The mare pranced and rolled her eyes at a fox slinking through, the crack of branches underfoot, swoop of a bat above her head. Daniel leaned forward and urged her on. The chanting of the crowd beat through the night. They were ahead of him. The horse’s hooves pounded the ground and Daniel clung to her mane as the air raced past. All the while he pictured Sarah at the hands of the villagers, stoked as they were by anger and ale. One look and she had possessed him, fool that he was, charging ahead now on a treacherous mission that might see him killed, would certainly leave him regarded with even more suspicion by the village. And yet he did not think to stop.

He kept to the edge of the thicket, hidden, but close enough to see flames ahead. To his right a thatch of twisted trunk and undergrowth blending to shadow, to his left the empty path. He had not reached them, could not pass them. They would be upon her.

Every pounding of hoof, lift and fall of branch ahead, flicker of path through the trees brought him closer. Scent of wild garlic and bracken broken beneath the galloping horse.

At last, lights on the path. Through the black web of branches he glimpsed faces as he passed, disjointed; a bearded cheek, a bobbing hat. Flicker of fire and shadow revealing expressions that burned with a brutal hunger. Daniel hunkered to the mare’s neck. Surely they must see him. Surely they must hear.

A sound to his right, no more than a whimper, and turning he saw, a flash that was gone, the soft white back of Magistrate Thompson in his flower-strewn hat and behind him, against a tree, the pale face of little Phyllis Ross. It was not unusual to find couples in the woods on May Day, but he knew immediately she had not chosen this. Her eyes met his briefly. Tears. A cub in need, and he knew he should stop, any other time would not hesitate to, but he must choose and, in the brief moment it took, he chose Sarah. Phyllis must have another rescuer this night.

A branch cracked him on the eyebrow, a sting that stole his breath and snapped his head back, sending his hat spinning to the ground. He passed the last of the villagers, finally pulling ahead. Daniel raced on until he reached the ruined hamlet, searching for a house that might be hers. Blinking blood from his eye, he searched in the darkness.