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to peer over his shoulder, as though fearful of taking an arrow to the back. His face was creased into an ugly frown.
    He pulled up beside them and grumbled to himself, brushing a tangle of iron-wool hair from his face. He looked to Allie, and then the apple in her hand. “Got another one of those?”
    She threw him her own. “You didn’t see anything?” she said.
    He shook his head, taking a bite. “There’s nobody there.”
    “They couldn’t have followed us anyway,” she said. Her eyes were swimming with sorrow.
    Lucian’s gaze settled on her. “We were stealing from them, don’t forget that,” he said.
    “I’ll never forget that.”
    Allie turned her mare towards the slight rise before them. Norman and Lucian followed without question, sharing a meaningful look. Lucian put on an encouraging voice, addressing her in an upbeat tone entirely unlike his usual grumble, “Those people had been starving for a long time. We didn’t do any harm.”
    She didn’t answer, but Norman thought he saw her shoulders relax somewhat as they reached the foot of the hill.
    The horses snorted to each other as they began to climb, their hooves slipping on wet mud, uprooting tufts of gnarled, dead grass as they went. They lost traction and slid backwards several times, but they were urged on by swift kicks to their flanks, and soon crested the ridge.
    Norman felt a weight lift from his chest. Raised high over the landscape, they could now see for several miles in every direction. The sun was dipping below the horizon, sending the world into a deeper state of shadow.
    Below were the remains of what had once been Canterbury. Surrounding it on three sides were wild fields and barren farmland, growing darker by the second, being consumed by a monochromatic haze. On the remaining side were cultivated fields, but the crops lay limp and dying, close to the ground, in various stages of decomposition.
    The city itself looked much like it had done many decades before. Most of the buildings were crafted from solid stone, and had been built long before the previous century. In the mere forty years since the End, they had changed little. The jagged architecture was lent a stark beauty by the dying light; the winding streets and quaint cobbled roads rendered in a picturesque golden tint. After the horrors of the coastal ruins, it was a sight born of fairy tale and dreamscape, brought forth by the magic of dusk.
    The city was now home to eight hundred people, the largest settlement for at least thirty miles. As the trio watched from the hilltop, distant booms echoed from the riverside, and a portion of the city became illuminated by sharp artificial light. The lampposts of the north-eastern labyrinthine streets blinked to life in rapid succession, leaving the uninhabited, unlit remainder to darken further towards obscurity.
    Snaking through the city’s centre, the river Stour reflected a thousand twinkling lights—a thin ribbon of silver-white, meandering its way through the city’s heart. In the distance, the great cathedral was outlined in profile against the sky, its innards emanating a spectral glow through its many-coloured windows. Its mighty spires thrust towards the sky, towering above their surroundings, monuments to a bygone era, lording over their own private Lilliput.
    They simply sat for a while and watched. Norman sighed, comforted by the sight of the city’s lights rallying against nature, pushing back the shadows. In his twenty-nine years, he’d never seen anywhere quite like it.
    Here, at least tonight, nobody would starve. Here was home.
    It had only been a few days since he’d last laid eyes on it, but it felt as though it could have been years.
    Ablaze with light, the inhabited pocket of the city looked like a glowing torch, suspended in fading limbo. In the growing darkness it was becoming quieter atop the hill, and the lights drew them like sailors to a siren.
    “I need a shower,” Allie said, setting off down the