He was eleven, and it felt as if the year before it had been the longest one in his life. As if he’d been ten for ever. But that was the thing about growing older. He’d never be ten again.

The soldiers went east, into the burned forest.

He would find them there. And do what was right.

* * *

‘What are you doing?’ Glyph quietly asked.

Startled, the dishevelled man looked up. He was crouched beside a heap of stones that had been pulled from the frozen ground along the edge of the marsh. His hands were filthy and spotted with blood from scrapes and broken fingernails. He was wearing a scorched wolf hide, but it didn’t belong to him. Nearby, left on the snow-smeared ground, was a Legion sword and scabbard and belt.

The stranger said nothing, eyes on the bow in Glyph’s hand, the arrow notched in the string, and the tension of the grip.

‘You are in my family’s camp,’ Glyph said. ‘You have buried them under stones.’

‘Yes,’ the man whispered. ‘I found them here. The bodies. I – I could not bear to see them. I am sorry if I have done wrong.’ He slowly straightened. ‘You can kill me if you like. I won’t regret leaving this world. I won’t.’

‘It is not our way,’ Glyph said, nodding down at the stones.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

‘When the soul leaves, the flesh is nothing. We carry our dead kin into the marsh. Or the forest where it is deep and thick and unlit.’ He waved slightly with the bow. ‘But here, there was no point. You take the bodies away to keep your home clean, but no one lives here any more.’

‘It seems,’ said the man, ‘that you do.’

‘They had rotted down by the time I returned. No more than bones. They were,’ Glyph added, ‘easy to live with.’

‘I would not have had the courage for that,’ the stranger said.

‘Are you a Legion soldier?’

The man glanced across at his sword. ‘I killed one. I cut him down. He was in Scara Bandaris’s troop – the ones who deserted and rode away with the captain. I went with them for a time. But then I killed a man, and for the murder I committed Scara Bandaris banished me from his company.’

‘Why did he not take your life?’

‘When he discovered the truth of me,’ the man said, ‘he deemed life the greater punishment. He was right.’

‘The man you killed – what did he do to you? Your face is twisted. Scarred and bent. He did that?’