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with his wife and son as the prize, and he would attempt to solve it.
    Now he watched a party of seven slowly climb the stony path behind the house of the Hegeoman. They walked in single file, moving in and out of shadow, the last limping even though he used a stick. Hah, Arathé had wounded one. Two bound figures staggered along in the middle of the line. Noetos was sure his enemies would not be able to sense him from his rocky perch fifty paces away, but the last of the Recruiters turned as he reached the path’s summit, threw his cowl back and called across the cool spring night.
    ‘You are marked, fisherman! Wherever you go, we will know you. And think on this. Any attempt to prise your family from our grasp will end in something far worse than mere failure. We have revealed but a small part of our power. If you are a more foolish man than you have yet demonstrated, you will pursue us; and if you do, you will feel the full extent of our magic on some lonely road, far from help, far from home. Go and gnaw the bones of your grief in some other village, and try to forget you ever had a family. And pray that we do not one day decide to return for you!’
    One by one the Recruiters and their captives disappeared over the top of the cliff. Within a few moments Noetos was left on his own, truly alone.
    The eastern sky took on the pearly glow of dawn before the fisherman stirred from his perch. Like a monk of Hagga Rock considering his vows, Noetos had allowed his thoughts to range wide through the night, trying to hold on to his sanity, trying to forcehis emotions into more comfortable channels. How he hated magic! Such a filthy way of ruining the lives of innocent people. What had drawn it here, to a small fishing village? Was there knowledge he was missing, some pattern he did not see? Was this his past returning to bedevil him, as he feared? Or did it all revolve around Arathé? He thought about his daughter and her suffering, the moment when they took her tongue, her degradation since then, her body lying pierced by a kitchen knife, one he’d purchased and sharpened himself. But most of all he thought of his own past: a battlefield, a cooling body and the way a man could lose courage—not in the face of death, but in the face of futility.
    He would leave the village and follow the Recruiters, as they no doubt expected he would. Futile. But first he had one further task to perform.
    The Hegeoman awoke with a hand across his mouth and a sword held against his side. His struggling earned him a bleeding lip, and the ferocious face of his attacker promised more. His wife lay snoring, undisturbed by the stirring beside her. Shivering with more than the cold, the village leader eased himself out of bed and donned his nightshirt while the fisherman waited, arms folded. With this madman on the loose, why had he thought it safe to leave his house undefended?
    Because he is not a madman, the frightened man acknowledged. Because he did not kill his family; because I betrayed them to the devious Recruiters who did not tell me all the truth. The village leader was nothing if not a pragmatic man, and as he searched his larder for food and drink to fill the sacks from his own kitchen, he knew he might very well die today.
    He’s not mad, but he is a hothead, a man with a splinter in his soul, prickly and obstinate at best. Not a man to offend. Aside from yesterday’s events the Hegeomanknew other reasons why he might have made an enemy of the fisherman. With these reasons in mind he had handed Opuntia and her son to the Recruiters when they came to his house with their wild story—which, except for the nonsense of Arathé being transformed into some monster, turned out not to have been wild at all. He hoped Noetos did not know those reasons, or the possibility of his imminent death would become a certainty.
    Relax. He knows nothing. Opuntia is a clever woman with a boor for a husband. Even if he suspects our dalliance it will serve