Samson’s glazed eyes suddenly rolled back in their sockets. Reynevan watched in horror as the giant’s head shuddered, his mouth contorted and saliva ran from it. A strangled cry came from his throat.

“It’s dark…” he mumbled indistinctly, in a strange voice. “Dark… Black… Jesus… Where am I? It’s night here… I want to go’ome…’Ome! Where be I…?”

Reynevan, horror-struck, pressed a hand to Samson’s bloodied temple and whispered—or rather croaked—the formula of the Alkmena spell. He felt cold overcome him, flowing from his shoulder, from the bolt lodged beneath his clavicle. Samson struggled and waved an arm as though shooing something away. His eyes were suddenly clearer. And more lucid.

“Reynevan…” he panted. “Something… Something’s happening to me… While I still can… I’ll tell you… I have to tell you…”

“Lie still…” Reynevan bit his lip with the pain. “Lie still…”

In a second, Samson’s eyes misted over and terror filled them. The giant whimpered, sobbed and curled up in the foetal position.

The exchange is happening. Recollections and associations flew through Reynevan’s spinning head like a gale. Someone is leaving us; someone is coming to us. The monastery idiot is returning to his mortal shell from the darkness he passed into. The negotium that usually comes from the darkness is returning to the darkness. Going back to where it came from. The wanderer, the Viator, is going back to where it came from. In front of my eyes, Death is doing what the sorcerers couldn’t.

Pain racked him again, spasms squeezed his lungs and larynx, utterly paralysing his legs. He felt his back with a trembling hand. As he had expected, the point of the bolt was sticking out. And blood was flowing.

“Hey, you whoresons!” yelled someone from the thicket beyond the ravine. “Heretics! Godless curs!”

“Whoresons yourselves!” Dobko Puchała roared back from the other side of the ravine. “Sodding papists!”

“Want to fight? Then come over to our damned side!”

“You bloody come over to ours!”

“We’ll kick your fucking arses!”

“We’ll fucking kick yours!”

It appeared that the none-too-sophisticated and painfully trivial interchange would last an eternity. But it didn’t.

“Puchała?” said a voice from the thicket in disbelief. “Dobko Puchała? Of the Wieniawa?”

“And who’s bloody asking?”

“Otto Nostitz!”

“Oh, damn! Grunwald?”

“Grunwald! The Day of the Sending Out of the Apostles, 1410!”

There was silence for some time. The wind, however, was carrying the smell of smouldering fuses.

“I say, Puchała? We won’t go for each other’s throats, will we? After all, we faced each other in battle. It’s not fucking right.”

“Not at all. After all, we crossed swords. Why don’t we go our way and you yours? What say you, Nostitz?”

“I say we may.”

“I have casualties down there! If I take them, they’ll expire on the way. Will you look after them?”