Tom-Tom jumped as if slapped. "What's the matter?" I asked. "That means the thing was the nastiest, cunningest, cruelest, and craziest of the lot."

"Vampires," I muttered. "In this day."

Tom-Tom said, "Not strictly a vampire. This is the wereleopard, the man-leopard who walks on two legs by day and on four by night."

I'd heard of werewolves and werebears. The peasants around my home city tell such tales. I'd never heard of a wereleopard. I told Tom-Tom as much.

"The man-leopard is from the far south. The jungle." He stared out to sea. "They have to be buried alive," Silent deposited another corpse.

Blood-drinking, liver-eating wereleopards. Ancient, darkness-wise, filled with a millenium of hatred and hunger. The stuff of nightmare all right, "Can you handle it?"

"N'Gamo couldn't. I'll never be his match, and he lost an arm and a foot trying to destroy a young male. What we have here is an old female. Bitter, cruel, and clever. The four of us might hold her off. Conquer her, no."

"But if you and One-Eye know this thing... ."

"No." He had the shakes. He gripped his drum so tight it creaked. "We can't."

Chaos died. Beryl's streets remained as starkly silent as those of a city overthrown. Even the mutineers concealed themselves till hunger drove them to the city granaries.

The Syndic tried to tighten the screws on the Captain. The Captain ignored him. Silent, Goblin, and One-Eye tracked the monster. The thing functioned on a purely animal level, feeding the hunger of an age. The factions besieged the Syndic with demands for protection.

The Lieutenant again summoned us to the officers' mess. The Captain wasted no time. "Men, our situation is grim." He paced. "Beryl is demanding a new Syndic. Every faction has asked the Black Company to stand aside." The moral dilemma escalated with the stakes. "We aren't heroes," the Captain continued. "We're tough. We're stubborn. We try to honor our commitments. But we don't die for lost causes."