What could injure three Eszai in close succession so badly that the Circle couldn't hold them? In what circ.u.mstances could the skill and strength of three of my friends be useless? They were surrounded by troops and fortifications. Could it be a fyrd revolt?

Perhaps I was lucky not to be there. I found myself sobbing, feeling light and drifting. A second of time had pa.s.sed for me, for all of us, before San reformed the connections. It felt awful, much like the shock on hearing the news that someone you love has diedwhich is not fair considering that few Eszai love anyone apart from their spouses.

I examined myself. Did I feel tired? Could anyone badly hurt be pulling on the Circle? I couldn't tell.

s.h.i.+t, s.h.i.+t, s.h.i.+t. Another disaster at Slake Cross and I'm not there. The Emperor will have felt it and he'll be expecting me to come and tell him whyand I don't know! He'll find out I wasn't at the front!

I was cold with rising panic but I forced myself to concentrate. I'm in deep troubleand so is Lightninga.s.suming he's still alive. I spoke aloud: 'There's no time to hesitate. I must reach Slake, find out what's happening, then race back to the Castle and take San the news. I'll have to outpace all the dispatch riders and reach the Castle before them, because if any beat me there and tell the Emperor I was absent, he'll have my b.a.l.l.s.'

Where the f.u.c.k was I, anyway? I looked down on the valley. The oblique morning light cast a shadow of one valley side across the other and the stone buildings of Cushat Cote village at the bottom were still in darkness. The border of Awia. Having got my bearings, I turned sharply. I must steel myself to be prepared for anything. I beat my wings powerfully and flew my fastest towards Slake Cross.

CHAPTER 11.

I came upon the baggage train along the Glean Road. It was decimatednothing was moving down there.

I descended and let the road stream along under me. It was solid with dismembered bodies of men and women, severed heads and limbs. Between the shafts of overturned carts lay the white or chestnut flanks of the hitched horses. Ragged green vegetables and leather-fletched crossbow bolts spilt from the barrels. Dead Insects lay among them, each two metres long. The devastation stretched into the distance along the road. If a swarm has reached this far, what's happening at Slake?

I skimmed over themthe horses and mules were no more than jumbles of b.l.o.o.d.y hide and entrails, a semi-digested green-s.h.i.+t stench. I could see no sign of the attack having come from any directionthe people lay in equal numbers on both verges as if they didn't know which way to flee. Few were armed. Horses had bolted dragging their carts off the road; they lay on the gra.s.s further off, their black hooves raised and rigid.

It didn't make any sense. Where were the live Insects? Once they were out of danger they would always stop and feed but few bodies showed any signs of damage beyond the wounds that had killed them. It was as if a great force had swept through and torn them apart instantaneously.

Here was one of the armoured wagonssteel plate riveted to its wooden sidesdesigned to be a temporary refuge in case of attack. The worst Insects could do was eat the wheels off and cause it to tumble to the ground. Its doors were firmly shut. As they had to be bolted from inside, somebody must be in there. I landed squarely beside it. On the ground the silence was terrifying. The pools of blood between the carts had dried to brown but the corpses still smelt salty, like fresh meat.

I looked all around, drew my ice axe and banged the haft on the door. I called through an air hole, 'Anyone in here?'

'Just me,' said a young man's voice.

'This is Comet. What happened?'

'Comet!' The voice degenerated into sobs. 'Everything's gone.'

'Open the door. The Insects have left.'

'No!' screamed the man. 'I'm not coming out! Leave me! Leave me here!'

I peered through the air hole but could see only blackness. What would I do with one man crazy with terror in the middle of the Lowespa.s.s countryside? 'OK,' I said calmly, 'I'll fly to Slake and send lancers. They'll get you out; you'll be safe.'

'Fly? Safe?' The man started laughing with a horrible high-pitched tone.

I took off and flew as high as I could trying to catch a first glimpse of the town. Beneath me, both sides of the road were 'trap fields' where iron traps had been set. Yellow signposts warned travellers not to leave the highway. The pressure of an Insect's foot on the trigger plate will spring a trap shut and bite the claw off. Now I started to see them, maimed but still alive, moving slowly or spasming on the ground.

I went over the valley head and the moorland pa.s.s dropped awayreddish spots were Insects roaming randomly on the slopes. I hastened on, frightened for my friends. This reminded me far too much of 1925.

