‘What curse?’ scoffed Adalrik. ‘What’re you on about, old man?’ He tapped his head at his brother. Leikr laughed, although with more nervousness than mirth.

The stranger ignored them. Instead he stared at Erlan.

‘What do you mean, another?’

‘Your lord spoke of a journey into the depths below. What did you find down there?’

Erlan’s restless glance shifted between the boys then back to the bald man. ‘Things you wouldn’t believe. . . I wouldn’t expect you to.’

‘Oh, I believe in things of the darkness. Just as I do those of the light. Tell me.’

‘I saw men who had become less than men. The darkness had made monsters of them.’

‘And?’

‘And their lord. He called himself the Witch King. A Watcher. Azazel. . .’ He murmured the name, as if speaking it too loudly might summon him there. ‘I killed him.’

Without warning, Vassili snatched Erlan’s wrist, his grip like iron tongs. ‘Dear God! You drank his blood, didn’t you?’ His eyes were round as shields.

Erlan looked at him carefully. This man couldn’t know that. No one could. ‘What if I did?’ he said softly.

‘It was the blood of demons.’

Leikr sucked a startled breath.

‘What?’ Erlan shook his head, suddenly confused.

‘Listen to me, friend. And hear me.’ Vassili leaned in. ‘Unless you drink the blood of the king of kings, you shall be a slave to that other, who called himself a king. You shall walk the Earth, cursed to wander. Hear me. Only the blood of the king of kings will set you free.’

A voice rang out from the high platform. ‘Where is the holy man? Where is this priest from the south?’ It was Osvald’s. Evidently he was finished with his thrall and looking for new distraction. ‘Up here! You bring a message. Well, now’s your time to speak. Damn him – where is the fellow?’

Vassili’s eyes darted to the platform and back to Erlan. ‘Seek him in the south. Do you understand me?’ But Erlan was as perplexed as ever. ‘Seek him there. And you will find him.’

‘Aha – there you are!’ Osvald at last caught sight of Vassili in their gloomy corner. ‘Come up here! It’s ill manners to keep your host waiting!’

‘My time has come.’ The twinkle returned to Vassili’s eyes. ‘God be with you.’

‘God?’ Erlan muttered after him. ‘What god?’

Vassili had been speaking a long while before Erlan truly heard him. But gradually the man’s words filtered into his troubled mind.

The little man carried a message from another – from his lord, he said, with a name far stranger even than his own. But this lord of his sounded like none that Erlan had ever known. He had no host of hirthmen, no hall, no wealth, no famous deeds of valour, nothing to mark him worthy of a man’s oath. ‘Only his words,’ declared Vassili. ‘His life. And his victory over death.’ Vassili declared he carried a message of peace from this lord – although what state of war existed between him and the Livi and why, he did not explain. Instead he turned to other things, to ancient things, his bright eyes burning, his small hands beating the air in his passion.