The blood feud! I jumped up and dashed into the reeve’s house. From the rack I grabbed my crossbow and a bandolier of bolts.

The backs of the axe men were disappearing through the smokehouse door. I frantically wound the cranequin, but my wound reopened and my hand shook badly. I raised the bow and shot at the father. The bolt snicked into the log wall; the man turned and looked at me, then ducked inside. I missed. I was struck stock-still in shock. I don’t miss. I never miss. I can’t remember the last time I missed!

I lost sight of him inside the smokehouse. There was no time to reload. I started to run to Savory, but a second later the men were out of the door. They tore across the clearing, eyes popping, fists punching in front of their chests. What had they done to her?

They passed some distance in front of me, their axes flashing in their hands. From their other hands dangled longbow strings. I had seen enough of the world to know they are used as garrottes.

I tried to spin the cranequin back but the strength had gone completely from my cut hand, as if it didn’t belong to me. Click-click, click-click was all I could get out of the damned mechanism as it rocked back and forth on one ratchet. The men had reached the gate. A woman of their family pulled it open. They sped into the forest and it swallowed them.

I yelled and sprinted into the smokehouse. Where was Savory? Hanging hams swung at my touch as I felt my way between the drying racks. My wife’s white dress was a spectral smudge. She lay face-down on the pressed earth floor. I knelt next to her. The back of her neck was cut across cleanly with one axe blow. There did not seem to be much blood.

I jumped up and dashed after the murderers. As I passed the bonfire I threw in the crossbow, in a flurry of yellow sparks. Who talked me into using that thing? If I had my longbow, I could have put seven arrows through them in the thirty seconds they took to cross my field of vision.

I dashed through the gate and into the prickly frustration of the forest’s edge. Their fleeing footsteps crackled far in front of me, deep between the trees. The cold leather of my sword grip was damp in my hand.

I saw pale flashes heading downhill. By god, the bastards were signalling at me! But it was only the reflection of the bonfire on their back plates and it soon vanished.

I found myself surrounded by a wall of fretted branches, hard cones, bending needles. They clutched my clothes but I pushed further and further in. Shadows and twigs looked like they could be…but they weren’t, when I got closer. I could hardly judge distances, over the nettles and around snarled brambles. Where the trees grew more densely packed, the ground was clear and springy with needles. I couldn’t see in the low space under the branches; it was pitch-black.

I ducked down and hesitated, trying to catch my breath. All was silent. The murderers could be anywhere; without faithful Lymer I would never find them. They had gone to earth, and even if I flushed them the forest was their world and they might have picked up longbows. I was more lost than I have ever been. I listened carefully, but I only heard wolf howls muted in the far distance.

The village’s bonfire backlit the trees. Numbly, I turned and stumbled to the palisade, to the clearing, and into the smokehouse, to Savory. Those craven murderers knew she could have beaten them, with her skinning knife and the desperation of self-defence, had they faced her. They had cut her down as she knelt to slice meat onto my plate.

As my dear wife fell she had upset a sack of kindling and there were pieces of bark all over her. I cleared them away and I turned her over. She was ghastly cold. I used my cloak for a pillow and closed her glazed hazel eyes gently. I kissed dear Savory.

The pointlessness of it unhinged me. I jumped up suddenly and ran out of the smokehouse, but the village was deserted. Everybody had bolted into their homes and wedged shut the boards serving as doors. ‘Savory is slain!’ I shouted. ‘Help me find the murderers!’

From inside came small sounds that told me they were busy with other tasks. They were hinting that I should stop causing a disturbance, stop bawling and go away. I stared around the clearing: the bonfire burnt down to a red ember murmur; a clutch of boar ribs on the table; an overturned cup on the bruised grass. Nothing indicated that minutes ago this had been a lively party.

I ran from cabin to cabin banging on the blank doors. ‘Help! Help me for god’s sake!’ But I could not speak the language properly; nor they mine. I hammered on the reeve’s door. ‘You know me, Asart! We must catch the murderers!’ No answer from within. I clapped my hand flat over the sun brooch on my shoulder. ‘In the Castle’s name, I’m her husband! Tell me who the murderers are! I’ll bring my fyrd! Damn you all-help me or I’ll raze this village to the ground!’

What was I doing here? Here in the back of beyond? I should never have come to this filthy, tree-dark province at all. These folk had no inkling of my power. My palace where one of their daughters would have lived was no more than a tale to them. They valued their murderous traditions more highly than the distant Castle itself. Here I was the foreigner and how could they understand? With all the time in eternity I would not get through to them! I lost my mind and I curled up, faint, beside the fire.

At first light people emerged from their houses and went about their daily chores as if nothing had happened. I lay on my stomach on the wet grass watching abstractedly. They spoke not a word of Savory. They shut the events away and went on with tapping sap and lathing wood. How could they-when the world was shattered?

Years of blood feuds had bred in them a toleration like a collective sickness of the mind. They were quiet and cowed, but acted as if the random murder was fair and justified. She had been, after all, a Savory. Father Savory killed Pannage and was killed by Pannage’s grandson. So it went on. So it still goes on today.

Day only truly dawned on the village when the sun rose above the trees and slanted its rays down into the little enclosure. The dew began to vanish, though it remained, grey and sparkling, in the cobwebs, the palisade’s shadow and each hovel’s woodpile.

Two men, their sleeves rolled back, went into the smokehouse and brought out Savory on a stretcher. She was naked. They had stripped her naked. I felt a jolt as if I had been punched. My legs went weak but I stumbled to her and tried to cover her body with the cloak. The men put their arms out and blocked me. She was a pale sculpture, she lay on her long hair like a pelt, as red as the hair on her legs and sex. I had last seen her naked when-I had kissed her thighs and breasts-their disrespect was too much for me. ‘I’ll take her back to Awia! I’ll place her in my tomb!’

My pleas were cut short by the high squeal of a fiddle and a flute. The door of the nearest cabin flung open and the troupe of mummers tumbled out. They started dancing! They began to dance the old, false story where the King of Morenzia steals the King of Awia’s wife and Awia raises its fyrd to bring her back. The dancers whirled furiously around Savory’s stretcher, stamping either side as they acted out the battle. The King of Awia was mock-stabbed by the human king, and he fell. The dancers all jumped on the fallen actor, their hands scrambling under his clothes. They brought out real human bones, all dry and painted black, and began to dance with them, clacking them together.

What did it mean? I had no idea but the dishonour was too much. I drew my sword and was about to set among them and slay every last man, when the reeve came out of his house.

He was wearing a mask. It was a human visage, of heavy white plaster, as if his own face had been smeared with thick paste, but for its blind eye sockets, in which were placed cowry shells. Their pursed toothy grooves made blind black lines. In the mouth of the mask real human teeth were set. No, not set: the mask was the front of a real skull, sawn off and covered in plaster. The rest of his clothes were normal and he came towards me walking confidently, as if he could see through some hidden contrivance in the mask.