Cadell will be feeling the same way, he knows. (They know each other very well by now.) The Celt might even—the thought comes—have returned here because he’s actually afraid she might let a transgression have consequence. She is capricious, almost above all else, unpredictable even after more than twenty-five hundred years. And she has altered their duel this time into something new.

Sometimes when he thinks the number, the length of time, twenty-five hundred, it can still catch him in the heart. The weight of it, impossibility. The long hammer of fate.

They never change, the two of them. She always does, in small, telling ways. She must be rediscovered, as a consequence, each and every time. Endlessly different, endlessly loved. It has to do with how she returns—through the summoning of someone else. The claiming of another soul.

His back to the other man and the spirits, looking out from the edge of the plateau, he is entirely unafraid. Cadell will not attack him here. That far he would never go.

He expects the Beltaine dead to be gone—as commanded—before sunrise, though the druid might not be. Brys is a wild card of sorts in this, always has been, but there is nothing to be done about that, really.

What he cannot alter he will ignore, for the next three days.

What he needs to do is find her. First.

He needs to concentrate on possibilities and there are too many. He reminds himself that she wants to be found. Tries to grasp what that means, in terms of where she might be.

It is possible that she’ll move around, not stay in a single chosen place. They have done this return so many times, the three of them. She will know how to change garments, hide her hair, find money if she needs it. She cannot fly, but there are trains, taxis. This world will not frighten her any more than it has unsettled either of the men, returning to changes. There are always changes.

She is not limited, except by the range, the ambit of their history here, and that is wide, east and west and north, and to the margin of the sea.

In the moonlight, the land below, unfurling south, is bright enough for shadows. He holds the sound of her voice inside him and gazes out towards the changed, invisible coastline, remembering.

He was so afraid, that first time here.

Arriving with three ships to establish a trading post on a shoreline known to be inhabited, and dangerous. You made your fortune in proportion to the danger. That was the way of it. If the goods on offer were difficult to obtain back home, the rewards were that much greater.

He was young, already known as a mariner. Unmarried as yet, willing to take risks, shape the rising trajectory of a life. Not an especially genial man, by reputation, but no obvious enemies, either. A habit of command. They had made him leader of the expedition.

They put ashore, he remembers, on the coast a little west of here. The shoreline has silted up, is greatly changed in two millennia: logging for timber, wood burned for fires, irrigation systems, flood barriers. The sea is farther away now than it was.

He remembers seeing the trees from the boat, the forest coming right down to where they made harbour. A windbreak cove, small, stony beach. Looking from the ship at those oak woods, wondering what lay beyond. Death or fortune…or nothing of significance.

After all, it didn’t have to be one or the other.

The Celts came to them two days later. Appearing silently out of the woods as they were putting up their first temporary structures.

Fear returning, the sheer size of them. They had always been bigger people. And the wildness: half naked, the heavy gold they wore, the long hair, bright leggings, weapons carried.

He knew how to fight, some of his seamen did. But they were traders, not truly soldiers. They had come in peace, in hope and greed, to begin a cycle: a rhythm of trade, seasonal, enduring.

To stay, if they could, eventually.

There was no language in common. Two of his men had been here before, farther east along the coast; they had twenty or thirty words between them in the barbaric tongue men spoke here. And it would have been laughable to imagine one of these giant savages speaking Greek. The tongue of the blessed Olympians.

Of civilized man.

They were far from civilization on that stony shoreline by the woods.

The Celts accepted gifts: cloth and wine, and cups for the wine, jewelled necklaces. They liked the wine.

And they made an overture, a promising one. From their gestures on the second encounter, two days after the first—motions of drinking, eating, pointing inland beyond the trees—he understood what they were conveying. He was being invited to a feast. No thought of not accepting.

You couldn’t allow fear to control you.

He left, with one companion, the next day when they came for him. They followed ten of the Celts into the trees, darkness dropping like a cloak, immediately, even on a sunny day, the sea disappearing behind them, then the sound of it gone.

He remembers, on this high, open, moonlit ground, how frightened he was as that day’s long walk went on. He had thought, for whatever reason, that this tribe lived by the water, but there was little reason for them to do so. These were not fisherfolk.

The woods seemed endless, enveloping, unchanging. A journey from his world into another one. A space out of time. Forests could be like that, in the stories, in life.

They heard animals as they went; never saw any. He was lost almost immediately as they twisted to follow a barely seen path, mostly heading north, he thought, but not invariably. He realized he was at their mercy; the two of them would never find their way back alone.

Your profits were in proportion to the risks you ran.

Towards sunset, end of a full day’s travelling, the trees began to grow thinner. The faint path widened. The sky could be seen. Then torches. They came out of the forest. He saw a village, lit with fires for a festival. He didn’t know, at that point, what the celebration was.

How could he have known?

They led him into that torchlight, across a defensive ditch, past bonfires, through an earthen wall, then a gauntlet of men—and women. Not hostile, more curious than anything.

They came into a circle, a wide space at the centre of small houses made of wood. A tall man, silver-haired, not young, stood up to greet them. They looked at each other and exchanged gestures.

He had liked the man from the first moment.

He was given a cup, one of their own. He lifted it in salute, drank. A harsh, burning liquor, unwatered. Fire down his throat. An effort (he remembers) not to shame himself, insult them, by coughing, or spitting it out. No civilized man would take liquor this way.

He was far from civilized men. He’d felt the drink affecting him almost immediately. A deep breath. A brief smile. He handed the cup back; a man of restraint, moderation. Chosen for these things as much as for courage and skill. A leader, responsible for his companion here and the others on the shore. The need to be diligent, careful.

He saw her then. First time.

The world changing, forever.

Really that, he thinks, on the plateau of Entremont, two thousand six hundred years after: as near to forever as a man might know.

For good or ill, joy or grief, love or hatred, death or life returning. All those things. As much as a man might know.

He hears a sound now, someone approaching, stopping. He turns this time. He knows the footfall as he knows his own, very nearly.

“Did you enjoy watching?” Cadell asks. “Hiding down below?” He smiles.

“The bull?” He shrugs. “I never enjoy it very much. You’ve improved. The kill was clean.”

The Celt continues to smile. “It always is. You know it.”

“Of course.”

They look steadily at each other. He wants to kill the other man. He needs to kill the other man.