Ashraf crouched over the still warm corpse of his trusted sergeant yet couldn't believe it. Not only that his compatriot had been killed, but how… And by whom. Tarak had a knife wound in his chest and a nasty sword strike through his neck. The Tarak he knew was a more than capable swordsman, seldom bested. Nevertheless, it appeared he'd been disarmed and stuck with his own sword by a stripling boy barely half his age. It had to be the boy? The dagger pin-pointed him being only a hundred or so yards ahead of them across the bridge. It did but didn't add up. His head was fuzzy and he couldn't figure it out.

After ransacking the body for booty, the young grave robber had hightailed it into the marshes. It didn't matter if he had a sword, they had the dagger. Still, he was missing something important. This didn't make sense.

A panting Ishak arrived. Peppered with wasp stings, abrasions, and injuries - including a half closed eye and bloody nose - he was lumpier than ever, but still as effortlessly annoying.

"What happened to Tarak?" he gasped, heaving for air.

Ashraf wished he knew, but just shrugged and turned towards the bridge.

"Leave the body, no time."

They slowed to cross the shaky swing bridge and Ishak got his breath back.

"You know he probably shouldn't have been posted here by himself, something like this was bound to happen."

Ashraf gritted his teeth and thought positive thoughts of promotion and bloody revenge.

"I mean, how was he supposed to identify the boy? By guessing?" Ishak held his hands out wide, palms up. " He was a sitting ibis if ever I saw one."

In lieu of maiming his lieutenant, Ashraf looked away, staring instead at the diamond sparkling in the gloaming gloom. Although he really didn't need to. Any idiot, even Ishak, could track half submerged bootprints in mud, ploughing straight ahead. Unlike in his horrible forest, the boy was fleeing heedlessly without thought. Obviously out of ideas and energy and they were catching up. Ashraf smirked. Sarkian soldier training regime had given them stamina far and above that of your average Perugian peasant - surely his death was nigh. He was going to skewer his Perugian piglet and revel in its squealing pain. He savoured the thought as he wiped the sweat out of his eyes.

It was dusk in autumn, he shouldn't be sweating, this accursed country was far too cold for that. They all were though. Ishak, as usual, was the worst. He really didn't look well. Could their umpteen stings and cuts be infected already? Unlikely. By the prophets, he was thirsty though. They should have drunk back at the stream, but he'd never even considered it in his vengeful rage, not with their quarry so close. Definitely on the way back though. Here in the swamp there was water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. Such a waste. Sludgy puddles of mosquito-infested liquid were not on the menu unless you wanted a bug buffet as well.

As a Sarkian, he hated this country by default. Now he hated it even more. Much more. The swamp was worse than the foreboding forest. This was a trek through a Sarkian's idea of hell. Oppressive air, tainted and humid, bore the humming insect silence that seemed to push and prod at his every pore. On every side snakes skulked through the shadows, while alligators, stood still as stone statues, jaws agape jagged rows of nightmare teeth un-gnashed. Maybe he'd hand feed bits of the boy to the hideous creatures. The idea raised his spirits momentarily.

An exultant cry shattered the steamy silence, scattering a murder of skulking crows, smearing their black blight across the slate grey sky. Shariff! Swiping aside a nimbus of whizzing gnats, Ashraf waded into the brushwood boscage separating him from his scout. Squeezing between two fungi-clad birch, he finally laid his eyes on the fugitive, flushed out into plain sight at last. The boy stood stalled upon a slight hillock only a score of yards away, hands on knees, chest heaving. Ahead of him a steep bank with a tangle of trees at its crest blocked any forward progress. Trapped! The brat was stuck - figuratively and about to be literally.

No orders were necessary, swords drawn, they charged feverishly at their quivering quarry, leaning weakly on a rotten tree stump.

As scout, Shariff was in the lead, Ayrek three steps behind, with Ashraf closing fast. Ishak, finally forcing his way through the thicket behind them, brought up the rear. Hence it was Shariff who fell first, forward onto his front - sword in one hand, sacred dagger in the other - his left foot sinking in sludge up to his ankle. Beside him, Ayrek half-turned to help but fell backwards onto his rump as his heel dug deep into the mud. Ashraf stopped dead in his tracks and it kept him alive.

A desert dweller, Ashraf knew the great devourer well. He threw himself bodily backwards before his boots got engulfed too. Finding firmer ground under his torso, he twisted, clawed and crawled his way out of the sucking muck. Slowpoke Ishak plodded to a halt beside him.

"Get branches," Ashraf barked. "It's farrakin quicksand!"

