‘Blood was pouring from her,’ protested Rispat La Pointe. ‘She rode away, I’m telling you, rode off and then fell and croaked in a hollow somewhere. Wolves and birds ate the carcass, martens finished it off, and ants. That’s the end, deireadh. So we’re sitting here in vain, drinking our money away. Our money, it is, for I don’t seem to see any pay!’

‘It can’t be that no traces or signs of a corpse are left,’ said Dede Vargas with conviction. ‘Something’s always left: the skull, pelvis or one of the bigger bones. Rience, that sorcerer, will eventually find Falka’s remains. Then the matter will be over.’

‘And perhaps then they’ll drive us so hard we’ll recall with delight this idleness and this lousy pigsty.’ Cyprian Fripp the younger threw a bored glance at the tavern’s walls, on which he already knew every nail and every damp patch. ‘And that poxy booze. And those two, what smell of onions, and when you rut them they lie like calves, staring at the ceiling and picking their teeth.’

‘Everything’s better than this tedium,’ Yuz Jannowitz stated. ‘I feel like howling! Let’s fucking do something! Anything! Shall we torch the village or what?’

The door creaked. The sound was so unexpected that all four of them leaped up from their seats.

‘Scram!’ Dede Vargas roared. ‘Get out, old man! Beggar! Filthy bastard! Get back outside!’

‘Leave him.’ Fripp, bored, waved an arm. ‘See, he’s lugging some pipes. He’s just a beggar, probably an old soldier who earns a crust by playing and singing in taverns. It’s cold and rainy outside. Let him stay…’

‘Just well away from us.’ Yuz Jannowitz showed the beggar where to sit. ‘Or we’ll be crawling with lice. I can see from here what specimens are crawling over him. You’d think they were tortoises, not lice.’

‘Give him some victuals, landlord!’ Fripp the younger beckoned imperiously, ‘And us some hooch!’

The beggar took off his bulky fur hat and solemnly gave off a stench that filled the room.

‘Thanks be to you, m’lord,’ he said. ‘For today is Samhain’s Eve, a holy day. It doesn’t befit to drive anyone away on a holy day, to be soaked and frozen in the rain. It befits to regale a body on a holy day…’

‘In truth!’ Rispat La Pointe slapped himself in the forehead. ‘Today is Samhain’s Eve! The end of October!’

‘A night of witchcraft.’ The beggar slurped the watery broth he was brought. ‘A night of ghosts and horrors!’

‘Oho!’ said Yuz Jannowitz. ‘The old gimmer, heed you, is about to divert us with beggarly tales!’

‘Let him divert us,’ Dede Vargas yawned. ‘Anything’s better than this boredom!’

‘Samhain,’ repeated Cyprian Fripp the younger. ‘It’s already five weeks since Unicorn. And two weeks that we’ve been here. Two whole weeks! Samhain, ha!’