I pushed the second thermalite into the battery chamber, then counted thirty paces back towards the museum, the track we’d made on the way out now only visible as smoothed-off dents in the undulating white carpet. I stood there, safety off, thumb on the choke button, wondering who or what would come through the snowstorm toward me. A good five minutes must have passed and I heard a thud, then another, but I wasn’t expert enough to tell from which weapon they had originated.

All of a sudden I was aware of the squeak and crunch of something moving in an untroubled fashion through the snow, less than thirty feet away to the left of me. They made no attempt to move silently and seemed to be lumbering rather than walking, and at a reasonable pace. I was put in mind of a large herbivore, which wasn’t possible – Megafauna would never be awake, and even if they were, they would not be out in this. Only Villains, womads, Consuls and idiots ventured out in a snowstorm in the Winter.

I swallowed down my fear and as the sound drew closer I decided to tempt providence and hail whoever it was. But as soon as I opened my mouth to speak the footfalls abruptly stopped and I heard a shuffle in the snow as the figure turned to face me. I couldn’t see them, but I somehow knew that whoever it was could see me. Or sense me, at any rate. I was also acutely aware that this wasn’t Fodder. I had put my hand in my bag to pull out the camera that Laura had given me when a voice made me jump.

‘I wonder if you wouldn’t mind awfully dropping that weapon?’

I had been so fixated on the presence to my left that I had not been paying attention, and a figure had crept up on me out of the snow storm and was now holding a Bambi to my head. He was dressed in the mismatched blend of clothes that was the adopted uniform of the Winter Villain: much-mended ski salopettes with a mammoth-wool tweed jacket under a down-filled puffa, criss-crossed with belts of thermalites. He had large boots, again mismatched, a sturdy tea cosy for a hat which was embroidered ‘A gift from Whitby’ and was missing his nose – frostbite, I figured. There was also a scar the thickness of a little finger that ran from his forehead to his chin by way of his left eye – which held a cracked monocle.

‘Well, take me to Mansion House ball and dance me the Dashing White Sergeant,’ he said in the cut-glass tones of the English upper classes, ‘I seem to have bagged myself a Novice.’

I’d never met a Villain before, so didn’t quite know what to say – and he was right, I was still a Novice, despite what anyone said.