Slake Cross town sat in the distance, the lake beyond it. A ma.s.sive misty funnel of black spots was rising high and thin in the air above the lake. It was drifting slightly with the breeze but twisting with a slowness unlike any whirlwind I'd seen. And there was scarcely a wind anyway. I couldn't tell what it was; I stared at it until my eyes hurt. The great spiral towered over the lake and specks cascaded from it like water drops or debris. They rose and fell like soot specks coming off a fire, but they must be huge if I could see them at this distance.

Below me another defencea 'field of holes'was full of struggling Insects. Pits had been dug close together over the whole valley floor. Each was two metres square and five deep, straight-sided, concrete-lined with sharp, tar-painted stakes fixed upright in the bottom. I looked directly down into them; some were half-full of Insects skewered on the stakes, in the base of others lone Insects raised their heads, convergent compound eyes glittering. They would try to dig their way out until they wore their claws to stubs.

Further still and I was over the zigzag trenches running parallel with the river. The trenches were square-based, cut in chevrons, so that trapped Insects could be more easily dispatched as they slowed down to scurry round the corners. The trenches trimmed across my field of vision and Insects looking no bigger than ants scuttled up and down them, bristling.

I approached, with a feeling of trepidation like facing the cold wind that precedes a storm. The swirling flurry in the sky was more than five hundred metres tall. The whole sky was mottled with specks b.u.mbling around each other, some over the town, some now between it and me. I concentrated on these, and as I came nearer the s.p.a.ce between them seemed to increase. From looking at lots of motes plastered against a blank grey sky I was soon aware of them as individuals hanging in the air. I picked one and closed in on it.

The dot resolved into a dark crescent moving at my alt.i.tude with both points facing downwards. Closer still, I could see the crescent had three segments. It was bulky, not streamlined like a bird and I couldn't understand what was keeping it up. Then it turned towards me and I saw its bulbous eyes. It was an Insect! An Insect flying!

I yelled, pulled my wings closed and fell below it just as it swept over my head. Its buzzing nearly deafened me even above the sudden roar of the air stream as I went into freefall. I forced open my wings, looked around, saw I hadn't fallen more than twenty metres, and performed a slow roll so I could look down the length of my body and see it behind me.

A flying Insect?

I couldn't believe it was real! It was heading away and starting to turn. I could see its ten bronze-brown abdomen plates, its tail curved and hooked under like a gigantic wasp. Its legs were bunched up under its body, the knee joints sticking out. Above its thorax was a continuous flickeringone, no two pairs of long translucent wings, beating so fast they blurred! They protruded from under its thorax's first lamina, attached by a narrow joint that seemed flexible, like a hinge. What were these things?

Another one underneath me altered its path, rising up diagonally, but I jinked to one side and it missed. I looked forward, realising what the rising funnel above the reservoir wasa flight of Insects. Thousands upon thousands of winged Insects.

Their ma.s.sed humming caused the sky to vibrate as if struck, resounding from all directions like the sound of flies on a corpse. It drowned out my own beats.

I have fought ground-bound Insects for so long I was bewildered; I couldn't believe they were doing something different. Are these the same animals? Insects have always had tiny wings. Where have they suddenly got long wings from? And why now? One struck my foot a glancing blowI dived hastily.

Below me, normal Insects swarmed over the whole valley bottom. They floated dead in the moat, scurried on the road, tore tents down and dragged them over the heather. Trebuchets stood abandoned. Warning beacons blazed on all the peel towers but I could see no other sign of life. A convoy of wagons by the town wall had been chained together to form a laager but every soldier inside the enclosure was dead. The Insects were raining down from above, bypa.s.sing our defences, overwhelming everything on the ground.

Arrows pulsed out of the towers' overhanging belfries and irregularly from the covered walkways along the walls of Slake Cross. I thought of Lightningsurely he must be alive, directing the archers? I had to find out what was going on.

I pa.s.sed over the town and towards the Insect flight. Like a single being, it threw off graceful wisps as myriads tumbled from the apex. Its base was russet with them ascending from their side of the lake.

Every sense was alive as I dodged past the Insects hurtling towards me. I flew low, dropping underneath the main concentrations. I would never see down through the flight if I went above it. I stared out towards the Wall and what I saw took my breath away. On the far side of the lake, against the panorama of the muddy valley bottom, thousands of Insects, no, tens of thousands, were crawling out from irregularly s.p.a.ced breaches in the white Wall. They blanketed the ground, scuttling slowly and purposefully over the bare earth before the lake. Ranks and ranks of Insects were flowing out. Each had four transparent wings, so long that their wider rounded ends overlapped each one's abdomen and dragged on the ground behind it like a bride's train.

