She doesn’t need me anymore. I go outside, find a spot where nobody’s in sight, and bring up my breakfast under a bush. Can’t seem to stop. I’m still retching even when there’s only spit and bile left to come. When I’m done at last, my eyes are streaming, my chest’s heaving and my mouth tastes like a cesspit. Funny, that. You could say I saved one today, or helped save him, and that evens the score. But it doesn’t. I could save ten, twenty, fifty, and it wouldn’t make up for Strangler lying dead in the woods, and Poxy and Dribbles butchered on the road, left there like pieces of meat for me to stumble over after Mathuin’s men had done their foul work. That’s a part of the story Blackthorn’s never going to hear. Strangler’s buried in those woods, a stone’s throw from the lockup, and the other two I laid to rest in a quiet field with a nice big willow for shade. But I’ve got them all on my back, and the others from long ago. It’s like a scale that can never balance. A weight that’ll never lift.

I find the well, draw up a bucket, splash my face and take a drink, hoping the foul taste will go. And here she is beside me, bag on her back, staff in her hand.

‘We’re moving on,’ she says.

Fergus’s wife said something about food and drink before, but I don’t mention this. ‘All right. I’ll get my things.’

I fetch them, and Fergus’s wife gives me a little bag. ‘Some provisions, since your woman won’t take any payment. Would have liked her to stay on a night or two, seeing as he’s so poorly. But I didn’t ask; she said you two have to move on.’

‘That’s right.’ I put the little bag into my pack. ‘Heading north.’

‘Good luck to you,’ the woman says. ‘You saved my husband’s life today. I can’t believe what you did. Lifting that cart all by yourself – that’s a feat beyond any ordinary man.’

Nothing to say to that. I shoulder my pack and pick up my staff.

‘Sure you don’t want work here?’ An older man, perhaps her father, comes to the door behind her. ‘Strong fellow like you, you’d be welcome. With Fergus laid low, we could do with the help.’ A pause. ‘And there’s no healer between here and Maedan’s Bridge.’

I shake my head. ‘Got to be moving on,’ I say. I wonder if they’d be so keen to keep us if they knew where we’d just come from.

‘Good luck to you, then,’ says the man. ‘Long way to go?’

‘Long enough.’