The first sensation he felt after waking was biting cold, all the more acute since he couldn’t move at all, couldn’t curl up to protect what remained of the warmth in his body. It was as though he were paralysed.

Then, in turn, his other senses awoke and he realised the position he was in. His open eyes showed above him stars against a black October sky: Polaris, the Greater and Lesser Bears, Arcturus in the Herdsman, Vega, Castor and Pollux and Auriga. His sense of smell was assaulted by a stench, vile and overpowering in spite of the cold and the obvious fact of lying under the open sky, on hard, bare, frozen ground. His sense of hearing registered desperate screams coming from somewhere nearby. And guffawing.

His neck was terribly sore, regardless of which he wriggled and struggled—he had worked out that he could not adjust his position because he was being immobilised by several bodies pressed hard against him, and that it was those bodies that were giving off the noisome odour. The bodies reacted to his movements by pressing even closer and tighter. One voice moaned, another groaned, a third called on God. A fourth cursed.

On his left—meaning towards Vega and the constellation Lyra—flickering flashes of fire lit up the black of the night. The smell of smoke finally overcame the stench of human bodies. It was from the campfire that the desperate cries—which had now become groans and sobbing—were coming. He thrashed around again and with great effort freed a hand, forcibly pushing one of the bodies—clearly a woman’s and by no means a skinny one—away from him. He swore and drew up a knee.

“Leave it, m’lord,” somebody just alongside whispered. “Don’t do anything, sir. Woe on us if they hear—”

“Where am I?”

“Quiet. If they hear they’ll thrash us—”

“Who?”

“Them. The martahuzes… For God’s sake, be quiet…”

Footsteps, the creaking of wood. The flare of a brand. A cackle.

He turned his head and looked.

The face of the man holding the torch was thickly covered in pimples. He had almost no forehead. His stiff, black hair appeared to grow straight from his eyebrows and the bridge of his nose. Reynevan had seen him before.

There were three more. One was carrying a lantern and holding something in his other hand. Two of them were frogmarching a teenage boy. He was sobbing.