They stopped on the bank. I picked one and focused on it. Its elbowed antennae twirled, even more active than usual, and its head was raised, alertly tasting the air. It turned its head, separated its drooping wings with a mandible and a stretched back leg. It began to twist them up and down with beats. The wings beat faster into a blur and the Insect's back began to arch. It was being tugged up. I could see its feet s.h.i.+fting position and rising until just the tips of its claws touched the ground, then they lifted off and with a tremendous birring the Insect slowly took off from standing, rose into the air and joined lines, skeins, then great clouds of them spiralling up above the Wall.

Hundreds of metres above, the mult.i.tudes were converging. Insects clung together in cl.u.s.ters; enormous aggregations of chitin plates and thrumming wings. They were tussling to touch the tips of their abdomens together. They rolled as they fell, losing height rapidly and separating again. When their abdomens retracted I saw sticky strands of mucus stretched between them. They reminded me of ants in...in a mating flight!

With this chill realisation I flew a circuit around the rising funnel, risking being attacked, but the insects paid me no attention at all, totally intent on each other. Their numbers seemed to increase and ebb in waves. Individuals in the spiral rose and fell, dropped height and struggled up again, as if with fatigue.

I glided and watched spent Insects tumble out of the spiral, still trailing strands of slime. They righted themselves and descended, drifting south with the wind, around the town and over it. They fell into the town, onto the wreck of canvas outside the walls, onto the glacis between the walls and moat. The moat was completely full of thras.h.i.+ng, hopelessly tangled brown legs and abdomens.

Some landed in the reservoir, or in the river, where they didn't resurface, and I saw the current turning them over and over as it swept them downstream.

Those that survived were suddenly free of their wings, running rapidly back towards the Wall. Whole wings were scattered all over the ground like glinting shards. The Insects trampled them heedlessly. I concentrated on one Insect alone on the river bank. It settled, took hold of its wings with its nearest pair of legs and pulled them off. They didn't leave a wound or a scar, or any sign of the enormous muscles that must surely be driving them.

When the newly grounded Insects reached the lake they joined thousands of others all along the south sh.o.r.e, gathered so densely they were clambering over each other. Many were turning around, dipping their abdomens into the water. What appeared to be streams of froth drifted away from them. All around the lake margin the Insects' tails were pus.h.i.+ng out lines of white foam, which lazily tangled with other streams into an irregular lace, drifted towards the lake centre and became indistinct as it slowly sank in the depths.

I put some distance between myself and the chaos of the mating flight to gain a clearer picture of what was happening. Were these different Insects altogether?

The fresh perspective simply brought new questions. More Insects were swarming over the Wall and their saliva was melting the paper as if it was wax. They were working hard to pull out darker lumps from within the liquefying spit. I glided closer to see what was happeningthen wished I hadn't. The lumps were cadavers, the remains of soldiers. Free of the spit that had formed the Wall and preserved them, some were so rotten that they began to fall apart. There were horse limbs and heads, whole sheep from Lowespa.s.s farms, the feral mastiffs of the forts, and some chunks of matter I couldn't recognise, all covered with the white paste.

The Insects carried them directly to the lake. All along its sh.o.r.es they were wading into the water as deep as their middle leg joint and dropping their burdens. They lowered their heads and nudged the ancient carca.s.ses further in; I could see them bobbing, leaving ripples.

The reservoir edges were filling up with a putrid ma.s.s of sodden rotting meat. Chunks was.h.i.+ng at the surface and at the water's edge were releasing a thick, dark brown and oily sc.u.m that started to resemble broth. They were turning the entire lake into a waterlogged charnel pit. The amount of matter being dumped was displacing the water and the dam's spillway glistened as shallow pulses ran down over its cobbles.

'Oh s.h.i.+t,' I said, for want of a better word. I had never seen Insects do something so complicated. What if they were sentient after all?

The rank smell of rotting fat and skin rose on the breeze, making me retch. I folded an arm over my face and gained height above it, but I knew it would stick in my sinuses for days. I took a last look at the gruesome mess and skimmed away from the lake. More Insects were beginning to build a new Wall around it.

