King Kristuff drew shallow breaths through his mouth as he studied the corpse Hunter and Chekwe laid out for him on a plank table in the castle stables. It was still frozen solid, but a rank odor of peat, blood, tar, and rot came off it. They had stripped it bare and Kristuff’s eyes lingered on its left side. Somehow the left arm had decayed faster than the rest: skin and muscle along the outside of the limb, from wrist to shoulder, had rotted away, revealing long bones and sinews. So much meat was gone from the shoulder joint that, standing up, the arm had nearly dropped off when Chekwe had killed it a second time with an ax blow to the head. The bones had been painted with tar, as had the thing’s first fatal injury, a spear wound to the neck.
“Dear Quam,” Kristuff muttered, swallowing h
