Rocco noticed the revolting, clammy gazes of the marauders, and looked back. On the threshold of his cottage stood Incarvilia Hildebrandt, his wife, and Aloë and Yasmin, his two daughters.

Pike and his company looked at the hobbit girls, smiling lecherously. Yes, assuredly, the amusement promised to be first-class.

Impatientia Vanderbeck, Hildebrandt’s niece, normally called by the pet name ‘Impi’, approached the hedge on the other side of the highway. She was a very pretty girl. The bandits’ smiles became even more lecherous and revolting.

‘Well, shorty,’ Pike hurried him, ‘hand over the penny to the royal army, give us your vittles, give us your horses, and lead the cows from the cowshed. We aren’t going to stand here till sundown. We must get round a few more villages today.’

‘Why must we pay and hand over our food?’ Rocco Hildebrandt’s voice trembled slightly, but determination and doggedness still resounded in it. ‘You say it’s for the army, that it’s for our defence. And who, I ask, will defend us against hunger? We’ve already paid the winter levy, and the geld, and the poll tax, and the land tax, and the animal tax, and the devil only knows what else! If that wasn’t enough, four halflings from this hamlet, my son included in that number, are coach drivers in the army convoys! And no one else but my brother-in-law, Milo Vanderbeck, known as Rusty, is a field surgeon, an important personage in the army. That means we’ve paid our acreage with interest… For what reason are we to pay more? Wherefore and what for? And why?’

Pike gave a long look at Incarvilia Hildebrandt, née Biberveldt, the halfling’s wife. At their plump daughters, Aloë and Yasmin. At the gorgeous Impi Vanderbeck, dressed in a green frock. At Sam Hofmeier and his grandfather, old grandpa Holofernes. At Granny Petunia, doggedly picking at a flowerbed with a hoe. At the other halflings from the hamlet, mainly womenfolk and youngsters, apprehensively peeping out from their households and from behind fences.

‘You ask why?’ he hissed, leaning over in the saddle and looking into the halfling’s terrified eyes. ‘I’ll tell you why. Because you’re a mangy halfling, a foreigner, a stranger, and whoever robs you, you repulsive brute, delights the gods. Whoever vexes you, non-human, is carrying out a good and paterotic deed. And also because I feel sick with the desire to send your non-human nest up in smoke. Because I feel a yen coming on to fuck your midget women. And because we’re five burly fellows, and you’re a handful of short-arsed wretches. Now do you know why?’

‘Now I know,’ said Rocco Hildebrandt slowly. ‘Off with you, Big Folk. Begone, you good-for-nothings. We shan’t give you anything.’

Pike straightened up, and reached for the short sword hanging from his saddle.

‘Have at them!’ he yelled. ‘Kill them!’