The decline of the track was not particularly steep, but its persistence was wearing. The backs of my legs began to ache and the fall of my own feet jarred: I was already out of rhythm with this place. I stopped to unbutton my cloak, not quite ready to take it off completely – my one piece of armour. As I did so, I heard a faint sound far ahead on the track. A grinding, creaking sound.

I held up the lamp and peered beyond its ineffectual glow. Tabitha became unusually agitated. She pawed at the ground and whickered, though my firm hand on her reins stopped any thoughts of flight. The grinding was worse now. It echoed along the treeline as if the pines were the walls of a cathedral and the noise a terrible choir. I hurriedly put down the lamp and drew my pistol from beneath my cloak. My hand trembled as I loaded the powder. When I finally raised the pistol the long, pale head of a horse appeared from the darkness.

Somehow, even from such a distance, I could make out its teeth, which were uncommonly sharp. Grinning so, the horse came fully from the dark and I saw it pulled a cart. Just as the horse, the cart was pale like bone under the new moon. Its wheels were the source of the grinding and it approached under that constant sound. I could not clear the track completely, unwilling to step into the forest or subject Tabitha to what I would not do myself, but I led the mare as close to the trees as I dared.

I was glad to find the cart had a driver of the ordinary kind, though even in the poor light I could see how age weighed heavily on her shoulders. The woman brought the cart to a halt on the track and turned to face me with difficulty. She was terribly thin, her cheekbones like drawn daggers, and her eyes were aflame in the light of my lamp.

I began a stuttering question as to her purpose, but she interrupted me with a voice as deep and black as the forest.

‘Come,’ she said, then took a shuddering breath, ‘from the village.’

‘Supplies?’ I said weakly.

‘I don’t bring, I take.’ Her cart was empty. ‘Pox up there.’

On instinct I glanced back along the track but saw nothing of the fort. Perhaps it wasn’t there at all, or never had been. This far south anything was possible. ‘I didn’t realise more had caught it.’

‘Quarter will go, before all’s told,’ the woman said without a hint of sorrow or pity.

‘And you’re to help?’

‘So you say.’

There was a pause between us then that I felt was awkward, though she gave no sign of discomfort.

‘The village, is it far?’ I said.

Without a sign from the woman, her horse set off. The grinding started again and I couldn’t move until it grew faint and then was lost to the ragged sound of my own breath. It was an unsettling first encounter with someone from Drekenford. I hoped I would find more of a welcome in the town itself; I would no doubt need local assistance in the coming investigation.