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their few rescued animals. Stone-cold faces, catching the sun, winking at their shutter-less wind-eyes, ever watchful; wanting, hoping, praying – no doubt – that our Riding would pass them by this day.
    I must have trodden streams and skirted about the edges of the west marshlands. Or rather, let my hobby-horse lead me stubbornly across its secret paths. My tough little Dandy, who could carry not only her rider, but the whole world upon her back, it seemed. Pots and pans, wooden implements, swords and weaponry, sticks and stones, blanket rolls and stolen booty. She would carry it all, overloading the tiny workhorse; and yet she always stood her ground, made her way without protest.
    I must, on occasion, have stopped to relieve myself, or to take a drink of fresh water from an upland stream. I must have done…only afterwards I did not remember it. Not any of it.
    Not even the first fierce call of alarm.
    Not the first ringing of iron upon iron as swords clattered and clashed. Stones thrown, hitting their target. Riders suddenly taken to the gallop in hot pursuit…The smell of fear – as acrid as a slewed piss pot – distinct, yet oddly indescribable.
    Not the first brutal killings. Nor the unmistakable crying…The frantic calling…The pleas, the oaths, the terror…The escaping last breath of a man already dead…The blood…The torn flesh…The shattered bones.
    I remember none of it.
    How so?
    I was a seasoned man. All my senses were taken up from the first. Not numbed, heightened by practice. I had allowed a red shroud to descend upon me, suffocating all else…Nothing was near at hand. Everything was distant…Not indistinct I say, distant. No natural colours. No life. The world was set apart, put aside. No pity. Humanity utterly abandoned. Even fear…Even a pounding heart – there could be no heart, except a stone heart.
    What was I thinking? I did not think. There was no place for thinking here. Thinking men got themselves killed. There was instinct. There was violence. There was the bloody act of war. There was the doing of it. Only the doing.
    Suddenly Dandy was moving at the gallop beneath me. I might have tried to rein her in, only to have her protest and give her back her head. When she slowed again, it was of her own account.
    I must have dismounted.
    From somewhere the world was trying to get in, to make contact again…to find me out. One moment, surely, I had been with my close kin, waiting at the Heel Stone. The very next I was standing here, in this strange place, upon this open scrubland, with nothing in between. My sword was in my hand and already notched and running with blood.
    And then I became fully aware.
    There was a slight movement close by…of all things, a butterfly alighting upon a grass stem.
    There was a face in the grass. There was a human face.
    And I understood what had passed.

Chapter Six
The Killing Field
    Her eyes; they were a blue that startled, invited, demanded. They caught hold of me, drew me to her like a lover. Still wet, they glistened. Not with tears. Nor fear. There was no stain on her cheeks. Her white cheeks…White skin…She was a beauty yet. The wind was playing lightly across her face, moving a single frond of auburn hair. She had caught it upon her tongue at the edge of her mouth. Open mouth. Red mouth…Surely she was teasing me, smiling, whispering. No…yes.
    I tried to put Notyet’s face in the way of hers, only I could not seem to find it. Vague, hidden as if veiled; its image would not come to me.
    ‘Rogrig,’ she said.
    Again.
    ‘Rogrig…’
    Did she really speak my name, then? No…yes. No. It was only the voice of the wind.
    ‘Rogrig…Rogrig…?’
    But this last was not a woman’s voice, nor the wind.
    ‘Watch this, Rogrig!’ It was a clumsy youth who had spoken: Edbur, my elder-cousin Wolfrid’s whelp; his laughing cry was thin with a disguised fear.
    Then there was violence: the sweet scent of fresh blood spilled; the kicking.
    I was