Twice looted! he thought to himself. The Horsekin in those barrows must have been buried with the spoils of war before the plague wiped out their fellows back in the Seven Cities. Vaguely he remembered that the Horsekin stripped the flesh of their dead fellows from their bones, ate it, and then buried the bones in tidy bundles, bound with leather thongs to keep the ghosts from walking. Or so he’d been told—the story had the spiteful feel of mere legend about an enemy.

“Jemjek?” Kov said. “Have you ever gone gathering?”

“Once,” Jemjek said.

“Did you see any bones in the mound?”

“I did. All stacked up like winter firewood, they were.”

“Were they tied in bundles?”

“They were not, not no more, but there were stains on them from thongs or ropes. Rotted clean away, if you do ask me.”

Spiteful or not, part of the tale held true. What a lovely lot they are, the savages! Kov thought.

“Kov?” Clakutt came trotting over. “What be this?”

The boy handed Kov something that looked like a length of rope braided from fine strands of gold. As thick as his thumb, the “rope” had been twisted into a semicircle about eight inches in diameter, with a solid gold sphere for a finial at each end, leaving an opening about two inches across.

“I’m not sure,” Kov began then paused, running through his memory. “Wait! I heard somewhat once. I think it’s called a torc. A very long time ago the men of Deverry wore things like this around their necks.”

“They did?” Clakutt’s eyes narrowed in thought. “They must have had truly skinny necks to get them on.”

Kov laughed. “When the jeweler finished braiding this rope, it would have been a straight piece. He must have bent it very carefully around the person’s neck. Then they’d never take it off.”

“But how did it get off, then, to get here?”

“Well, I suppose you could bend it one more time without breaking it.” Another detail rose in his memory. “Or an enemy might have cut the person’s head off and pulled the torc free.”

Clakutt wrinkled his nose and growled in disgust, a throaty sound so animal that it startled Kov. He’d started thinking of the Dwrgwn as just a different variety of Mountain Folk, he realized. A mistake, he told himself. Don’t fall into it again.

At the end of the workday, the crone, Marmeg, who’d once been Kov’s captor, came to fetch Clakutt, her grandson. For the boy’s sake, Kov decided to be polite to her, even though he’d not forgotten the kicks and insults she’d given him during the night he’d spent tied up and helpless in her hut. When Clakutt launched into an excited recital of the day’s work, she laid one bony hand on the boy’s shoulder and scowled at Kov.