We rode the en­tire night. Chade breathed the horses, but not as of­ten as Burrich would have. And he stopped more than once to scan the night sky and then the ho­ri­zon to be sure our course was true. ‘See that hill there, against the stars? You can’t see it too well, but I know it. By light, it’s shaped like a but­ter­mon­ger’s cap. Keef­fashaw, it’s called. We keep it to the west of us. Let’s go.’

  An­other time he paused on a hill­top. I pulled in my horse be­side his. Chade sat still, very tall and straight. He could have been carved of stone. Then he lif­ted an arm and poin­ted. His hand shook slightly. ‘See that rav­ine down there? We’ve come a bit too far to the east. We’ll have to cor­rect as we go.’

  The rav­ine was in­vis­ible to me, a darker slash in the dim­ness of the starlit land­scape. I wondered how he could have known it was there. It was per­haps half an hour later that he ges­tured off to our left, where on a rise of land a single light twinkled. ‘Someone’s up to­night in Wool­cot,’ he ob­served. ‘Prob­ably the baker, put­ting early-morn­ing rolls to rise.’ He half-turned in his saddle and I felt more than saw his smile. ‘I was born less than a mile from here. Come, boy, let’s ride. I don’t like to think of Raid­ers so close to Wool­cot.’

  And on we went, down a hill­side so steep that I felt Sooty’s muscles bunch as she leaned back on her haunches and more than half-slid her way down.

  Dawn was grey­ing the sky be­fore I smelled the sea again. And it was still early when we cres­ted a rise and looked down on the little vil­lage of Forge. It was a poor place in some ways; the an­chor­age was good only on cer­tain tides. The rest of the time the ships had to an­chor fur­ther out and let small craft ply back and forth between them and shore. About all that Forge had to keep it on the map was iron ore. I had not ex­pec­ted to see a bust­ling city. But neither was I pre­pared for the rising tendrils of smoke from blackened, open-roofed build­ings. Some­where an un­milked cow was low­ing. A few scuttled boats were just off the shore, their masts stick­ing up like dead trees.

  Morn­ing looked down on empty streets. ‘Where are the people?’ I wondered aloud.

  ‘Dead, taken host­age, or hid­ing in the woods still.’ There was a tight­ness in Chade’s voice that drew my eyes to his face. I was amazed at the pain I saw there. He saw me star­ing at him and shrugged mutely. ‘The feel­ing that these folk be­long to you, that their dis­aster is your fail­ure … it will come to you as you grow. It goes with the blood.’ He left me to pon­der that as he nudged his weary mount into a walk. We threaded our way down the hill and into the town.

  Go­ing more slowly seemed to be the only cau­tion Chade was tak­ing. There were two of us, weapon­less, on tired horses, rid­ing into a town where …

  ‘The ship’s gone, boy. A raid­ing ship doesn’t move without a full com­ple­ment of row­ers. Not in the cur­rent off this piece of coast. Which is an­other won­der. How did they know our tides and cur­rents well enough to raid here? Why raid here at all? To carry off iron ore? Easier by far for them to pir­ate it off a trad­ing-ship. It doesn’t make sense, boy. No sense at all.’

  Dew had settled heav­ily the night be­fore. There was a rising stench in the town, of burned, wet homes. Here and there a few still smouldered. In front of some, pos­ses­sions were strewn out into the street, but I did not know if the in­hab­it­ants had tried to save some of their goods, or if the Raid­ers had be­gun to carry things off and then changed their minds. A salt-box without a lid, sev­eral yards of green wool­len goods, a shoe, a broken chair: the lit­ter spoke mutely but elo­quently of all that was homely and safe broken forever and trampled in the mud. A grim hor­ror settled on me.

  ‘We’re too late,’ Chade said softly. He reined his horse in and Sooty stopped be­side him.

  ‘What?’ I asked stu­pidly, jol­ted from my thoughts.

  ‘The host­ages. They re­turned them.’

  ‘Where?’

  Chade looked at me in­cred­u­lously, as if I were in­sane or very stu­pid. ‘There. In the ru­ins of that build­ing.’

