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gods-forsaken place.’
    ‘I’m not a liar,’ I said evenly. ‘But I’m not insulted by your doubts.’
    ‘Nothing more to be said, then,’ he grinned. ‘Only something to be drunk !’ He reached for a leather flask and waved it towards me.
    ‘I agree.’
    *   *   *
    A discomforting event occurred soon after, which put me on my guard. The next ‘evening’, which is to say after the formal meal before sleeping, one of Urtha’s retinue—Cathabach, I think—led me into the snowbound forest. Urtha and the rest of his men were there, staring up at the dangling clothing of his two enchanters, stretched over crude wooden, human frames. As I’d approached I’d noticed that a certain amount of humorous commentary had been abruptly stopped. Only frost-breathed reverence greeted me as I came up beside the chief.
    ‘This is what happens if you don’t get it right,’ Urtha said. ‘What a shame. For all their faults, they had talents.’
    ‘What happened to them?’ I asked, sensing mischief had been done.
    But Urtha simply pointed to tracks in the snow, leading into the wilderness. ‘They went “wolf”,’ he said. ‘It’s something such men do when they need to escape.’
    ‘Are they dead?’
    Urtha laughed. ‘Not yet. Just going home the hard way.’
    Such men as Urtha’s druids were held in high esteem by many keltoi tribes, I knew, occupying high stature. But not, it seemed, in Urtha’s land. Make a mistake: run naked through midnight snow.
    He stepped forward and stripped the deerskin trousers from one of the mannikins. He pulled the fleece jacket from the shoulders, and untied the gold lunula from around the other stick-man’s neck. To my surprise he offered me the trousers.
    ‘Any good to you? They’re shit-stained I expect, but you can clean them up, and they’re well stitched. Better than the stinking rags you’re wearing at the moment.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    ‘Do you want the jacket as well? Good for this climate.’
    ‘I won’t say no. Thank you again.’
    ‘Don’t thank me,’ he said with a searching look at me. ‘I’m not giving them to you. We’ll trade, in time.’ He passed me the thick fleece, then held the half-moon golden lunula in his hands, stroking it with his thumbs. ‘I’m glad to have this back for the moment. It’s very old. Very old indeed. It has … memories.’
    I sensed that Urtha wanted a response from me but I said nothing. After a while he looked at me, his eyes sad. ‘It belongs to my family. That man had the right to wear it. Now I can keep it for a while, until I find a better man to wear it. I’m glad you came out of the night, Merlin.’
    He clutched the lunula in his folded arms, his gaze in the distance. A few moments passed and he sighed. ‘So it’s done. They’ve gone. Ah well…’
    Again he glanced at me, then walked away.
    I clutched my new clothes and stared after him, wondering how many years I would have to add to my flesh and bones in order to heighten my powers of insight.
    Urtha was curious about me, and that made me curious about him. The disappearance of the druids, and the reclaiming of the tribal ‘moon’, suggested that change was in the wind for the warlord.
    All because I had ‘come out of the night’.

CHAPTER THREE
    Argo
    Niiv was like a brightly coloured bird in her furs and shawl, racing around me as we walked through the snow, chattering constantly. ‘How are you going to do it? How are you going to do it? Tell me, Merlin. Tell me!’
    In the days that we’d been back at the ice-covered lake, the shaman’s daughter had dispensed with the formalities and ritual that she had inherited after her visit to the Mistress of the North. Instead of taking up a position of meditation and learning inside the skin and bone but where her father had spent so much of his life sending his spirit out on the wing, or on the fin, or by forest running, she had declared: ‘There is so much more to be learned from the strangers! The