They were ranging freely over the whole countryside, scurrying on the road, feeding on dead men and horsesand carrying fresh pieces, still dripping, back to join the corruption they had made of the lake.

I couldn't stay there, not so close to the stench. It seemed to cling to my feathers no matter how high I flew. I winged towards the town.

High above the gatehouse I saw an Insect buzz through the hail of arrows. They found their mark and it suddenly bloomed with white flights. Shafts stuck out all over it as it pa.s.sed underneath me. It went into a steep descent, wings beating furiously, and crashed into the roof of the tavern buckling all its legs. Its wings flickered; the time between each vibration lengthened until it died.

I took this as a warningthe steel crossbows mounted on the ramparts have an awesome seven-hundred-metre rangeso when I was about a kilometre away from town I climbed high and came in above them.

I looked down into complete confusion. The outermost road of the three concentric squares was totally infested. Soldiers were shooting Insects from the safety of the curtain wall, the large square shutters all hooked back. Archers stood on every available rampart, crossbowmen leant out of windows, rocks and boiling water issued through the machicolations of the h.o.a.rdings, bombarding the Insects directly underneath. I even saw civilians hurling roof slates into the seething ma.s.s.

From the window in the first ring of barracks, spearmen jabbed frenziedly at any Insects getting too close.

In the inner two roads and the central square, smaller numbers of Insects ran at random, claws skittering on the cobbles. Bodies littered the streets. Most of the iron paling gates had been shut across the roads. Others were barricaded with heaps of furniture, anything men could lay their hands on in the panic. Slake Cross was designed so that if a road ring was taken, we could pull back to the next one, and so on, to the middlebut that design depended on Insects attacking on the ground, from outside. The Architect could never have envisaged them dropping in from the sky.

I banked, turning in a shallow glide towards the intense throng continuing to rise into the air above the lake. Their opaque buzzing made it difficult to think and the sweeping movements of the flight were so ultimate, so terrible, it drew my gaze and I watched, hypnotised.

A shout rose over the buzzing: 'Hahay!'

Surprised to hear an Awian hunting cry I glanced down towards the source and saw an Insect pacing me, only a hundred metres below. As I saw it, an arrow storm poured from the walkways. Enfilade shooting from the tower tops caught it in cross-volleys. It twisted in the air. Arrows slashed its wings to ribbonsit seemed to fold up and dropped like a stone, straight down, its abdomen writhing with a blind life of its own. The Insect hit the ground by the moat and splatteredgreat splits opened up in its carapace and its insides began to seep out, pooling yellow on the gra.s.s.

I slewed left and right in acknowledgement at the favour although in reality I was far more alarmed by the prospect of being riddled with arrows than being bitten by the Insect.

Time to show them I didn't need their help. From what I had seen of the Insects' manoeuvrability I was definitely the stronger flyer. I put my hand behind me, unfastened a stud and drew my ice axe from its holster fastened horizontally on my belt. I went into a glide and tapped its steel head thoughtfully against my palm as I circled the town.

I stripped off my bangles and shoved them into my coat, and b.u.t.toned my sungla.s.ses into my inside pocket. I positioned myself above the nearest Insect, my shadow covering it. Its dragonfly-like head swivelled: it could see three hundred and sixty degrees around it. It saw me and tried to climb to my alt.i.tude, but I was far more agile. I stood on one wing and turned, soared directly over, and gave its rapidly beating wings a good solid kick as I pa.s.sed. The Insect rocked, righted itself in the air and dived.

I whooped and dived after it. It wouldn't let me stay above its head. I saw dark patches on its compound eyes that looked almost like pupils, one pair on the top, another pair facing forwards. At first I thought they were reflections, then I realised they were areas of smaller facets, set closely together. Perhaps the eyes of these mating Insects are different too; it seemed to see well directly above it. I decided to attack by coming in fast and from the side. I swerved away, turned so steeply the ground and all its towers swung up to my left. I beat with my wings close to my body and bore down on it with full speed.

The Insect saw me too late, jinked, but I rammed into its thorax, grappling so it couldn't turn to grab me. We whirled together, losing height, and the wind stream roared up past us. The ground rotated and spun crazily. I didn't look down, I have a sense of how close I can fall, how big the buildings can grow before I seriously start to panic. I hefted my axe and chopped through its neck. The Insect's head detached and I let it fall but the body flew on thirty metres before tumbling to the ground.