  It is dif­fi­cult to ex­plain what happened to me in the next mo­ment of my life. So much oc­curred, all at once. I lif­ted my eyes to see a group of people, all ages and sexes, within the burned-out shell of some kind of store. They were mut­ter­ing among them­selves as they scav­enged in it. They were be­draggled, but seemed un­con­cerned by it. As I watched, two wo­men picked up the same kettle at once, a large kettle, and then pro­ceeded to slap at one an­other, each at­tempt­ing to drive off the other and claim the loot. They re­minded me of a couple of crows fight­ing over a cheese rind. They squawked and slapped and called one an­other vile names as they tugged at the op­pos­ing handles. The other folk paid them no mind, but went on with their own loot­ing.

  This was very strange be­ha­viour for vil­lage folk. I had al­ways heard of how after a raid, vil­lage folk ban­ded to­gether, clean­ing out and mak­ing hab­it­able what build­ings were left stand­ing, and then help­ing one an­other sal­vage cher­ished pos­ses­sions, shar­ing and mak­ing do un­til cot­tages could be re­built, and store-build­ings re­placed. But these folk seemed com­pletely care­less that they had lost nearly everything and that fam­ily and friends had died in the raid. In­stead, they had gathered to fight over what little was left.

  This real­iz­a­tion was hor­ri­fy­ing enough to be­hold.

  But I couldn’t feel them either.

  I hadn’t seen or heard them un­til Chade poin­ted them out. I would have rid­den right past them. And the other mo­ment­ous thing that happened to me at that point was that I real­ized I was dif­fer­ent from every­one else I knew. Ima­gine a see­ing child grow­ing up in a blind vil­lage, where no one else even sus­pects the pos­sib­il­ity of such a sense. The child would have no words for col­ours, or for de­grees of light. The oth­ers would have no con­cep­tion of the way in which the child per­ceived the world. So it was in that mo­ment, as we sat our horses and stared at the folk. For Chade wondered out loud, misery in his voice, ‘What is wrong with them? What’s got into them?’

  I knew.

  All the threads that run back and forth between folk, that twine from mother to child, from man to wo­man, all the kin­ships they ex­tend to fam­ily and neigh­bour, to pets and stock, even to the fish of the sea and bird of the sky – all, all were gone.

  All my life, without know­ing it, I had de­pended on those threads of feel­ings to let me know when other live things were about. Dogs, horses, even chick­ens had them, as well as hu­mans. And so I would look up at the door be­fore Burrich entered it, or know there was one more new-born puppy in the stall, nearly bur­ied un­der the straw. So I would wake when Chade opened the stair­case. Be­cause I could feel people. And that sense was the one that al­ways aler­ted me first, that let me know to use my eyes and ears and nose as well, to see what they were about.

  But these folk gave off no feel­ings at all.

  Ima­gine wa­ter with no weight or wet­ness. That is how those folk were to me. Stripped of what made them not only hu­man, but alive. To me, it was as if I watched stones rise up from the earth and quar­rel and mut­ter at one an­other. A little girl found a pot of jam and stuck her fist in it and pulled out a hand­ful to lick. A grown man turned from the scorched pile of fab­ric he had been rum­ma­ging through and crossed to her. He seized the pot and shoved the child aside, heed­less of her angry shouts.

  No one moved to in­ter­fere.

  I leaned for­ward and seized Chade’s reins as he moved to dis­mount. I shouted word­lessly at Sooty, and tired as she was, the fear in my voice en­er­gized her. She leaped for­ward, and my jerk on the reins brought Chade’s bay with us. Chade was nearly un­seated, but he clung to the saddle, and I took us out of the dead town as fast as we could go. I heard shouts be­hind us, colder than the howl­ing of wolves, cold as storm wind down a chim­ney, but we were moun­ted and I was ter­ri­fied. I didn’t pull in or let Chade have his own reins back un­til the houses were well be­hind us. The road bent, and be­side a small copse of trees, I pulled in at last. I don’t think I even heard Chade’s angry de­mands for an ex­plan­a­tion un­til then.

  He didn’t get a very co­her­ent one. I leaned for­ward on Sooty’s neck and hugged her. I could feel her wear­i­ness, and the trem­bling of my own body. Dimly I felt that she shared my un­eas­i­ness. I thought of the empty folk back in Forge and nudged Sooty with my knees. She stepped out wear­ily and Chade kept pace, de­mand­ing to know what was wrong. My mouth was dry and my voice shook. I didn’t look at him as I panted out my fear and a garbled ex­plan­a­tion of what I had felt.

