“Course I did. Course I did, Will. You was offering me a tidbit.” Teeth gleamed among the foliage. “We likes tidbits, don’t us, Scarry?”

The tithing gave a soft, concerted moan; another creature had come, dancing, to join the first.

It gave a shriek of joy. “Puellae.”

“Only one this time, Scarry, only one. But she’ll do for us. First me, then you, eh?”

“You and me, Wolf, you and me.” More greenery decorated this taller, slimmer, swaying figure.

Will was arguing. “No need for this, Wolf… no need…” Yet as he spoke, he was walking backward. Adelia became aware that the others were melting away from her. Alf was protesting. “You promised, Wolf, you said…” But his shaking hands had dropped the spade, and he, too, was retreating like a cowering dog.

It was a dream. This was no longer the present; she’d been transported to a darkness where there were only trees and predators.

“Time you was going, lads,” Wolf said softly to men who were already going. “Leave the lady. Me first, Scarry next. Eh, Scarry?”

There was a response of joy. “Mirabile visu. Let ’em stay, oh, Wolf, Lupus of mine. You first, then me. Let ’em watch.”

They were half goats. They would perform a rite on her, here in their glade; she would be torn to pieces to satisfy a pagan god. They had no need for weapons; they were terror itself, the mere stink of it scattering normal men like panicked birds. She was so frightened she couldn’t move, as if the ground had sprouted roots into her body.

The one called Wolf padded daintily forward until he stood opposite her with only the grave between them. Bright eyes held hers through the mask of leaves. “I’m owed,” he said. “The one as got away, she robbed me of me entertainment. I likes me entertainment, and I were promised her, weren’t I, Scarry?”

“You were, Wolf. The dame promised. Filia pulchrior.”

“But I done the ones she left behind, didn’t I, Scarry? They was entertainment, wasn’t they?”

“Bleated, they did, Wolf. Lambs under the slaughter. Is agnus, ea caedes est. Oh, rapture.”

“An’ I’m a-going to do you,” Wolf said. “I can do anything.”

His eyes never leaving hers, he began fumbling at his crotch. There was a splashing sound. He was urinating, waving his penis back and forth so that it sprayed the grave of those he’d butchered.

The other creature neighed with pleasure.

At that, a great fury was released in Adelia. She stood up, not knowing that she could, nor why she did, except that she was the last remnant of civilization in this terrible place. Here were men without souls, for whom there were no limits, no restraints, who’d relinquished every decency humanity had forged in order to set itself apart from brute beasts. Chaos had come again. It had overtaken the dead, who were being dishonored, it would overwhelm her, but for their sake, however alone, she had to be on her feet to face it.

Wolf smiled.

She wasn’t alone. Somebody’s mumbling was coming nearer. “But you said… You promised us… Ain’t right, Wolf, it ain’t, it ain’t.” It was Alf. He was coming back, fighting against terror as against a high wind but pushing against it so that he could stand in front of her.

Wolf smiled again, fondly, twirled the stake in his hands like a baton, and struck Alf with it across the neck. He fell at Adelia’s feet, still whispering protest as if he couldn’t stop. “You said… you said… you said… ain’t right.”

“Shut the fucker up, Wolf,” the thing called Scarry said casually.

Wolf twirled the stake again, catching it above his head in midair so that it faced downward, the moon shining wickedly white on its sharpened point.

He held it high, stepped nearer, enjoying it, a priest about to sacrifice. Adelia smelled earth. Coming forward.

Later, she was to tell herself that she killed him of her own volition. At the time, it seemed that the sword, which she’d forgotten was in her hand, leaped up by itself and lunged.

All at once, in front of her, was a bare human chest from which a pommel and part of a blade were sticking out and vibrating.

For a moment, a long, silent age, woman and creature were connected by a piece of iron; she saw the eyes flicker in surprise. This wasn’t how it should be.

Wolf coughed.

There was a sucking noise as his body released itself and fell back.

Then there was just a sword point that dripped. Adelia stared at it. “Good gracious,” she said.

“What’ve you done, you bitch?” The thing called Scarry came leaping across the glade and threw itself down to take the body of its leader in its arms. “Aaaaah.”

Wolf’s eyes, still astonished, stared up at his friend. He tried to say something. His chest heaved with dry coughs.

Scarry looked up, staring round the glade as if for help from the gods he’d worshipped here. “He’s hurt. Do something, in the name of God. Somebody do something.”

It’s his lung, Adelia thought. The sword went into his lung. The grotesque creature of which she’d been so afraid had been transformed into a patient. He was suffering. She went down on her knees and listened to the chest. Air was making a flopping sound as it flowed through the lung’s puncture hole.

Scarry screamed at her like a man at the ending of his world. “Do something.”

Adelia heard her foster father’s voice as he’d bent over a man stabbed in a Salerno brawl whose chest was making the same sucking noise, “If we could open the thorax and sew up the ripped lung… but we cannot… He will die in minutes.”

Already Wolf’s eyes were glazing over. Beneath the mask of leaves, his face was changing color.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m so sorry. There’s nothing to be done.”

“Bloody is,” a voice above her head said earnestly. Will was trying to get her to her feet. “We run.”

Scarry was kissing the dying face, begging. “Te amo. Don’t leave me, my Lupus. Te amo, te amo.”

“Run,” Will said again. He’d taken the sword from her, pointing it at the sobbing Scarry. “And quick. He ain’t going to take this kindly.”

She was pulled up. Toki and Ollie had a stumbling Alf by the arms. “Run,” Will was shouting now. “He’ll fuckin’ kill us.”

What had happened, what was happening, the horror of this place… She let herself be dragged into a run.

Out of the glade, through trees.

Behind them rose a screamed lament that ruffled the leaves. “Come back, my Lupus! Te amo! Te amo!”

She was leaping over fallen branches, along a stream, breath coming short; whether woodland hurtled by her or she was hurtled past it was impossible to know.

The charcoal burner’s hut. They stopped, panting.

Will found his voice. “Is he after us, Toki?”

Adelia could hear nothing except the pounding in her own ears.

“He’s after us,” Toki said.

She was put up on a donkey; they were all on donkeys and galloping. When they reached the road, knowledge came to her. “Dear God, I killed him.”

The tithing took no notice. It just galloped faster.

THEY TOOK HER to the cave on the Tor and sat her down by the spring. It was quiet there.

The night was still dark, though. Being so near to the summer solstice, the sky had never been completely black and, even with the sun still below the horizon, was lightening as if filters were being removed from it one by one. Bats flittered against it.

“Toki?” asked Will.

A blackbird emitted its first song of the day, an isolated sound.

Toki nodded his head and puffed out his cheeks in relief. “We lost him.”

“Then you get back down the hill an’ wipe out our tracks. He can sniff a footprint in the dark, can Scarry.”

Adelia looked up at them. “I killed him,” she said.

“Pity you di’n’t do Scarry while you was about it,” Will told her. “He ain’t a-going to like losing Wolf.”

Ollie spoke for the first time. “But he don’t know where she lives, Will, does he?”