"Fine. I was afraid last night, with the howling of the wolves and the arrows coming down, but now... Well, during the day it all seems so unreal."

Behind them, from the wagon, came the groans of a man in agony. She turned momentarily to look, then hardness passed across her face and settled like a mask.

"It's not nice working with the wounded," Felix said.

She shrugged. "You get used to it."

Felix was chilled to see that expression on the face of a woman her age. It was an expression he had seen on the faces of mercenaries, men whose profession was death. Looking around, he could see children playing near the cart of the wounded. One was firing an imaginary crossbow, another gurgled, clutched his chest and fell over. Felix felt isolated and very far from home. The safe life of poet and scholar he had let back in the Empire seemed to have happened to someone else a long time ago. The laws and their enforcers he had taken for granted had been left behind at the Grey Mountains.

"Life is cheap here, isn't it?" he said. Kirsten looked at him and her face softened. She linked her arm with his.

"Come, let's go where the air is cleaner," she said.

Behind them the shrieks of the playing children mingled with the groans of the dying men.

Felix saw the town as they emerged from the hills. It was late afternoon. To the left, the east, he could see the curve of fast-flowing Thunder River and beyond that the mighty peaks of the World's Edge Mountains. South he could see another range of hills marching bleakly into the distance. They were bare and foreboding and something about them made Felix shudder.

In a valley between the two ranges nestled a small walled town. White shapes that could have been sheep were being herded through the gates. Felix thought he saw some figures moving on the walls. At this distance he could not be sure.

Dieter beckoned for him to approach. "You are fair-spoken," he said. "Ride down and make parlay. Tell the people there that we mean them no harm."

Felix just looked at the tall, gaunt man. What he means, thought Felix, is that I am expendable, just in case the people aren't friendly. Felix considered telling him to go to hell. Dieter must have guessed his thoughts.

"You took the Baron's crown," he said.

It was true, Felix admitted. He also considered taking a hot bath and drinking in a real tavern, sleeping with a roof over his head; all the luxuries that even the most primitive frontier town could offer. The prospect was very tempting.

"Get me a horse," he said. "And a truce banner."

As he clambered up on the skittish war-horse he tried not to think about what suspicious people armed with bows might do to the messenger of a potential enemy.

A crossbow bolt hissed through the air and stuck quivering in the earth in front of the hooves of his steed. Felix struggled to control the animal, as it reared.