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man.”
    His interrogator slapped Kane across the face with the back of his hand as hard as he could. His knuckles caught Kane’s nose, and blood trickled into Kane’s mouth. The crows or the other men – perhaps all of the spectators – uttered hoarse sounds of appreciation. “You worthless coward,” the bald man snarled. “Fight me,” he urged and punched Kane in the face.
    Kane might have fallen except for the grasp in his hair. In a moment his captor released him. He managed not to collapse, though his head swam with the blow andhis face throbbed like a wound. He tasted blood, but as his strength ebbed back he refused to let it tempt him to retaliate. “I have renounced violence,” he vowed.
    The words were not addressed to his tormentors, but the shaven man raised his raw-knuckled hand to cup it behind one misshapen empurpled ear. “What’s that you say?” he barked.
    The tattooed man put his hands together in a parody of prayer, which the patterns etched into his skin rendered diabolical. “Says he’s renounced violence,” he intoned like a monk echoing a phrase of holy ritual.
    “Well, that’s a shame.” The bearded man gave Kane a moment to anticipate what kind. “Because we haven’t,” he said and lifted his staff high. He used both hands to swing it, and the thick handle clubbed Kane on the side of the head. The blow flung Kane to the unyielding earth. In his last moment of consciousness he saw the sneering faces of the robbers, savagely painted by the firelight, and beyond them a crow taking to the air. Then a void as black as the crow swallowed him.

SEVEN

    I t seemed to Kane that a great voice spoke to him out of a vast darkness, summoning him before the throne of judgment. “You will do as I say, Solomon,” it said.
    Time and space had no meaning in the dark. Instantly he was back at Axmouth, in the great hall of the castle he had once called his home. The light of many candelabras mellowed the stone of the walls and the columns that supported the high roof, but it could not soften the presence that dominated the hall. He was seated on the massive baronial throne at the end of the room, his powerful hands gripping its arms so hard that every knuckle stood out like a threat of a blow. His sternness might almost have turned him to stone, a statue of a magistrate. He was Josiah, Kane’s father.
    Not everybody in the room was anxious to face him. The servants busying themselves about the long oaken table in the middle of the hall must be hoping that their activities would lend them anonymity – would let the lord of Axmouth think that they were hardly there at all, as good as invisible, certainly unable to overhear what was being said. The solitary figure who was confronting Josiah, standing defiantly before the throne, was just fourteen years old. What he lacked in age and stature he was making up in spirit, and Kane hardly knew whether to admire or counsel him, for he was Kane’s youngerself. Josiah’s keen grey eyes were regarding him without favour, and the long face etched by harsh experience was set in a decision against which there was no appeal. “Do not forget your place, Solomon,” Josiah said for everyone to hear.
    The boy drew himself up in mute fury that he should be shamed in front of the servants. Every man must find his place, Kane wanted to assure him; it was ordained by God. He could not speak, and in any case he knew that he would have gone unheard. Before the boy could put his protest into words, Josiah said “You are the second son.”
    Kane grew aware of the older youth. He stood closer to their father, relishing every nuance of the scene. Marcus had inherited the long face, but his chin was weak, his mouth loose and petulant. He wore his hair luxuriously long, and it was as pale as his eyes, from which it might almost have leached the colour. “Marcus is my heir,” Josiah said, but he refrained from glancing at him, so that Kane could have suspected him of