As Matthew’s and Devane’s horses entered the single dirt road between the unpainted houses, first one and then another and another of the folk began to cautiously emerge, some holding axes, shovels, and whatever else could be used as weapons. A group of a half-dozen men came out of a larger structure that might have been a meeting hall. Two of them held muskets that took aim at the new arrivals, though one musketeer looked to be near eighty and the other a boy of about fourteen, both of them almost quivering in their boots.

“Hold your fire!” Devane commanded, in a voice that must’ve resonated from one side of the village to another. “We’re friends, not enemies!” he said. And added: “Not like your last gang of visitors.”

The boy’s musket lowered a few inches but the elder’s stayed fixed. “You say!” the codger growled. He had a face that made the stones of the watchtower appear smooth, and his wild white hair was a snowy forest in chaos. “Who the Devil are you and what are you wantin’?”

“Information only,” Matthew spoke up. “May I dismount without being shot?”

“Watch ’em, Eurig!” said one of the other men who was armed with a pitchfork. There was a grumble of assent, and a brown-bearded man with huge shoulders stepped forward to take the musket from the boy and steady its aim at the horsemen.

“Step down!” Eurig decided after another few seconds. “Easy, like!”

Matthew did, and so too did Devane, who took up a position well behind the young—and in his estimation—idiot.

“Your village was raided in the last few days, yes?” Matthew prompted.

“Raided and ravaged. Those men … they weren’t human, as we know humans to be.”

“Especially not the tall one, the one in charge,” said the bearded gent with the second musket. He had a voice like a saw on granite. “They called him Cardinal Black. It was a blasphemy, is what it was.”

“Agreed, but they raided another village a few miles further down the coast last night,” Matthew said. “We’ve come from there.”

“The place that’s sealed and guarded like a fort.” It was a statement. Eurig’s thick white eyebrows went up. “I suspect nothin’ good goes on there.”

“Point well taken, sir … but other matters are pressing. When did Cardinal Black leave, and by what means?”

“The early hours after midnight, by that big ship they come in. Twelve of ’em went with him. The other six left in two coaches.”

“There was a second ship, anchored further out to sea?” Matthew asked.

Eurig nodded. “One just as big as the other. That one out to sea left last night and didn’t come back. Black and most of the others rode out after dark but they left five men here with guns and everybody was herded into Caffrey’s barn. Then we heard the thunder and I figured it to be cannonfire ’cause that ship looked to me like a man-o’-war. We all watched the other ship go, and thank God. Lord be praised they didn’t kill more than three of our folk.”