Ragnarson compelled himself to remain seated. He forced his eyes away from the bobbing globe. He did not want to see the mockery in that tiny, cruel face.

Varthlokkur beckoned his creation down, down, till it hovered over the dead assassin. He murmured. Bragi recognized the language of ancient Ilkazar. He did not understand it. It was the tongue of the wizard’s youth. He used it in all his sorceries.

The dead man’s skin twitched. His legs jerked. He rose like a marionette on uncertain strings. Once upright, he sagged against whatever force it was the Unborn used to support him.

“Who are you?” Varthlokkur demanded.

The dead man did not reply. A puzzled look did cross his face.

The wizard exchanged glances with Ragnarson. The corpse should have responded more positively.

“Why are you here? Where is your home? Why did you attack the General? Where are your comrades?” Every question elicited an equally uninformative silence. “Wait a minute,” the wizard told his creature.

He sat down beside Ragnarson, elbow on knee, chin in the cup of his hand. “I don’t understand,” he grumbled. “He shouldn’t be able to hide from me.”

“Maybe he isn’t.”

“Uhm?”

“Maybe there’s nothing there to hide.”

“Everyone has a past. That past is stamped on body and soul. When the soul flies, the body remembers. I’ll try something else.” He stared at the Unborn, his face intense.

The dead man ran in circles. He leaped. He jumped an imaginary skip-rope. He turned tumblesaults. He did push-ups and sit-ups. He flapped his arms, crowed like a rooster, and tried to fly.

“What’s all that prove?” Ragnarson asked afterward.

“That the Unborn does have control. That this is a man.”

“So maybe he’s a hollow man. Maybe he never had a soul.”

“You could be right. But I hope not.”

“Why?”

“He would have to be a created thing, then. Something brought to life full grown and devoid of anything but the command to kill. Which means an accomplished enemy. Probably one we thought already destroyed. The question is, why would he go after the General? Why attack the lion’s paw and waste what could have been a telling blow to the head?”

“You lost me. What the hell are you babbling about?”

“I think we’ve been laboring under a mistaken presumption of death.”

“You’re not telling me anything.” The wizard had a habit of orbiting in on a subject, circling as a moth circles a flame. Ragnarson found it irritating.

“We accounted, directly or indirectly, for all the Pracchia but one. We assumed his body was lost in the heaps at Palmisano.” That climactic battle had been hard on everyone. Insofar as Ragnarson knew, the other side had lost every captain but Ko Feng.

He scratched his beard, listened to the hungry rumble of his stomach, wished he were somewhere snoring, and made several false starts at trying to unravel the riddle the wizard had posed. “Okay. I give up. Who are we talking about?”