“That I cannot remember.” The voice was the merest thread of sound now and Simon edged himself as far as he could in his bonds to catch it at all. “They work some magic, these men from Gorm, so that one’s head spins around, spilling all thoughts out of it. It is said that they are demons of the great cold from the end of the world, and that I can believe!”

“And you, Falconer, did you look upon those who took you?”

“Yes, but you will have little aid from what I saw, raider. For those who brought us here were Karsten men, mere husks without proper wits — hands and strong backs for their owners. And those owners already wore the trappings they had taken from our backs, the better to befool our friends.”

“One of them was taken in his turn,” Simon told him. “For that be thankful, hawkman, for perhaps a part of the unraveling of this coil may lie with him.” Only then did he wonder if there were ears in those walls to listen to the helpless captives. But if there were, perhaps that one scrap of knowledge would serve to spread uneasiness among their captors.

There were ten Karsten men within that prison hold, all taken from jails, all caught up for some offense or other against the Duke. And to them had been added the three Falconers captured in the cove. The majority of the prisoners appeared to be semi-conscious or in a dazed condition. If able to recall any of the events leading up to their present captivity, such recollections ended with their arrival at the island beyond Kars, or on the beach of the cove.

As Simon persisted in his questioning however, a certain uniformity, if not of background, then of offenses against the Duke and temperament among these prisoners began to emerge. They were all men of some initiative, who had had a certain amount of military training, ranging from the Falconers who lived in a monastic military barracks for life and whose occupation was frankly fighting, to his first informant from Kars, a small landowner in the outlands who commanded a body of militia. In age they were from their late teens to their early thirties, and, in spite of some rough handling in the Duke’s dungeons, they were all able-bodied. Two were of the minor nobility with some schooling. They were the youngest of the lot, brothers picked up by Yvian’s forces on the same charge of aiding one of the old race who had been so summarily outlawed.

None of those here were of that race, and everyone declared that in all parts of the duchy men, women and children of that blood had been put to death upon capture.