not look when the apparition had gone by, but Moria swung on his arm, feigning
drunkenness like some doxy.
”Sjust a beggar,’ she said in full voice, hanging on him, terrifying him with
the noise. Haught spun half-about, turned again, and kept walking like some
honest man with disreputable followers – but no honest man crossed the bridge.
‘Beggar,’ Moria whined, leaning on Mradhon’s arm. He jerked at her and cursed,
knowing this mentality, this bloody-minded humour that he had had beside him in
the field, soldiers who got this affliction. Heroes all. Dead ones. Soon.
‘Straighten up,’ he said, knowing her, knowing her brother, knowing that this
was a game both played. He twisted at her arm. ‘You see your brother? You see
what games won him?’
She grew quiet then. Subdued. She walked beside him at Haught’s back, past the
tall end-pilings that themselves bore nail-holes from the time that hawkmasks,
not Stepsons, were the prey.
To the right, a huddle of blackened timbers, of tumbled brick, was the burned
shell of a house. Haught went that way, entering the shadow of Downwind, and
they came after, out of choices now.
Erato slipped back into shadow, his pulse beating double-time, for a shadow had
passed that disturbed him. He felt a presence at his shoulder, where it
belonged, but he trusted nothing now. He scanned the figure at near range, his
heart still thumping away until he had (pretending calm) resolved his left-hand
man still beside him, and not some further threat, some shape-changer, night
walker. He had no taste for this witch-stalking. ‘They’re across,’ the partner