  When I was si­lent, our horses con­tin­ued to pace down the packed earth road. At length I got up my cour­age and looked at Chade. He was re­gard­ing me as if I had sprouted antlers. Once aware of this new sense, I couldn’t ig­nore it. I sensed his scep­ti­cism. But I also felt Chade dis­tance him­self from me, just a little pulling-back, a little shield­ing of self from someone who had sud­denly be­come a bit of a stranger. It hurt all the more be­cause he had not pulled back that way from the folk in Forge. And they were a hun­dred times stranger than I was.

  ‘They were like ma­ri­on­ettes,’ I told Chade. ‘Like wooden things come to life and act­ing out some evil play. And if they had seen us, they would not have hes­it­ated to kill us for our horses or our cloaks, or a piece of bread. They …’ I searched for words. ‘They aren’t even an­im­als any more. There’s noth­ing com­ing out of them. Noth­ing. They’re like little sep­ar­ate things. Like a row of books, or rocks or …’

  ‘Boy,’ Chade said, between gen­tle­ness and an­noy­ance, ‘you’ve got to get your­self in hand. It’s been a long night of travel for us, and you’re tired. Too long without a sleep, and the mind starts to play tricks, with wak­ing dreams and …’

  ‘No.’ I was des­per­ate to con­vince him. ‘It’s not that. It’s not go­ing without sleep.’

  ‘We’ll go back there,’ he said reas­on­ably. The morn­ing breeze swirled his dark cloak around him, in a way so or­din­ary that I felt my heart would break. How could there be folk like those in that vil­lage, and a simple morn­ing breeze in the same world? And Chade, speak­ing in so calm and or­din­ary a voice? ‘Those folk are just or­din­ary folk, boy, but they’ve gone through a very bad time, and so they’re act­ing oddly. I knew a girl who saw her father killed by a bear. She was like that, just star­ing and grunt­ing, hardly even mov­ing to care for her­self, for more than a month. Those folk will re­cover, when they go back to their or­din­ary lives.’

  ‘Someone’s ahead!’ I warned him. I had heard noth­ing, seen noth­ing, felt only that tug at the cob­web of sense I’d dis­covered. But as we looked ahead down the road, we saw that we were ap­proach­ing the tail-end of a rag-tag pro­ces­sion of people. Some led laden beasts, oth­ers pushed or dragged carts of be­draggled pos­ses­sions. They looked over their shoulders at us on our horses as if we were demons risen from the earth to pur­sue them.

  ‘The Pocked Man!’ cried a man close to the end of the line, and he lif­ted a hand to point at us. His face was drawn with wear­i­ness and white with fear. His voice cracked on the words. ‘It’s the le­gends come to life,’ he warned the oth­ers who hal­ted fear­fully to stare back at us. ‘Heart­less ghosts walk em­bod­ied through our vil­lage ru­ins, and the black-cloaked pocked man brings his dis­ease upon us. We have lived too soft, and the old gods pun­ish us. Our fat lives will be the death of us all.’

  ‘Oh, damn it all. I didn’t mean to be seen like this,’ Chade breathed. I watched his pale hands gather his reins, turn­ing his bay. ‘Fol­low me, boy.’ He did not look to­ward the man who still poin­ted a quaver­ing fin­ger at us. He moved slowly, al­most lan­guor­ously, as he guided his horse off the road and up a tus­socky hill­side. It was the same un­chal­len­ging way of mov­ing that Burrich had when con­front­ing a wary horse or dog. His tired horse left the smooth trail re­luct­antly. Chade was headed up into a stand of birches on the hill­top. I stared at him un­com­pre­hend­ingly. ‘Fol­low me, boy,’ he dir­ec­ted me over his shoulder when I hes­it­ated. ‘Do you want to be stoned in the road? It’s not a pleas­ant ex­per­i­ence.’

  I moved care­fully, swinging Sooty aside from the road as if I were totally un­aware of the pan­icky folk ahead of us. They hovered there, between an­ger and fear. The feel of it was a black-red smear on the day’s fresh­ness. I saw a wo­man stoop, saw a man turn aside from his bar­row.

  ‘They’re com­ing!’ I warned Chade, even as they raced to­ward us. Some gripped stones, and oth­ers green staffs freshly taken from the forest. All had the be­draggled look of towns­folk forced to live in the open. Here were the rest of Forge’s vil­la­gers, those not taken host­age by the Raid­ers. All of that I real­ized in the in­stant between dig­ging in my heels and Sooty’s weary plunge for­ward. Our horses were spent; their ef­forts at speed were grudging, des­pite the hail of rocks that thud­ded to the earth in our wake. Had the towns­folk been res­ted, or less fear­ful, they would have eas­ily caught us. But I think they were re­lieved to see us flee. Their minds were more fixed on what walked the streets of their vil­lage than on flee­ing strangers, no mat­ter how omin­ous.

