Ebenezer was right – Ollie wanted nothing more than to get out into the fresh air before he was sick. First, though, he had to check there was nobody left alive. He forced himself to stand, willing his shaky knees not to buckle. He swallowed hard and walked towards the altar. Kids were strewn everywhere, too badly injured to possibly be alive. The grown-ups had pulled the small bodies to pieces, and now they lay dead among their victims.

Ollie caught Blue’s eye. For once Blue didn’t look like he was too cool to care. There was a haunted look about him. Ollie knew how he was feeling. He must look the same. They’d let these kids down. Should have been here for them. Should have come back sooner. Even Achilleus looked cut up. He was stalking the church, sticking his new spear into every grown-up body and twisting it with a foul curse.

‘What we gonna do?’ said Ollie.

‘Bring the other bodies in from outside,’ said Blue. ‘All of them.’

‘And then what?’

‘Then we’ll burn this stinking place down. It’s all we can do. Burn their bodies.’

Ollie helped Blue organize a work party and they collected anything that would burn and piled it in the middle of the church: old prayer books, the little square cushions for kneeling on, the wooden pews, the cloth off the altar. They dragged the small broken bodies close to the pile and when it was ready Blue set light to it. It was slow to catch, but in a few minutes a flame had taken.

Ollie forced himself to stay a little longer and he and Ebenezer double-checked that there weren’t any survivors. The last place they looked was the tower. There was an open door at the bottom; it had been splintered and broken in. They climbed to the top of the spiral staircase and out into the light. Ollie could see some of the children down below, the ones who hadn’t come into the church with the war party, sitting or standing in silence.

And a big expanse of empty grey sky.

They went back down and walked outside where Ollie found Einstein and Emily sitting on a bench with their arms round each other. Einstein looked very pale.

‘All of them?’ he said.

Ollie said nothing. There was nothing to say. He left Ebenezer and walked away from Einstein into the trees. Managed a few paces before he sank to his knees, overcome with tears. He sobbed and wailed and beat his fists in the dirt till he had no strength left. And then it was over.