I wheeled away, plastered in yellow blood, yelling in triumph. 'Get out of my sky! Back on the ground, you f.u.c.kers!'

I spotted another on the far side of town. I beat upwards, climbing to approach it, then swooped. Its wings whirred beneath me and their wind streamed out my ponytail. I hacked with the axe, missed and collided with its sh.e.l.l back, pus.h.i.+ng it downwards in the air. My axe fell free, jerking on its lanyard. My hands were next to the bases of its front wings. They were moving so fast I didn't dare touch them. The great, gla.s.sy wings flicked back and forth on either side of medry black veins around clear cellsI saw the moorland distorted through their transparent surfaces. I matched its pace, hanging on to the top of it while I recovered my axe and chopped through the base of one wing. The Insect jerked away erratically. Spines on top of its abdomen grazed my hands. It began to fall. Its antennae with ends like strings of beads flicked frantically. Its other wing started beating twice as fast. It spun violently, spiralling tighter and tighter until it hit the road and exploded into a thousand shards.

'Great!' I shouted, and swung into a long turn looking around for more. One was buzzing in a straight path from the mating flight, at around seventy kilometres an hour. I can do twice that. I let it pa.s.s overhead, beat hard to come up behind it. Its very thin waist and haze of wings pa.s.sed beneath me an arm's length away. I tilted, slowed down. The Insect beat faster and it knocked up underneath me, hitting me along the length of my body. I gasped a breath, frightened, then swung my axe and cut through a wing stem. It plummeted away, curling into a ball so tight the pointed tip of its abdomen was over its mandibles. It spun; the brown hunch of its thorax, smooth rounded abdomen, goggle compound eyes.

On the ground, I saw upturned faces and men pointing at me. I grinned and pressed the fingers of my wings together like paddles, pulled the air past me more strongly with the right than the left, rotated as I rose steeply showing them the soles of my boots. Then I fanned out my wings' fingers, came to a standstill for a second, levelled my flight and sped swiftly towards the next Insect, wondering if this is how a peregrine feels.

I ran rings around them. I had no real impact on their numbers but I was more effective than the arrows. I sparred with them for the next three hours until sunset. The swarm above the reservoir was starting to falter and disperse; fewer Insects were crawling out from the Wall. Below me, troops were being marched out of the buildings of the two outermost rings, in an attempt to clear the centre. Civilians packed the hall and church to capacity. I could still see clearly, my eyes had attuned to the dusk and the red-gold smudge of sunset over the hills in the distance. The town's floodlights were abandoned but lamps glowed along the concentric roads and the square. I was exhausted and losing concentration but a few Insects were bombilating in from the flight.

I cut the wings off one and swept on to the next. I soared over and tore a wing, stalled deliberately in front and cracked its head with my boot heels. I glided towards another and dealt it a blow that smashed both antennae roots, knocking it sideways. It turned over and I felt a strong tug above my belt. I looked downthe Insect's back right foot had caught my s.h.i.+rt, its claw had closed and now as it turned away from me it was winding the material around its foot. I pulled frantically at my s.h.i.+rt but I couldn't free it. I yelled and flapped madlythen we plummeted together.

The Insect kicked its extended leg, struggling frantically, and every movement just wound my s.h.i.+rt tighter into a knot around its three claws. I grabbed the hard ankle joint and pulled at it.

The Insect and I began to spin around each other, centripetal force pulling us away from each other the length of its leg. Airflow rushed past faster and faster. I flared my wings, desperately braking, but lying on my side I couldn't gain any purchase on the air. The Insect's underside faced me, the ball and socket joints of its legs under its thorax. Its five other legs razored past as it kicked and it bent at the waist bringing its tail close to my legs. The roaring airstream tore its wings along their length and the loose strips started fluttering around us.

Relative to the Insect I seemed to be stationary but the ground below us swept round faster and faster. I sipped at the rus.h.i.+ng air through gritted teeth. The horizon climbed up the sky and the awful gusts buffeted us, blowing my ponytail upwards. The end of it tangled with the Insect's other back foot.

My axe dangled. I grasped its shaft back into my hand and swiped down at the leg projecting from my s.h.i.+rt. I missed. Tried again, and missed. Panicking, I reached down and tapped with little cuts but the angle was impossible. The narrow blade kept chipping past the smooth leg on both sides. I couldn't put any force behind it so even when I did strike the tubular chitin, flattened to barbs on the back, I couldn't sever it. f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, why do I never carry a sword?