  They stood in the road and shouted and waved their sticks un­til we were among the trees. Chade had taken the lead and I didn’t ques­tion him as he took us on a par­al­lel path that would keep us out of the sight of the folk leav­ing Forge. The horses had settled back into a grudging plod. I was grate­ful for the rolling hills and scattered trees that hid us from any pur­suit. When I saw a stream glint­ing, I ges­tured to it without a word. Si­lently we watered the horses, and shook out for them some grain from Chade’s sup­plies. I loosened har­ness, and wiped their draggled coats with hand­fuls of grass. For ourselves, there was cold stream­wa­ter and coarse travel-bread. I saw to the horses as best as I could. Chade seemed full of his own thoughts, and for a long time I re­spec­ted their in­tens­ity. But fi­nally I could con­tain my curi­os­ity no longer and I asked the ques­tion.

  ‘Are you really the Pocked Man?’

  Chade startled, and then stared at me. There were equal parts amazement and rue­ful­ness in that look. ‘The Pocked Man? The le­gendary har­binger of dis­ease and dis­aster? Oh, come, boy, you’re not simple. That le­gend is hun­dreds of years old. Surely you can’t be­lieve I’m that an­cient.’

  I shrugged. I wanted to say, ‘You are scarred, and you bring death’, but I did not ut­ter it. Chade did seem very old to me some­times, and other times so full of en­ergy that he seemed but a very young man in an old man’s body.

  ‘No, I am not the Pocked Man,’ he went on, more to him­self than to me. ‘But after today, the ru­mours of him will be spread across the Six Duch­ies like pol­len on the wind. There will be talk of dis­ease and pes­ti­lence and di­vine pun­ish­ments for ima­gined wrong­do­ing. I wish I had not been seen like this. The folk of the king­dom already have enough to fear. But there are sharper wor­ries for us than su­per­sti­tions. How­ever you knew it, you were right. I have been think­ing, most care­fully, of everything I saw in Forge. And re­call­ing the words of those vil­la­gers who tried to stone us. And the look of them all. I knew the Forge folk, in times past. They were doughty folk, not the type to flee in su­per­sti­tious panic. But those folk we saw on the road, that was what they were do­ing. Leav­ing Forge, forever, or at least so they in­tend. Tak­ing all that is left that they can carry. Leav­ing homes their grand­fath­ers were born in. And leav­ing be­hind re­l­at­ives who sift and scav­enge in the ru­ins like witlings.

  ‘The Raid­ers’ threat was not an empty one. I think of those folk and I shiver. Some­thing is sorely wrong, boy, and I fear what will come next. For if the Red Ships can cap­ture our folk, and then de­mand that we pay them to kill them, for fear that they will oth­er­wise re­turn them to us like those ones were – what a bit­ter choice! And once more they have struck when we were least pre­pared to deal with it.’ He turned to me as if to say more, then sud­denly staggered. He sat down ab­ruptly, his face grey­ing. He bowed his head and covered his face with his hands.

  ‘Chade!’ I cried out in panic, and sprang to his side, but he turned aside from me.

  ‘Car­ris seed,’ he said through muffling hands. ‘The worst part is that it aban­dons you so sud­denly. Burrich was right to warn you about it, boy. But some­times there are no choices but poor ones. Some­times, in bad times like these.’

  He lif­ted his head. His eyes were dull, his mouth al­most slack. ‘I need to rest now,’ he said as piteously as a sick child. I caught him as he toppled and eased him to the ground. I pil­lowed his head on my saddle­bags, and covered him with our cloaks. He lay still, his pulse slow and his breath­ing heavy, from that time un­til af­ter­noon of the next day. I slept that night against his back, hop­ing to keep him warm, and the next day used what was left of our sup­plies to feed him.

  By that even­ing he was re­covered enough to travel, and we began a dreary jour­ney. We went slowly, go­ing by night. Chade chose our paths, but I led, and of­ten he was little more than a load upon his horse. It took us two days to cover the dis­tance we had tra­versed in that one wild night. Food was sparse, and talk was even scarcer. Just think­ing seemed to weary Chade, and whatever he thought about, he found too bleak for words.