When first he opened his eyes he wondered why the needle was shining so brightly, and why it was floating before his eyes. Then he realized he was staring at the crescent moon in a clear night sky. His cloak had been laid over him, and beneath his head was a pillow fashioned from a folded blanket. A fire was burning close by, and he could smell the savoury scent of woodsmoke. As he tried to move, pain erupted in his shoulder, stitches stretching against tortured flesh. He sagged back.

The girl moved alongside him, stroking his hair from his sweat-drenched brow.

Waylander closed his eyes and slept again, floating in a sea of dreams. A giant creature with the face of a wolf bore down upon him. He shot two crossbow bolts into its mouth. A second came at him. With no weapons to hand, he leapt at the beast, his hands grasping for its throat. It shifted and changed, becoming a slender woman whose neck snapped as his hands gripped hard. He cried out in agony, then looked around. The first dead beast had also changed. It had become a small boy, lying dead in a meadow of spring flowers. Waylander looked at his hands. They were covered in blood, which flowed up over his arms, covering his chest and neck, streaming over his face and into his mouth, choking him. He spat it out, struggling for breath, and staggered to a nearby stream, hurling himself into it, trying to wash the blood from his face and body.

A man was sitting on the bank. 'Help me!' called Waylander.

'I cannot,' said the man. He stood and turned away, and Waylander saw two crossbow bolts jutting from his back.

The terrible dreams continued, dreams of blood and death.

When he awoke it was still dark, but he felt stronger. Moving with care to protect the stitches, he rolled to his right and pushed himself to a sitting position. The second wound above his hip flared with pain and he grunted.

'Are you feeling better?' the girl asked him.

'A little. Thank you for helping me.'

She laughed.

'What is so amusing?' he asked.

'You rode after thirteen men and suffered these wounds to come to my rescue. And you thank me? You are a strange man, Lord. Are you hungry?' He realized that he was. In fact, he was ravenous. She took a stick and rolled three large clay balls from the fire. Cracking open the first with a sharp blow she knelt down and examined the contents. Looking up at him, she smiled.

It was a pretty smile, he thought. 'What do you have there?' he asked.

'Pigeons. I killed them yesterday. They are a little too fresh, but there was no other food. My uncle taught me how to cook them in clay, but I have not tried it in years.'

'Yesterday? How long have I been sleeping?'

'On and off for three days.'

Satisfied that the first pigeon was cooked, she cracked open the other two balls. The smell of roasted meat filled the air. Waylander felt almost sick with hunger. They waited impatiently until the meat had cooled, then devoured the birds. The flavour was strong, the texture not unlike aged beef.

'Who is Tanya?' she asked.

He looked at her, and his eyes were cold. 'How do you know that name?'

'You cried out in your sleep.'

He did not answer at first, and she did not press him. Instead she built up the fire and sat quietly, a blanket around her shoulders. 'She was my first wife,' he said at last. 'She died. Her grave is a long way from here.'

'Did you love her greatly?'

'Aye. Greatly. You are very curious.'

'How else does one find out what one wishes to know?'

'I cannot argue with that.' She was about to speak, but he raised his hand. 'And let that be an end to questions on this matter,' he said.

'As you will, Lord.'

'I am not a lord. I am a landowner.'

'Are you very old? Your hair is grey, and there are lines on your face. But you move like a young man.'

'What is your name?' he asked her.

'Keeva Taliana.'

'Yes, I am old, Keeva Taliana. Older than sin.'

'Then how is it that you could kill all those men? They were young and strong and fierce as devils.'

Suddenly he felt weary again. She was instantly full of concern. 'You must drink lots of water,' she said. 'My uncle told me that. Loss of blood, lots of water.'

'A wise man, your uncle. Did he also teach you to use your elbow as a weapon?'

'Yes. He taught me many things. None of which was terribly useful when the raiders came.'

Fetching a canteen from a saddle on the ground close by, she held it out to him. Waylander took it from her and drank deeply. 'Do not be so sure,' he said. 'You are alive. The others are not. You stayed cool and you used your mind.'

'I was lucky,' she said, a note of anger in her voice.

'Yes, you were. But you planted the seed of fear in the leader. For that he kept you alive.'

'I don't understand.'

'You told him the Grey Man was coming.'

'You were there?'

'I was there when he told his sergeant what you had said. I was about to slay them both when the sergeant grabbed you by the hair and dragged you back to the fire. That caught me out of position. Had you not crushed that man's nose I would not have had time to come to your aid. So, yes, you were lucky. But you made the best use of that luck.'

'I did not see you or hear you,' she said.

'Neither did they.' Then he lay back and slept again.

When he awoke she was snuggled down alongside him, sleeping peacefully. It was pleasant to be this close to another human being, and he realized he had been alone too long. Easing himself away from her, he rose to his feet and pulled on his boots. As he did so, a group of crows detached themselves from the bodies of the dead and rose into the air, cawing raucously. The sound woke Keeva. She sat up, smiled at him, then moved away behind the boulders. Waylander saddled two of the horses she had tethered, the effort causing his wounds to throb.

He was still angry about the first wound to his shoulder. He should have guessed the leader would send out a rearguard. They almost had him. The first had been crouched on a tree branch above the trail, the second hiding in the bushes. Only the scraping of the first man's boot upon the bark above had alerted him. Bringing up his crossbow he had sent a bolt into the man as he leapt. It had entered at the belly, slicing up through the heart. He had fallen almost on top of Waylander, his sword slashing across his shoulder. Luckily the man was dead as the blow struck, and there was no real force in it. The second man had lunged from the bushes, a single-bladed axe in his hand. The steeldust gelding had reared, forcing the attacker back. In that moment Waylander sent the second bolt through the man's forehead. You are getting old and slow, he chided himself. Two clumsy assassins and they almost had you.

It had probably been this anger that had led him to attack their camp – a need to prove to himself that he could still move as he once had. Waylander sighed. He had been lucky to escape with his life. Even so, one of the men had managed to slam a blade into his hip. An inch or so higher and he would have been disembowelled, a few inches lower and the blade would have sliced the femoral artery, killing him for sure.

Keeva returned, smiling and waving as she came. He felt a touch of guilt. He had not known, at first, that the raiders had a captive. He had hunted them purely because they raided his lands. Her rescue, though it gave him great pleasure, was merely a fluke, a fortunate happenstance.

Keeva rolled the blankets and tied them to the back of her saddle. Then she brought him his cloak and weapons.

'Do you have a name, Lord?' she asked. 'Apart from the Grey Man.'

'I am not a lord,' he said again, ignoring her question.

'Yes, Grey Man,' she said, with an impudent smile. 'I will remember that.'

How resilient the young are, he thought. Keeva had witnessed death and destruction, had been raped and abused, and was now miles from home in the company of a stranger. Yet she could still smile. Then he looked into her dark eyes, and saw beneath the smile the traces of sorrow and fear. She was making a great effort to appear carefree, to charm him. And why not? he thought. She is a peasant girl with no rights, save those her master allows her. And these were few. If Waylander were to rape and kill her, there would be no inquest and few questions asked. In essence he owned her as if she were a slave. Why would she not seek to please him?