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Kratak crouched in the uncertain shadow of an extrusion of rock, and planned out what he should do. He could not stay away from Dis for long. He could scarcely risk an absence of two days before someone began putting two and two together. But unless he made a serious and at least partially successful attempt at reconnaissance, the Lord would not be pleased. Worse, the Lord might even assume Kratak had been deliberately sabotaging the mission, and the demon-master could not even imagine what would be done to him if the creature on the dark throne decided to act on its assumptions.

He went over what the Lord had told him, and what he had gleaned from his own spies. Admantirax, though outwardly friendly towards Dis, was preparing for war. Alone, Admantirax was not a match for the armies of Dis, even in their current dilapidated state. But the Lords of that city were not alone – they had formed a secret alliance with the most powerful city in Hell.

Far away, many leagues over the horizon, lay mighty Pandemonium. Kratak had never entered its gates or roamed its black, lightless streets. He had only seen its walls, once, from a great distance, rising from the plain as though grown out of the bedrock; and, on a hill in the centre of the city, rose the High Citadel, a construction so gigantic that nothing else in Hell came close to challenging its eminence. Kratak had heard the tales of what went on inside the windowless, dome-topped walls of the High Citadel, and had no desire to get any closer to it.

Now, for whatever reason, Pandemonium had set out to subjugate the other cities of Hell, to bow them to its mighty will. Some had given in at once; some were too far away to be attacked for the present. But of those that held out, Dis, the city that thought of itself as the fount of free thought and progress, was the most important by far. War had not yet broken out, and was probably not inevitable, but Pandemonium desired war, craved it; and Admantirax was a convenient tool to set off the conflict.

Somewhere on the plain, the armies of Admantirax were gathering, secure in the knowledge that mighty Pandemonium stood at their backs. This gathering would not be too far away from Dis, because it would be difficult to march an entire army long distances across the plain without being detected and giving the defenders time to prepare. Small units would even now be making their way across the wastes, making sure to stay far off from the occasional caravans on the road, and seeking to link up with the others. With a little luck, he should be able to find the meeting place.

He had thought this far when there was a stirring and something titanic loomed over him...

The demon-master Kratak was not a coward. He had fought many times, against opponents more powerful than himself, and yet had won every time. He had, as his clothes testified, killed an Abyssal beast single-handed, and earned the right to make an outfit from its skin. But there was a difference between going out to hunt a monster deliberately, and discovering that the hump of rock behind which one has been sheltering is, in fact, one of the gigantic beasts. Kratak went rigid. For an endless moment, he literally could not will himself to move.

It was his rigidity which saved him. The Abyssal monster had, incredible as it seemed, not noticed his existence, even though he had been resting his back against it. As it unfolded to its full height, its armoured belly sagged low over his head, and the soft greyish-pink flesh between the horny plates was open to a thrust of his knife. Kratak did not make that thrust, because the rune-inscribed knife was a puny weapon against a monster of this size; it was surely one of the largest he had ever seen.

Cautiously, moving very slowly, he looked up. The monster’s head was a crag, a boulder, a mass of rough-hewn stone held up at the sky. Its hide was sheathed in armour, its heavy limbs ending in clusters of hooked claws. The jut of its belly almost touched his head, and the smell it gave out was overpowering, a hot dry wild smell, as though of burnt rock. As Kratak crouched low, the monster edged forwards on its short thick legs, blocking out the light, until it had passed over him. It hesitated, its huge head swinging from side to side.

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