When he came to, he was surprised to find that he was still alive, but not surprised to find that he was bound hand and foot and that all his weapons had been taken.

     His first sensation was of sweet, blessed warmth, and he opened his eyes to find that he was in a tent, with sheets of hide stretched across a framework of wooden poles. Another sheet of leather covered the floor, and a large slab of stone in the centre of the tent had a small log fire blazing merrily away on it. Fletcher lay nearby, also tied up and still unconscious, and from outside came the sound of a raging snowstorm.

     He looked down at his stomach, where the sword wound had been, but felt no pain there and saw that all the blood in his clothing was long dry, with no sign of any recent fresh bleeding. He squeezed his thumbs and fingers together, finding that they felt quite normal, and he knew that if he could see them, he would find them pink and healthy, with no sign of frostbite. In fact, he felt fine all over, except for the pain of his bonds. The sholog priest had healed him, it seemed. Almost certainly so he’d make better sport and last longer when he decided to play with him. Priests of Skorvos, the God of Conquest, relished the chance to torture a priest of Samnos to death, and he no doubt he meant to make the most of this rare windfall.

     He struggled in his bonds, quite uselessly, and tried to wriggle closer to the Beltharan soldier. “Fletcher!” he hissed as loudly as he dared. “Fletch! Wake up!” The soldier was still out cold, though, and looked likely to remain that way for some time.

     “Damnation!” swore the young priest in frustration. If they’d both been awake they might have been able to free themselves and escape before the shologs came back. There was still a chance, though, so he pushed the soldier with his head and shoulder, rolling him over onto his front and bringing his bound hands uppermost, then began to work on the knots with his teeth. If he could untie Fletcher, and if the soldier woke up before the sholog priest came back...

     He’d barely started, though, when there was a blast of cold and a flurry of snow, and he looked around to see the huge sholog standing there, heavily wrapped in several layers of snow-encrusted furs and leather. He cast aside most of his furs, revealing his priest's uniform beneath, then grabbed Drake by the shoulder and threw him across to the other side of the tent.

     “There’s gratitude for ya,” he said with a toothy grin. “I saves yer life, and ya can’t even stop t’ say thanks before trying to go.” He laughed then, a horrible sound like a cross between the barking of a dog and the braying of a donkey.

     Drake struggled into a sitting position and glared defiantly at the sholog, but he said nothing, knowing that nothing he said would make any difference to his situation. He was determined to die with honour and dignity.

     The sholog waited for a few moments, then shrugged indifferently and picked up Drake’s helmet from where it lay on the floor a few feet away. “I see you're a Defender of the Faith now,’ he said, running a hairy, clawed finger along the gold stripe. “Gone up in the world, have we?”

     Realisation suddenly came to the young priest. “You’re the priest I met in the Overgreen Forest last year,” he said. “I thought I’d killed you.”

     “Liar!” roared the sholog angrily. “Ya thought at the time that I was dead, or else ya would've made sure o’ me, but ya found out later that I were still alive ‘cos ya sent out patrols after me. They didn’t catch me, but I caught you, didn’t I?”

     Drake didn’t reply, and the sholog suddenly burst out in wild, hooting laughter; a kind of laugh that surprised the young priest because the creature seemed to be laughing at himself, something he’d had no idea shologs were capable of. Shologs laughed while they were pulling someone’s arms off, or when they were burning someone’s eyes out. Shologs laughed at other people’s pain, especially if they were the ones inflicting it. But a sholog who laughed at himself? It was unheard of.

     “What a joke!” he said, still laughing in that same way. “What a damned joke! Apart from that human girl who desecrated my temple, you’re the one I’ve been looking for the most in the whole world. I’ve had the boys out all over the country looking for ya, and I’ve been spying on every patrol sent out by the big city before the war started to see if you were in it, but ya seemed to have disappeared right off the face o’ the world. I’d given up, I had! I’d given up! I thought someone else must've killed ya, or else you’d been posted to some far corner o’ the world where I’d never find ya, but then this war starts. This beautiful, glorious war. The biggest war for thirty years! Skorvos says it’s war rules now, and then I finds ya not half a mile from me new home. Ya walks right into my lap! Good joke, eh human? A good joke on me! Skorvos must be laughing the tusks right outta his face!”

     The sholog laughed some more, leaving Drake in even greater confusion. What was the joke? What was it that was amusing the huge sholog so much? And what were war rules? He remembered Resalintas mentioning them once, during one of their discussions about the worshippers of the evil God of Conquest, and he struggled to remember what he’d said. “War rules,” he said thoughtfully.

