The long return to the forest, hungry and silent with shame. The smoke to the south, above the treeline. The sudden scattering of the parties, as family members drew together and then split away, rushing to the camps of their kin. The wandering among the slain. The dead wife, the dead sister who had made it halfway out of her burning hut before a sword slid into her back. The dead son whose neck had been snapped.

The desperate journey to the monasteries of Yedan and Yannis. The beseeching of the priests and priestesses within. The bitter bargain offered.

Bring us your children.

The hunters wailed. They cried, What children?

On that day, Glyph took for himself that vicious title the people of the towns and the city had given them. He was now a Denier.

The name had become his promise. His destiny, in fact. Denier. Denier of life. Denier of truth. Denier of faith.

Dusk had arrived when he finally found the camp of the Legion soldiers whom he had been tracking. There were three of Urusander’s ilk, travelling east, making for Neret Sorr as had so many others before them. Glyph crept his way closer in the darkness, safe beyond the dungchip fire’s pool of light. He still possessed all his arrows, a half-dozen of them bearing iron barbs. The others were flint-tipped.

When he was in place, beside a stump and behind the tree that had toppled from it, he silently removed three arrows, the first two iron-headed, the last one bearing his best flint – long-bladed and sharp-edged under the single strand of gut binding it to the end of the shaft. Each arrow he set point-down into the ground beside him, making a neat row.

Two men and a woman. They were talking. The two men were arguing over who would lie with the woman this night. She was laughing as she set one against the other. They sat round the fire, under the cold night’s bright stars. Glyph concluded, as he waited, that she wanted neither of them.

He selected the first iron-barbed arrow and set it to his bow’s gut string. Lifted the weapon clear of the black trunk and drew on the string as he did so, pulling until it pressed against his lower lip.

Then he released the arrow.

The man directly opposite Glyph made a choking sound, toppling backward.

His friend on his right barked a laugh, as if the dead man was jesting. But then the woman spied the fletching jutting from the dying man’s throat, and she cried out.

Glyph was already drawing the bow. The second iron arrow sank deep under her left breast. With a small gasp, she fell on to her side.

The last man unsheathed his sword, wheeling round, but blinded still by the firelight.

The flint-tipped arrow buried itself in his stomach. He shrieked, doubling over. The arrow’s shaft tilted and then, at his frantic scrabbling, it fell to the ground. The long flint head remained in his gut.