The room could have been a slaughterhouse, or a refuse tip, or perhaps it had been used to house corpses during the Great Plagues and someone had forgotten to take them away. The stink of rotting meat was tremendous: a heavy, warm, sweet smell that twisted Rafe’s guts into agonized knots and brought saliva to his mouth. He hated himself for feeling hungry. He looked around to try to find the cause of the stink, but he saw only the huge man who had been tending him. Perhaps, he thought, this person was the source of the smell. It seemed all too likely, judging by his appearance. Over six feet tall, all of it scruffy and filthy, a beard that housed tiny crawling things and arms so hairy that they looked like furbats attached to his shoulders. The man’s face was scarred down one side, old whip-wounds black as death. Rafe recognized the signs of a tumbler attack from the stories he had heard back in Trengborne.

“Boy?” the man said, and it was as if the ground had spoken. His voice sounded like rocks grating together.

Rafe raised his eyebrows, too shocked to answer.

“Boy,” the man said again, smiling slightly. The smile tempered the voice and made it kind.

And then Rafe looked into his eyes for the first time, and he saw a cool, calm intelligence there, something belying his appearance. Rafe knew those eyes, recognized that intellect.

“Uncle Vance?”

“Rafe,” the huge man grumbled, “my boy, I haven’t seen you for so long. What in Black’s been happening? Why’re you all bloody and cut up?”

“Uncle, they’re dead,” he said. Actually saying it seemed to make it all final and real, and the dregs of unconsciousness flitted away to the corners of the stinking room. “All of them. Mother . . . Father . . . everyone.”

“Royston? Dead?”

“Dead,” Rafe said again, and began to cry. He tried not to blink because every time he shut his eyes, images of his slaughtered parents came to him. But keeping his eyes open made him cry more.

Vance, his expression one of stunned shock, came to him and held out his arms, touching Rafe’s lips with something cool and rank. “Best sleep, then,” he said, and before Rafe could reply, sight, taste and sound faded out once more. The final sensation was his uncle’s hand on his brow, shaking slightly as the big man shed his own shameless tears.

“HE RODE INTO the village,” Rafe said. “Then he killed everyone. And there was nothing anyone could do. The militia fought him, but he killed them. He had arrows in him and bolts and everything, but still he walked and killed. I watched him from the hills when I escaped . . . I watched him die, I think . . . but then I was followed. I think he’s following me.”

“A madman. There are many of them nowadays.”