I took a pace forward but there was a low moan, like the sound of wind when it howls around the guttering. We both stared towards where I’d heard the shuffling steps, and I heard the chortle of a bemused child. The hair rose on the back of my neck, and I could see that the Villain had heard it too.

‘Friend of yours, Novice?’

‘Not of mine,’ I said, this time in my mother tongue, ‘and not of yours, either.’

‘Well, damn and blast,’ whispered the Villain as he realised what it was, ‘I need a Gronk like I need a forty-thousand-acre estate and death duties.’

If you live on the edge of the Winter, you know what’s real and what isn’t. He dropped the Schtumperschreck and drew his other Bambi so he was holding one in each hand. He didn’t panic at all, just gritted his teeth and moved forward.

‘Now listen here,’ he said, his voice fading as he walked into the snowstorm, ‘I’ll show you how an Englishman faces de—’

*   *   *

When I woke up I was on my back in the snow with everything quiet, snowflakes melting on my eyelashes and running into my eyes. I climbed to my feet but couldn’t see the Villain anywhere, so followed a trail that was less a set of footprints and more a furrow where someone had been dragged. I found one discharged Bambi after about thirty feet, then another, then the Villain’s clothes. The salopettes, tea-cosy hat, and the puffa, tweed jacket, complete with stained dress-shirt, two T-shirts and a vest, all inside one another. I looked around to see where he might have gone from there, but there was nothing – I was surrounded by virgin snow with the words of ‘So Long, Farewell’ running around inside my head.

Truce busted

‘Scavengers are the bottom feeders of the Winter, taking what they can, when they can, to survive. Differentiated from Villains by their general adherence to a limited code of Winter conduct and from womads by their permanent residence, usually converted oil tankers or cement lorries. They are reputed to be citizens who had to turn cannibalistic during the Winter, and now shun society due to shame.’

– Handbook of Winterology, 4th edition, Hodder & Stoughton

Jonesy and Toccata arrived twenty minutes later, having homed in on the pulser I had set the moment I found Fodder, just near the helter-skelter. He was covered by a thin layer of fresh snow and had a large purple bruise on the side of his face. In front of him was another Villain, also unconscious. Fodder came round first. He had a splitting headache, but was otherwise unhurt.

‘Do you know him?’ asked Toccata when they rolled the first Villain over to get a look at him. He had a cold-gnarled leathery complexion, but no-one recognised him.