     “Yeah, war rules,” repeated the sholog, no longer smiling. “What a pain, eh?” He drew a dagger and held it thoughtfully in both hands, fingering the razor sharp blade with his thumb. A wistful gleam entered his brown, dog eyes. “I used to lie awake at night, thinking about what I was gonna do with you when I caught ya. It would've been glorious, the things I was gonna do to ya! I’d have made ya last for days, and every scream woudda been a prayer to Skorvos. The screams of a priest of Samnos bring great glory to Skorvos, and the one who made him scream like that would rise high in his favour. But it’s war rules now. War rules! Where’s the justice in that, eh human? Where’s the justice in that?”

     He’s going to kill me, thought Drake, beginning to grow afraid. That must be what war rules mean. Prisoners taken must not be given the chance to escape. They must be killed as soon as they’re taken. I should be grateful that I won’t have to suffer torture, but I’m afraid to die. May Samnos forgive me, I’m afraid!

     He forced down the fear with an effort and tried to say something defiant. He was determined to die with dignity. “If you’re going to kill me, hurry up and do it,” he snapped. “The sound of your voice is making me sick, and the smell of your fleabitten hide is more than I can stand.”

     The sholog stared at him in something like admiration. Courage was something that shologs prize above almost all else. “Kill ya?” he said. “But we're at war now, human, and you know how we work. War is the glory of Skorvos, and all wars must be made to last as long as possible. The torturing and killing of prisoners. The massacre of innocents. The burning of towns and cities. The looting and pillaging and raping. The blood, the brains, the guts, the smell of smoke and death. It must go on and on and on! More and more and more! War without end, slaughter without end. And when everyone’s dead in one place, another war starts somewhere else. That’s why we always join in a war on the losing side, human. To make the war last as long as possible.”

     “You always join in a war on the losing side,” said Drake numbly.

     “That’s right human, and you're losing.” He pointed a claw at the young priest. “You're losing!”

     For a moment the young priest’s mind whirled in bewilderment and confusion. He tried to speak, but found he had no idea what he was going to say. The sholog looked at him in amusement as he searched for words. “Are you saying...” he managed to say at last, “that you’re offering to help us fight the Shadowarmies?”

     “Not offering, human,” replied the sholog. “We are fighting them. That patrol that nearly got ya wasn’t the first we’ve killed. The Shads think it’s you, human soldiers, out picking them off a few at a time. Imagine their surprise when they find out it was us!”

     “I can imagine,” said Drake earnestly.

     “But these little scraps aren't enough for us. I wanna get into one of the big fights, like the one ya fought outside the big city, and now the Shads are camped outside another big city and there’s another big fight coming. I wanna be part of it, human, and I will! We're getting ready now, and as soon as we're ready, we're gonna march on the enemy camp. It will be glorious!”

     His animal eyes were blazing now with fanatical zeal and his lips were drawn back in a savage grin, revealing long rows of razor sharp yellow teeth. He stabbed the dagger at empty air as if he were disemboweling an imaginary enemy, did it again and again, with the knife once coming within inches of the young priest’s throat. Drake pressed himself as far back as he could against the stretched leather of the tent, still vibrating with the force of the storm, and twisted his bound wrists. Across from him, Fletcher moaned and stirred a little.

     “Look, er,” began the priest nervously, “if we’re going to be allies, then why am I tied up?”

     “Didn’t want ya trying to kill me before I had a chance to explain the situation,” replied the sholog, calming down. “If I untie ya now, will ya try to kill me?”

     Drake thought about it. So far as he knew, priests of Samnos and Skorvos had only ever met on the battlefield, and the only interaction they ever had was to try to kill each other. The idea of priests of Samnos and Skorvos allying against a common enemy was so revolutionary that his mind had trouble accepting it, but it did make sense, in a crazy sort of way. The sholog was right. Priests of the evil God of War always joined in a war on the losing side, to make it last as long as possible, and he had to admit to himself that the Fourth Shadowwar wasn’t going at all well for them. If he had to be perfectly honest, it might even be true that they were losing, although his mind shied away in horror from that concept. Let’s face it, he told himself. We need all the help we can get.

     It occurred to him suddenly that there was another, much more important reason for the priests of Skorvos to fight the Shadowarmies. “If the enemy are victorious,” he said cautiously, “then all life on this world will be wiped out.”

