I had no gods to pray to. I felt the lack of them then.

I had begun thinking of Tathra, too, my mother—I could not call her otherwise—whose body they would have thrown into the cavity of earth, for there was no bright burial of flame for the women, and that done while I lay on the hill.

Gradually, all of it became a great chaos of lights and sounds to me, my mother’s corpse and Demizdor’s imagined spread-eagled body, the actual fire gusts and the black sky, the yells and bawlings of the krarl. And into this dream came riding the ghosts of Sihharn Night, because no man had kept watch for them.

Of everything, they were the most clear. Black as the Black Place they came from, mounted on horses black as themselves or white as bone, and their faces silver skulls from which the pale hair still grew. I recall I knew myself dreaming at this point, never having credited this legend of Sihharn’s undead, and I jerked myself awake. And saw them still.

The krarl was seeing them also.

The clamor had died on the wind, just the sinking fire spattering now, the striking of shod hooves on the ground as the riders came between the tents, and the faint jingle of bells from their bridles.

Like figures in a tapestry, the braves and their women kept motionless. Only those nearest to where the skull-heads passed drew aside, walking backward as if half asleep. Somewhere, about a mile off over the hill, the dogs of a neighboring camp had set up a howling. It was in another world, that noise.

Near me, Seel breathed raucously through his mouth, and out of his stench came the sharp new stench of his urine, spilled from him in terror. I could have laughed at that, if I had had the health for it. I had already grasped who the riders were, and where they hailed from. Not the pit, but Eshkir. Their black was tawdry, and the skulls were masks.

The foremost of the horsemen held up his black gauntleted hand, and halted the column. Then he spoke, in the language of the tribes but arrogantly, as if it soiled his mouth to use it.

“You have one fettered there, on the ground, the black-haired. You will give him to us.”

It was not a request, nor even a demand. It was an assumption. The krarl merely rustled and quivered, and Seel’s body clattered, his teeth and the teeth of his robe rattling with his fright.

“You have also a gentlelady of Eshkorek among your tents. You will bring her. If she has been harmed, your krarl shall be burned. If she is dead, we shall kill your women and your children.”

The horseman’s voice was like dry silver. I wanted to answer him.

Before I could form a sentence or get it to my lips, the wooden pole was heaved suddenly upright.

Sky ran together with land. I slid the length of the wood before the thongs bit and held me, and it was as though a tower crashed downward into my head.