He stepped onto the bridge and at once knew that his sense of foreboding hadn’t been mistaken. Before he even saw them. Or heard them.

‘Well?’ rasped one of the men who now blocked his way. ‘Didn’t I say? I said, just wait a tick and someone’ll appear.’

‘Exackly, Okultich,’ another of the characters armed with clubs lisped slightly. ‘Verily we’ll ‘ave to make you a fortune-teller or a wise-man. Well, gentle passer-by, walking all alone! Will you give us what you have of your own free will, or will it have to come to a struggle?’

‘I don’t have anything!’ yelled Jarre at the top of his voice, although he didn’t have much hope that anybody would hear and rush to help. ‘I’m a poor wanderer! I don’t have a groat to my name! What can I give you? This cane? These garments?’

‘Not only that,’ said the lisping one, and something in his voice made Jarre tremble. ‘For you ought to know, poor wanderer, that in truth we, being in urgent need, were looking out for a wench. Well, night’s just around the corner, no one else is coming now, so beggars can’t be choosers. Grab ‘im, boys!’

‘I have a knife,’ yelled Jarre. ‘I’m warning you!’

He had a knife indeed. He’d swiped it from the temple kitchen the day before his flight and hidden it in his bundle. But he didn’t reach for it. He was paralysed–and terrified–by the realisation that it was pointless and that nothing would help him.

‘I have a knife!’

‘Well, prithee,’ sneered the lisping one, approaching. ‘He has a knife. Who’d have thought it?’

Jarre couldn’t run away. Terror turned his legs into two posts stuck into the ground. Adrenaline seized him by the throat like a noose.

‘Hi there!’ a third character suddenly shouted, in a young and strangely familiar voice. ‘I think I know him! Yes, yes, I know him! Let him be, I say, he’s a pal! Jarre? Do you recognise me? I’m Melfi! Hey, Jarre? Do you recognise me?’

‘Yes… I do…’ Jarre fought against the hideous, overwhelming, previously unfamiliar sensation with all his strength. Only when he felt a pain in his hip, which had smashed against a timber of the bridge, did he understand what the sensation was.

The sensation of losing consciousness.

‘Oh, this is a surprise,’ said Melfi. ‘Why, a fluke among flukes! Why, coming across a fellow-countryman. A pal from Ellander. A mate! Eh, Jarre?’

Jarre swallowed a bite of the hard, rubbery piece of fatback that his strange company had given him and ate a bit of roasted turnip. He didn’t reply, but only nodded towards the whole group of six surrounding the campfire.

‘And which way are you going, Jarre?’

‘To Vizima.’

‘Ha! We’re heading to Vizima too! Why, a fluke among flukes! What, Milton? Remember Milton, Jarre?’