Belasius ignored him. He could be cruel, I knew; in fact, in all the time I knew him he never once spared a thought for another’s anxiety or pain: more exactly, it never occurred to him that feeling could exist, even in a free man. Ulfin must have seemed at that moment less real to him than the horse he was controlling. He swung easily to the saddle, saying curtly, “Stand back.” Then to me, “Can you manage the mare if we gallop? I want to get back before Cadal finds you’re not home, and sets the place by the ears.”

“I can try. What about Ulfin?”

“What about him? He’ll walk your pony home, of course.”

He swung his horse round, and rode out between the pine boughs. Ulfin had already run to bundle up the blood-stained robe and stuff it in the brown mare’s saddlebag. He hurried now to give me his shoulder, and somehow between us I scrambled into the saddle and settled myself. The boy stood back, silent, but I had felt how he was shaking. I suppose that for a slave it was normal to be so afraid. It came to me that he was even afraid to lead my pony home alone through the forest.

I hung on the rein for a moment and leaned down. “Ulfin, he’s not angry with you; nothing will happen. I swear it. So don’t be afraid.”

“Did you . . . see anything, my lord?”

“Nothing at all.” In the way that mattered this was the truth. I looked down at him soberly. “A blaze of darkness,” I said, “and an innocent moon. But whatever I might have seen, Ulfin, it would not have mattered. I am to be initiated. So you see why he is not angry? That is all. Here, take this.”

I slid my dagger from its sheath and flicked it to quiver point down in the pine needles.

“If it makes you easier,” I said, “but you won’t need it. You will be quite safe. Take it from me. I know. Lead my pony gently, won’t you?”

I kicked the mare in the ribs and headed her after Belasius.

*   *   *

He was waiting for me—that is to say he was going at an easy canter, which quickened to a hand-gallop as I caught him up. The brown mare pounded behind him. I gripped the neck-strap and clung like a burr.

The track was open enough for us to see our way clearly in the moonlight. It sliced its way uphill through the forest to a crest from which, momentarily, one could see the glimmer of the town’s lights. Then it plunged downhill again, and after a while we rode out of the forest on to the salt plains that fringed the sea.