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Evar had threats and promises he wanted to challenge them with, but under the black-eyed stare of their incomprehension he knew the gulf between them could not be bridged. They didn’t hate him. They didn’t understand him. The cratalacs might have been utterly inhuman but at least their rage seemed like common ground. The skeer didn’t care one way or the other. This was simply their nature.

Evar wondered at their efforts to claim the library. It was hard to imagine the creatures reading a book, much less writing one. And yet there were doors in the library only they could open. Chambers given over to their records.

The nearest skeer took a sudden step forward, startling Evar from his contemplations. Its fellows to either side did the same, overstepping the stones laid out to mark the boundary. Evar scrambled back in panic. “The barrier’s down!”

The creatures came on, a yard past the stones, two yards, three. Not charging, but making a steady advance as if they were somehow pushing the invisible wall before them. “Get her back!” Evar yelled at his brother. He swung his sword at the nearest skeer, hoping to warn them off, but none of them so much as flinched. He backed away quickly, ceding ten yards to the insectoids.

“Clovis!” Kerrol’s voice behind him.

Evar whirled around fearing to see Kerrol hunched over their sister, hunting for signs of life. Instead, she was right there, barging against him, cursing in pain, and somehow reclaiming her sword from his hand.

“Clovis! Don’t!” He reached for her injured shoulder but hesitated, knowing the agony it would cause.

Clovis stumbled on, the white blade cutting an arc through the night before her. Evar, refusing to let her end herself in such a manner, lunged, meaning to drag her away. But even with her back to him and her blood running poisoned in her veins, Clovis was better than him. She lurched away at the last instant and set him on the ground with a kick to the side of his knee.

“Come on, you whoresons,” Clovis snarled, stumbling at her foe, cleaving another arc through the darkness.

Evar fully expected her to be torn apart before he could gain his feet. But against all odds the skeer came to a halt before her. She aimed a thrust at the nearest one, but it had started to retreat and already it was beyond her reach. It wasn’t just the one she’d singled out: dozens of them were withdrawing before the threat of a single sick canith.

“Clovis! No!” Evar threw himself forward as he rose. This time she couldn’t escape him, and he managed to get both his arms under hers, struggling not to hurt her whilst at the same time holding her back.

The skeer retreated more swiftly than ever, the darkness swallowing them until even their moonglow was little more than suggestion. “What’s going on?” Evar didn’t understand.

Kerrol reached them and took Clovis’s sword arm, steering her gently back towards the settlement. “Ask them.”

The humans were emerging from the hollow before the mine opening, still just moon-edged silhouettes before Queen Carlotte’s illuminated face. Arpix headed the group, his face as dirty as the rest of him. In both hands he carried a dull ball of what looked like rust-flaked iron, dented and scarred as if it had been kicked about by iron feet for years.

“We found it,” he said. “Dug it out of the wall three levels down.”

Kerrol released Clovis’s arm and went across to lay a hand on the iron ball. “With hindsight it would have been sensible for us to stay nearer the centre. If you’d moved a little more to the east when bringing it up, you would have been missing three canith.”

Evar sagged a little, understanding that the skeer had not retreated from Clovis but had been pushed back as the sphere had been moved and with it its repulsion field.

“The weapon...” Clovis shrugged him off, managing to support herself again.

Evar went to join Kerrol, looming over Arpix. The human hefted the ball into his hands. The thing proved surprisingly heavy. Evar lifted it to eye level. “So, what do we do now?”

“Take... take the war to the enemy,” Clovis said.

Arpix frowned and went to help Clovis back to her bed. “Hopefully it won’t come to that.” He nodded at Salamonda, who stood with Meelan at the front of the dirty band of humans. “You could call him now.”

Evar impressed himself by understanding the last part even though it was in human tongue. Clearly the Exchange had tutored his mind in the language over the time he’d spoken with Livira.

Salamonda faced the night. “Wentworth! Wentworth!” She clucked and called out something in human. Evar felt she’d said that it was time to find Yute.

The cat came nosing its way through the forest of the humans’ legs. It didn’t pause to hunt for treats this time, simply pressing on out across the plateau. They could all see where its path was heading. Back towards the mountain.

“Damn,” Arpix muttered.

Clovis leaned against him heavily, a grim smile on her face. “Told you so, human boy.”

Overdependence on epigraphs reveals not only the pretensions of the text but a fundamental character flaw in the author. The only writing crime worse than this is when the epigraph doesn’t come to

The Seventeen Critical Elements of the Modern Novel, by Edna Average

CHAPTER 28

Livira