'd got confused, and instead of throwing down his teddy he'd thrown down his sword. Nekros, however, had sensed the coming attack, and turning leisurely to meet it, raised his weapon to ward off the blow. The descending teddy bear connected with the blade and its head sheared off and hit Nekros on the nose. He blinked in surprise and then stared in amusement at the bean-pole of a youth now cowering in front of him.
    As suddenly as it had come, the fit of anger that had taken Ronan had vanished, to be replaced by absolute terror. He realised he was about to die, probably horribly, and behind him, blood-curdling screams gave him a good idea of what was happening to the rest of the village. Nevertheless, he stood his ground. If he had to die, he was determined to do so in a way that would have made his father proud of him. But instead of following up, Nekros bent down and picked up the headless corpse of the teddy bear. Then he held up the bear in front of Ronan's face and gently ran his bloodstained sword down its chest. The material parted and the bear's woolly guts spilled out in a torrent of fluff.
    This blatant sadism was too much for Ronan. Weaponless, hopeless, he lowered his head and blindly charged at Nekros. Deftly, the warrior side-stepped, and as Ronan careered past him he delivered a sweeping back-hand cut with his sword that smashed into the back of the youth's helm. Ronan nose-dived into the ground like an apatodon coming to rest, and lay there motionless. Nekros looked down at him, and smiled with pleasure as blood began to flow out from underneath the helm. Good! That would teach the idiot to attack people with cuddly toys! Leering with satisfaction, Nekros turned on his heel and stalked off in search of someone else to massacre.
     
    Ronan woke up with the headache of a lifetime and lay there with his eyes tightly shut, vaguely wondering why his bed felt so hard and uncomfortable. Various memories flitted round his badly dazed brain. The headache reminded him of the time he'd drunk a whole bottle of Stumpy's Fart Fermenter, a dwarfish barley wine, when he was ten. There was a strange clamped sensation about his skull that was reminiscent of the time he got his head stuck in a pan when he was eight. And the air seemed permeated with the stench of badly burned flesh, which reminded him of that disastrous time his father had tried to do a barbecue. His father! Oh God! With a suddenness that overwhelmed him, full memory came flooding back, and he sat up and dragged off the badly dented helm that had saved his life. The back of his head felt as though some incredibly powerful smith was beating flat a red-hot sword on it, and his face and chest were covered in the encrusted blood that had poured from his nose when he smashed into the ground. Aghast, he stared about him.
    It was morning, and the Tribe of Fallon were long gone. There was little sign that they had even been there - save for the fact that most of the village had been burned down and the ground was littered with bodies. A haze of pungent smoke drifted upwards from a few still-smouldering huts, and hordes of sated crows hopped heavily about from corpse to corpse, their beaks and feathers soaked in blood, half-heartedly searching for the odd delicacy that might have been overlooked. Ronan hauled himself upright and staggered across the square, desperately searching for survivors. As he stared at the charred remains of once-welcoming homes and stumbled over the lifeless bodies of friend after friend, the enormity of what had happened was almost too much for his mind to cope with. He felt emotionally numb. Coming to his father's corpse, he stopped. He just couldn't believe that this was real. Never again to lie in bed and hear his father's hearty greeting as he strode in from the alehouse? Never