Yurga scrambled out, blinked and rubbed his nose with a hand, smearing wood tar from the wheel hub over his face. The horseman fixed dark, narrowed, piercing eyes, as sharp as a spear tip, on him. Yurga was silent.

‘The two of us won’t be able to pull it out,’ said the stranger finally, pointing at the stuck wheel. ‘Were you travelling alone?’

‘There were three of us,’ Yurga stammered. ‘Servants, sir. But they fled, the scoundrels…’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said the horseman, looking under the bridge towards the bottom of the ravine. ‘I’m not surprised at all. I think you ought to do the same. Time is short.’

Yurga did not follow the stranger’s gaze. He did not want to look at the mass of skulls, ribs and shinbones scattered among the rocks, peeping out from the burdock and nettles covering the bottom of the dried-up stream. He was afraid that with just one more glance, one more glimpse of the black eye sockets, grinning teeth and cracked bones, something would snap in him, the remains of his desperate courage would escape like air from a fish’s bladder, and he would dash back up the highway, stifling a scream, just as the carter and his lad had less than an hour before.

‘What are you waiting for?’ the horseman asked softly, reining his horse around. ‘For nightfall? It’ll be too late then. They’ll come for you as soon as it begins to get dark. Or maybe even sooner. Let’s go, jump up behind me. Let’s both get out of here as quick as we can.’

‘But the cart, sir?’ Yurga howled at the top of his voice, not knowing if from fear, despair or rage. ‘And my goods? That’s a whole year’s work! I’d rather drop dead! I’m not leaving it!’

‘I think you still don’t know where the bloody hell you are, friend,’ the stranger said calmly, extending a hand towards the ghastly graveyard beneath the bridge. ‘Won’t leave your cart, you say? I tell you, when darkness falls not even King Dezmod’s treasury will save you, never mind your lousy cart. What the hell came over you to take a shortcut through this wilderness? Don’t you know what has infested this place since the war?’

Yurga shook his head.

‘You don’t know,’ nodded the stranger. ‘But you’ve seen what’s down there? It’d be difficult not to notice. That’s all the other men who took a shortcut through here. And you say you won’t leave your cart. And what, I wonder, do you have in your cart?’

Yurga did not reply, but glowered at the horseman, trying to choose between ‘oakum’ and ‘old rags’.

The horseman did not seem particularly interested in the answer. He reassured his chestnut, who was chewing its bit and tossing its head.

‘Please, sir…’ the merchant finally muttered. ‘Help me. Save me. My eternal gratitude… Don’t leave… I’ll give you whatever you want, whatever you ask… Save me, sir!’

The stranger, resting both hands on the pommel of his saddle, suddenly turned his head towards him.