"How did I not see it?" he lamented. Although the desert scourge appeared to be a vastly different beast here. A predatory chameleon - in Perugia it wore a crust of a mucky marsh, rather than the shifting sand cloak of its Sarkian brethren, but both were deadly. They had been set-up.

A puffing Ishak returned, bowed over and proffered a leafy five-foot branch at Ashraf.

"Not me lackwit, Ayrek and Shariff," he screamed. Ishak shrugged and repeated the process with Ayrek, who reached backwards, barely managing to get a grip on the topmost twig. Ishak pulled, but it achieved little but slow down the sinking process. Meanwhile, Shariff had somehow rolled onto his side, he managed to kneel attempting to get to his feet, but his knees began to sink too. No branch could reach him, Ashraf realised. With no rope nearby, Shariff was dead but didn't know it. Although, judging by his bug-eyed expression, he held his suspicions,

"Throw me the dagger and I will avenge you brother!" Ashraf promised, though not sure Shariff had even heard him. Unlike the soldier himself, the vow of vengeance seemed to take an age to sink in. All the while, Shariff's unfocussed face was swivelling back and forth, his lips gasping soundlessly like a landed fish. Floundering wildly, he sunk beyond his waist and cruelly the submersion seemed to speed up. As the tip of his elbow touched the treacherous skein of sludge, he snapped aware, locked eyes with Ashraf and shucked the dagger limply in his direction.

It fell short but settled on the crusty surface and stayed there. Instantly, Ashraf fell to his knees, pawing at the dagger with the nearest of Ishak's leafy branches, sweeping the precious artefact ever closer. Just as his hand grasped the hilt, he heard two things: a muffled gurgle that must have been Shariff dragged under and a thrumming reverberation. The hum was followed a heartbeat later by searing pain as an arrow embedded itself rigidly in his right shoulder.

"The farakking boy has a farakking bow!" Ashraf howled. And I'm a sitting ibis, it struck him .

Seizing his impaled shoulder with the far hand, he rolled to his feet and sprinted for the cover of the copse, sidestepping as randomly as his injury would allow. He heard another thrum as he ran, but felt nothing. "Praise be, he's missed!"

Behind him Ishak bellowed like a stuck pig. Well, he missed me at least. A third arrow whistled past his ear as he dived for cover behind a large fallen log. When the pain subsided enough to see, he risked a peek and was rewarded with a spray of wood chips as a shaft skidded off the log inches to the left. The glimpse had been enough. The demon spawn was standing on the sodden tree stump for extra elevation and, pretty as you please, taking pot-shots at them. Thwack! Aargh... Ashraf snuck another peek to see half-sunk Ayrek, an arrow through his right eye. A decent shot and a decent thing to do - a mercy killing. Meanwhile, Ishak made use of the momentary reprieve, limping to the cover of the log and collapsing a few feet to Ashraf's right - a feathered shaft sprouting out of his thigh.

"I've been hit," he cried. "It's the boy! It's an ambush!"

Wan with pain, sporting hundreds of nicks, a swollen eye and beautiful bee-stung lips, Lieutenant Lumpy looked like something the cat dragged in and would have got sternly scolded for. We must make a pretty pair Ashraf thought. He wrenched the arrow out of his shoulder, nearly throwing up in the process.

Night was falling, but the sun wouldn't rise for two more of his men. His own prospects were far from rosy too. He was alive but injured, and would wake somewhere in a fetid swamp, deep behind enemy lines with an idiot for an accomplice and a child prodigy for an opponent. Things couldn't get any worse... Or could they?

Night fell before anyone one else did. Of his estimated eight enemies, Jak was down to three - two of whom were wounded. Five dead already - two his gran had scorched and three he'd hushed himself. Satisfied for the nonce, he let his standoff with the shafted twosome become a stalemate - reluctantly surrendering the upper hand his killing field gave him rather than risk a night out on open ground. Under the wan light of a waxing moon he managed to scrabble up the northern bank then warily trod his way over to the nearest large tree.

It was a cottonwood, but Jak was more concerned with cottonmouths, the slithering sort. Serpents, he knew from his studies, were averse to ash and reverberations, amongst other things. He shook the lowest branches violently for a few seconds. Thankfully no snakes fell out, nor did any sidle away when he stomped around the base.

Content, he hauled himself into the tree, climbing as high as his weight would allow. After removing his bow and quiver and hanging them on twigs above, he wedged himself carefully between two thick boughs. He kept his ankle elevated in the branch above so as to heal it quicker - basic medical science letting the foul humours drain or disperse into the air. Painfully mindful of his own ribs and assorted other injuries, Jak doubted the wounded duo would have the wherewithal to attack him during the night so he chewed the last of his deer jerky and drifted off to sleep.

He was dead wrong.