Pilgrim knew, in a freezing moment, that the man was going to hurt him no matter what he did. He was still holding the sack with the broken slab inside, and swung it hard and fast, catching Creed under the chin. The blow shivered up Pilgrim’s arm and Creed fell backwards and his head struck one of the rocks that lined the verge of the road. There was a sound, distinct and terrible, like a hammer striking a hollow gourd, and Creed shivered like a clubbed fish and lay still.

Gentle had halted his mara’s headlong flight and turned it around. Now he urged it forward, looking down at Creed, looking at Pilgrim, his pink gaze level and serious. ‘Reckon you might have killed him.’

Creed lay on his back, the knife lying beyond his outflung arm. His eyes were open and rolled back sightlessly. Blood ran from one ear, dripping into a little puddle on the baked dirt of the road.

‘Help me,’ Pilgrim said to Gentle, and with a sick feeling slid off his mara and knelt by Creed and felt his throat, seeking a pulse. ‘Help me help him.’

‘I want no part in any of this,’ Gentle said, and sawed his mara around and kicked it into a lumbering trot, heading out across the dry grass, leaving Pilgrim alone with his victim.

11.

Creed had suffered a broken jaw and several smashed teeth, and a swelling to the brain that the tribe’s chief physic treated with trepanation. He lay unconscious in the Hearth’s sanatorium for three days and when he woke he was entirely blind, and claimed to have no memory of stealing a mara and attempting to rob Pilgrim Saltmire.

Blessed told Pilgrim that it was as if the Mother had interceded and punished the man with the loss of his sight after he had failed to show proper repentance for half-blinding another person. It was no comfort to Pilgrim. He believed that he alone was responsible for what had happened. He should have followed the code of great harmony, given up the pendant and anything else that Creed demanded. Instead, he had lashed out in fear and unthinking anger, and now the would-be robber was the victim and he was the villain, indelibly stained with shame and guilt.

He replayed the moment over and again in his mind, reliving the flare of anger and the aftermath of shock and mortification, yearning for a different outcome. He could have surrendered peacefully. Or the weighted bag could have missed Creed, or Creed could have flinched out of its path before robbing and beating him and making his escape. Pilgrim would have deserved that – the robbing, the beating. And afterwards he could have stood before the men’s council, could have presented his request for their support with a clear conscience …