The town blossomed up beneath me. The stone rings opened up; widened; then I lost sight of the outer wall and all beneath me were barracks roofs and the square. I've only got seconds.

I folded my wings in and bent my legs arching my back concave so my feet were almost behind my head. I scrabbled in my boot top for my flick knife. With less drag, we whirled round each other fasterthe Insect pulled my s.h.i.+rt and the tight material cut into my waist, restricting me further. I flicked the blade and swept it behind my head, cutting the end of my ponytail free. Then with swift cuts I slashed through my stretched s.h.i.+rt feeling it open up around my sides and tear of its own accord over my stomach. The claw ripped free.

I snapped one wing closed, raised the other and stalledslipped sideways away from the Insect.

It turned over in the air, legs uppermost, mandibles snapping and antennae whipping. A long bronze line of light reflected from the sunset along the length of its body.

I braked as hard as I could. I spread my feathers wide and flat, fighting against the airflow forcing them up. They hissed and jiggled, bending like bows. I splayed my legs trying to counteract the spin. The distance between me and the Insect increased. It shrank below me. I saw it, still rotating along its length, fall towards a messy impact with the barracks roof.

I did not have enough distance left to stop. I was braking as hard as I could but the spinning roofs were too large, too near. Well, this is it, I thought. This is how it ends. At least it'll be over quickly. I had an image of Tern in my mind like a portrait. I spun as I fell, every couple of seconds, trailing my foot in the corner of my vision. The barracks ring flashed away. I levelled with the towers; they shot above me. I glimpsed soldiers on the ground, their mouths round Os. Detail leapt out: the flags, the cracks between hall roof slabs, grit in the drainpipes. I hugged my arms and legs in tight. I closed my eyes and my mind was already dissociating, awaiting the impact.

Thumpf! I hit something elastic and jolted. I seemed to arc out in a slow trajectory. I almost stopped, thencrack! crack!I tumbled head over feet straight down and hit the ground heavily, backside, wings, and my head jerked back and hit the stone.

Oof. I skidded to a halt feeling my skin burning. I opened my eyes and looked around. I was loosely wrapped in voluminous folds of canvas, through which the lamplights shone orange. The stuff around my face blew in and out with my panting. All right, I thought; I'm alive. I'm on the ground and alive. Ooh, my head. I pressed a hand to it with Eszai stoicism but nothing gave way. I rolled around, winded, and scrabbled at the material but I couldn't find an opening. I stabbed my axe into it, cut a rent and crawled out, onto the cobbles of the central square.

Acres of orange canvas seemed to curl away from me on both sides. I looked at it and saw the ma.s.sive letters, backwards and upside down: 'Riverworks Company Est. 1692'. A glance up to the roof of the hall told me I had snapped the flagpoles holding Frost's banner. They hung down, trailing it between them.

I hugged my head, rolled over and moaned. My right arm and shoulder were skinned and bleeding profusely. Sliding on the cobbles had worn a hole in the banner, through my jeans' denim as if it was tissue, and blood was trickling down my right leg. My s.h.i.+rt was laddered and my axe scabbard reduced to leather shreds.

I rotated my shoulder, gasping at the pain.

A jangle of chain mail and the flash of plate armourTornado was running towards me out of the hall. The front of his helmet was featureless and forbidding. He hooked the visor back and I saw his shocked face. 'Jant, are you all right?'

'I think so...I mean, I'm bleeding...s.h.i.+t, I'm bleeding!'

'You lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d.' Tornado pointed at the broken banner. I shrugged lopsidedly at him.

He slipped his s.h.i.+eld from his arm and stuck it upright with its spike between the cobbles. It had a printed street map and the horn blast codes pasted on the inside. He hung his axe on top.

Tornado, I'm so glad it's you. I would have wasted hours trying to explain my ordeal to someone with more imagination. Now the nightmare faded rapidly when faced with this bloodstained mail-coiffed frontiersman smiling like a maniac behind a blade I would have been unable to lift.

I said faintly, 'Who's dead?...I felt the Circle break. Who did we lose?'

'The Lawyer.'

'Gayle? d.a.m.n...'

'Thunder.'

'Thought so.'

'And Hayl.'