This kind of talk made Thanakar feel ashamed, as if he and Charity, by sleeping together, had somehow justified the bishop’s regulations. There were acres of cells up on the mountain reserved for adulterers, and they were mostly empty these days. Thanakar wondered if come summer they were mostly full.

“If things are going to change at all,” the commissar was saying, “we have to trust each other.”

From the ridge above them came the sound of gunfire, just a few shots, and then some yelling in the dark, and a dog howling. Then silence, and then the dog started to howl again, nearer now. The sound stretched and broke, suddenly, and there was silence again in the dark night, for the amputees had quieted down. And then they heard a woman’s voice calling out, very near. The commissar got to his feet. There were sounds of some rocks falling, and the frightened neighing of a horse, and the voice calling out again, wordless and soothing. Then they could hear the horse’s hooves, down on the bedrock where they had camped, coming towards them. A dog slunk out from between two boulders and stood grinning, his tongue hanging out.

The shadow of a horse stepped out of the darkness, its hooves talking on the bare rock. It hesitated for a moment outside the circle of firelight, and then it stepped inside, suddenly diminished as it shed night’s bulky cloak. On its back sat a young woman and a boy, staring down at them. They were dressed in horsehair breeches, and naked from the waist up. The woman sat behind, holding the reins in one hand and a rifle in the other, its barrel pointed to the sky. The firelight shone on her skin and her small breasts, her proud face and the bandage wrapped around her forehead.

The boy leaned back against her. In one hand he carried a small horn, a mess of copper tubing coiled like a whip. Across his knees hung the body of a rock cat, bright gold in that light, still dripping blood. Tied to the saddle horn between his legs swung a battered trophy, a man’s severed head, tied up by his hair.

“Welcome,” said the commissar.

“Good hunting,” said the boy.

Behind them, the singing had been quiet for a while, but then from the tents broke out a long blubbering cry, as a drunken man awoke to what he had lost. The horse shied at the sound, and the woman reined it in a narrow stamping circle. It kicked nervously at the stones, kicking up sparks.

“Dangerous, riding at night,” remarked the commissar.

“A horse lives to run,” said the boy. “Tonight, not tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah,” muttered Bloodstar. “Pedantic bastards.” He got to his feet, looking backward towards the tents, towards the weeping and the crying out, as other men cursed at being woken. “I’ll go see,” he said. He raised the can to his lips for a final drink.

The boy sniffed the air. “Whiskey,” he said. The woman kicked the horse a few steps towards them.