I dreaded bringing this news back to the others so much that I put it off for a bit by walking to see what other news I could gather. It was a strange thing. I’d been brought up on the Grounds to think of Strongheart as a cruel man who would willingly do for people if they so much as questioned him or criticized him or stood in his way. And he really was. Even the Michael’s Place people, and the folk I talked to when I was in Veeklehouse, would complain about how much stuff he took from them and how little he let them keep, even though they were Davidfolk. ‘Those high people are all the same,’ they’d say, ‘they just look after themselves.’ And yet still, in a time like this, we all looked to Strongheart to protect us, like he was some kind of kind wise granddad, and we were little kids.

More little fires, more scared exhausted faces. Guards were riding about on bucks, trying to look important but not really knowing what to do. Davidstand people were frightened that all these strangers from poolside would try and take what was theirs, and so their men clutched sticks and spears and glared out at us from their solid shelters whenever we went too near to them. Poolside people were worried that the Davidstand folk would throw them out, and so their men clutched sticks and spears too, daring the Davidstand men to even think about it. And everyone, from Davidstand or poolside, worried that no one was in charge, no one was telling them what was happening, or what was being done, or what they were supposed to do.

When I spoke to other poolside people, I heard stories about the Johnfolk. We’d been lucky lucky it seemed. The ringmen hadn’t been as kind with others as they’d been with us. One time, in a cluster near David Water, a bunch of them had caught some guards trying to sneak up on them, and tied them to spiketrees to scream and burn. And when a woman in the cluster had run forwards to untie them – she was the granny of one of the guards – they’d pulled off her wrap and tied her to a tree as well. In another cluster, just alpway of Veeklehouse, the people had foolishly refused to bow down to the Johnfolk, and the New Earthers had done for everyone they could get their hands on, cutting the throats of oldies and little kids with their long cruel metal knives. And in not just one but many clusters the ringmen had gathered everyone together and made them watch while they pissed and crapped over their precious circles of stones, and then danced in middle, where no one was supposed to go except high people and shadowspeakers, lifting up their fakeskin wraps to show their arses and their dicks.