‘But I speaks the truth, m’lord. Yes, yes. Samhain is a magical, awful night, but also at once the best for all kinds of prophecies and predictions. On such a night it’s worth telling fortunes and prophesying from bones and palms and from a white cock, from an onion, from cheese, from a cony’s innards, from a rotting flittermouse…’

Fripp spat on the ground.

‘The night of Samhain, a night of frights and phantoms… Better to sit tight at home. With all the family… By the fire…’

‘With all the family,’ Cyprian Fripp repeated, suddenly grinning voraciously at his comrades. ‘All the family, see? Along with her, what’s been slyly hiding away from us in the bushes!’

‘The blacksmith’s daughter!’ Yuz Jannowitz guessed at once. ‘That golden-haired peach! You’re cute, Fripp. Perhaps we’ll catch her at home today! Well, boys? Shall we dart over to the blacksmith’s shack?’

‘Ooh, why not now.’ Dede Vargas stretched vigorously. ‘I can see that blacksmith’s daughter in front of me now, I tell you, those titties bouncing, that little bottom wiggling… We ought to have taken her then, not wait, but Dacre Silifant, that stupid stickler… Well, but now Silifant ain’t here, and the blacksmith’s daughter’s at home! Waiting!’

‘We’ve already hacked down the village headman with a battle axe.’ Rispat grimaced. ‘We butchered the churl who came to help him. Do we need more corpses? The blacksmith and his son are built like oak trees. We won’t take them with fear. We need to—’

‘Cut them up,’ Fripp completed the sentence calmly. ‘Just cut them a little, nothing more. Drink up, we’ll get set and ride to the village. We’ll have ourselves a Samhain! We’ll don our sheepskins with the fur on the outside, we’ll bellow and clamour, the boors will think it’s devils or wights!’

‘Shall we fetch the blacksmith’s daughter here, to our quarters, or make merry our way, in the Gemmerian style, in front of her family?’

‘The one doesn’t rule out the other.’ Fripp the younger looked out into the night through the window’s oiled parchment. ‘What a blizzard’s whipped up, dammit! The poplars are bending right over!’

‘Oh, ho, ho,’ said the beggar from over his mug. ‘That isn’t the wind, m’lord, that’s not a blizzard! It’s witches dashing astride their brooms, though some are in stone mortars, sweeping over their tracks with their brooms. Who knows when one of them may cross a fellow’s path in the forest or steal up from behind? Who knows when she may attack! And she has teeth like these!’

‘It’s children you should be frightening with witches, beggar!’