“Sorry, sir!” I quailed. “Can’t help it. Me foot, see? It’s gone all rotten since me master’s cart landed on it. I’m on the Trail of Shrines. Going to beseech Martyr Stevanos to put me right. Y’wouldn’t hurt a faithful fellow, would you?”

In fact, my foot was a fine and healthy appendage to an equally healthy leg. The stench that so assailed the soldier’s nose came from a pungent mix of wild garlic, bird shit and mulched-up leaves. For a guise to be convincing, one must never neglect the power of scent. It was important that these two see no threat in me. A lamed youth happened upon while traversing a notoriously treacherous road could well be faking. But one with a face lacking all wit and a foot exuding an odour carefully crafted to match the festering wounds this pair had surely encountered before was another matter.

Closer scrutiny would surely have undone me. Had this pair been more scrupulous in their appraisal they would have seen the mostly unmarked skin beneath the grime and the rangy but sturdy frame of a well-fed lad beneath the rags. Keener eyes and a fraction more time would also have discerned the small bulge of the knife beneath my threadbare jerkin. But these unfortunates lacked the required keenness of vision, and they were out of time. It had only been moments since I had stumbled into their path, but the distraction had been enough to bring their entire party to a halt. Over the course of an eventful and perilous life, I have found that it is in these small, confused interludes that death is most likely to arrive.

For the soldier on the right it arrived in the form of a crow-fletched arrow with a barbed steel head. The shaft came streaking from the trees to enter his neck just behind the ear before erupting from his mouth in a cloud of blood and shredded tongue. As he toppled from the saddle, his whip-bearing comrade proved his veteran status by immediately dropping the whip and reaching for his longsword. He was quick, but so was I. Snatching my knife from its sheath I put my bandaged foot beneath me and launched myself up, latching my free hand to his horse’s bridle. The animal reared in instinctive alarm, raising me the additional foot I required to sink my knife into the soldier’s throat before he could fully draw his sword. I was proud of the thrust, it being something I’d practised as much as my witless expression, the blade opening the required veins at the first slice.