     The sholog nodded in agreement, a strange light coming into his eyes.

     “No more life,” continued Drake. “No more war. No more war ever again, not on this world at least.”

     The sholog nodded again, his eyes narrowing in anger, and a low, dangerous growl began to come from his throat. “No more war,” he said slowly. “No more war again ever. No more killing, no more blood. No more screaming and dying. No more looting and burning. No more war, No! It cannot be! We will not allow it! There must always be war, always! Groll brak gallak bor! Grash guulatam brark!”

     He suddenly realised that he’d slipped back into his own language and brought himself back under control with a visible effort. “Every priest of Skorvos in the world will fight the Shads to the last drop of their blood. We will fight them until they are all dead or we are all dead, and if we die, we will die gloriously, but we will fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! FIGHT!”

     He gave an ear-splitting roar of murderous rage and battle lust and his jaws foamed with spittle, some of it running down his chin and throat. He was all animal now, whatever rudimentary civilized values shologs possessed having been completely submerged beneath a red haze of bestiality. The young priest was suddenly certain that he and Fletcher were about to be torn apart by tooth and claw. The need to kill something, anything, would simply be too strong to deny. He gabbled a prayer to Samnos and prepared to die.

     Gradually, however, the huge sholog calmed down and Drake breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, you’ve convinced me,” he said breathlessly. “You still hate me, but you hate the Shads more, and we need all the help we can get if we’re going to beat them. We’re allies. You can untie me now, I won’t attack you.”

     “Good, good, that is good,” said the sholog, grinning again. He grabbed the young priest by the shoulder, threw him roughly face down onto the floor and freed him with two swift slashes of his knife. Drake rubbed his throbbing wrists in relief and noticed that the sholog had cut him quite deeply beneath the left thumb, with thick red blood flowing rapidly and dripping onto the leather floor. An accident, probably. He healed himself and said no more about it.

     “Where are the rest of my men?” he demanded as he untied Fletcher, who was moaning again and seemed to be slowly coming round.

     “All dead,” replied the sholog. “Killed by the Shads. We were too late to save 'em.”

     Drake said a prayer for them as he untied the last knot and threw the tough leather cords across the tent. He then turned the soldier gently onto his back and carried out a quick examination, finding to his relief that he was uninjured as well. The sholog must have healed both of them. “How many men, er, shologs do you have?” he asked.

     “Twenty,” replied the sholog. “Plus fifty greenies, goblins you call them, and a dozen, what do you call them? Buglins. I'm still recruiting my congregation after you murdered my last lot.”

     “Eighty two in all,” mused the young priest thoughtfully. “You’re going to need a few more than that if you want to have a serious impact on eighty thousand Shads.”

     The sholog laughed, a sound different from either of the two laughs he’d heard already. This one was a nasty, knowledgeable laugh, deep and evil. The laugh of someone who has a dagger tucked up his sleeve and is about to meet his enemy to ‘negotiate’. “I am not the only priest of Skorvos hereabouts,” he said, “and not all the humanoids fight for the Shads. There are plenty o’ tribes in the mountains who fight for no-one but themselves, and plenty of them’ll flock to the banner of Skorvos when they hear there’s a good fight coming. There’s nothing we shologs like more than a good scrap.”

     “So I’ve heard,” agreed Drake. “How many do you think you can raise?”

     “In two weeks, we’ll lead an army of ten thousand to the big city,” replied the sholog, his eyes gleaming in anticipation. “Eight of them for every one of us! It is gonna be glorious! Glorious!”

     Fletcher opened his eyes and struggled to sit up. “Where am I?” he mumbled, rubbing the side of his head. “Are we safe?” He looked at his wrists and saw the deep grooves left there by the leather cords, and a look of puzzlement came over his face. Then he saw the huge sholog grinning at him and he went as white as a sheet. “Oh my Lord!”

     “It’s all right,” said Drake reassuringly. “Don’t worry.” He turned to the sholog and said “Perhaps you could leave us alone for a while while I explain things to him.”

     “Sure thing,” replied the sholog, grinning even wider. “I’ll go see to the boys.” He put on his thick furs again, left through the flap and the tent was once again filled with a brief flurry of snow.

     “Corp, that was a priest of Skorvos!” shrieked the soldier wildly. “A bloody priest of Skorvos! What in the name of all the Gods is going on here?”

     Drake sighed to himself and started to tell him.