Snorri roared then. The ferocity in it would have given Taproot’s elephant pause, but that wasn’t where the terror lay. The horror was in the simple unabashed joy of it. He didn’t wait for anyone else to emerge. Instead he rounded the corner swinging his axe to cave in the side of the next man’s head and smash him against the rock wall. He ran then, literally ran through them, striking quick short blows as if his axe were a rapier, light as a willow switch. Two, three, four men variously pitched into empty space or slammed against the rock, all of them with a hole in them big enough to put your fist into.

Somewhere out of sight Snorri found a pause and started to declaim, not some Norse battle dirge but ancient verse from the “Lays of Rome.”

Then out spake brave Horatius,

the Captain of the Gate:

“To every man upon this earth

Death cometh soon or late.”

Another grunt of exertion, a clatter of metal on rock. The thump of bodies falling.

“And how can man die better

than by facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers,

And the temples of his gods.”

Damn the barbarian. He was enjoying this madness! He thought himself Horatius on the narrow bridge before the gates of Rome, holding back the might of the Etruscan army! I started to crawl away. It’s shame that gets us killed. Shame is the anchor, the heaviest burden to carry from the battlefield. Fortunately shame was an affliction I’d never suffered from. I did wonder, though, hearing Snorri move on to the next verse of his epic, whether he might not be able to hold out there indefinitely. Providing they didn’t have bows with them . . . Of course, if that Edris were any kind of a leader he’d have sent men to flank his enemy. No single man can stand against many when they come at him from two sides. I would have flank—

“Hello. What have we here?”

I looked up into the pale staring eyes of Meegan—Edris’s second companion from the night before. The setting sun framed him with a bloody light. He’d struck me back at the tavern as one of the last men on earth I’d want to meet in a dark alley. Like Cutter John he had the look of a man who kept a distance from the world, as if viewing us all from behind the confessional screen. Such men make good torturers.

At Meegan’s shoulder stood a hard-bitten warrior tending to grey with a longsword ready in his hand. More men sent to flank us probably approached along the ledge as Meegan and I blinked at each other, me on all fours, him leaning forwards as if in enquiry.

Whatever you do in dangerous situations, the main thing is to do it quickly. I’ve always maintained just because it’s given to you to be a coward doesn’t mean it’s something you can’t strive to do well. My father used to admonish me to excel in all things. Excellence in cowardice means being quick off the mark. If you want to run away fast, then the first thing to do is take off in whatever direction you happen to be facing.