During the following five minutes many unpleasant thoughts crossed his mind. The dreadful fact of approaching death and the temptation to cut and run. If he died here-as he surely would, his conscience devil pointed out-it would do the girl no good: two of them would die instead of one. But then, of course, he would have to live with himself. But you could manage that, said his devil conscience. Better a live dog than a dead lion.

And so IdrisPukke, sword stuck in the ground in front of him and a bow at the ready, waited and endured the thoughts hammering in his brains. And he waited. And he waited.

Pain was nothing new to Cale, but the arrow that had taken him just above his shoulder blade was an agony far beyond anything he had ever felt before. The sound he let out through gritted teeth was a whining noise, as unstoppable by courage or an act of will as the blood he could feel warmly pouring down his back. His body began shaking with the pain as if he were having a fit. He tried to breathe deeply but the pain kept hitting him and drew out a spasm of short gasps. He had to sit upright and bring it under control. He stated crawling and whining, crawling and whining. Then he passed out. He woke up unsure how long he had been unconscious-seconds, minutes? They were coming for him and he had to get to his feet. He crawled to a pine tree and started to pull himself up. Too much. He stopped, then pushed on. Get on your feet or die. But it was as much as he could do to turn himself around and lean the unwounded part of his back against the tree. He vomited and passed out again. When he woke up, it was with a start and a grunt of pain, but this time from a fist-sized rock that a Redeemer standing about ten yards away had just thrown at him.

“Thought you might be playing possum,” said the Redeemer. “Where are the others?”

“What did you say?” Cale knew he had to stay awake and keep talking.

“Where are the others?”

“They’re over there.” He tried to raise his hand to point away from IdrisPukke, but he lost consciousness again. Another rock, another start awake.

“What? What?”

“Tell me where they are or I’ll put the next arrow in your groin.”

“There are twenty… I know Redeemer Bosco… He sent me.” The Redeemer had drawn back his bow, deciding that he’d get no sense from Cale, but the mention of Bosco astonished him. How could anyone here know about the great Lord Militant? He lowered the bow and it was enough.

“Bosco says…” and Cale started to mumble his words as if he was going to pass out again, and the Redeemer, without really thinking, made a few steps forward to hear what he was saying. Then Cale lashed out with his good left arm, launching the rock so it took the Redeemer high on the forehead. His eyes rolled back in his head, mouth gaping, and he slumped to the ground. Cale fainted again.

IdrisPukke still waited in the small, roughly circular space surrounded on three sides by bushes so dense that he could not see out and no one else could see in. Behind him was the thirty-foot steep drop at the bottom of which still waited, he hoped, Arbell Materazzi. There was a faint rustle from beyond the bushes. He raised his bow, fully drawn, and waited. A stone dropped into the circle. He almost let loose the shot the thrower had hoped for. Moving the arc of the bow back and forth to cover a rushed entry he called out, voice shaking.

“Come in here and it’s fifty-fifty you’ll get an arrow in the gut!” He moved sideways three steps so as not to give away his position. An arrow zipped through the bushes and out over the edge of the bowl, missing IdrisPukke by the same three steps. “Leave now and we won’t come after you.” He ducked and shuffled again to one side. Another arrow. Again buzzing through almost exactly at the point he had been standing. Talking had been a mistake. Twenty seconds passed. Idris-Pukke’s breathing sounded so loud in his ears that he was sure the Redeemer knew exactly where he was.

From about two hundred yards away there was a high-pitched skirling cry of pain and terror. Then it was silenced. Everything seemed to stop, only the wind hurrying through the leaves for what seemed like minutes.

“That was your friend, Redeemer. Now it’s only you.” Another arrow, another miss. “Run now and we won’t come after you. That’s the deal and you have my word.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“It’ll take my oppo about two or three minutes to get here-he’ll vouch for me.”

“All right. I agree to a covenant-but come after me and I swear to God I’ll take one of you with me before I go.”

IdrisPukke decided to stay quiet. With Cale out there, clearly alive and in a bad mood, all he had to do was wait. In fact, Cale had fainted again directly after he had killed the Redeemer just as he regained consciousness, and was in no state to do anything very much, let alone rescue IdrisPukke. But after ten minutes waiting, his anxiety slowly increasing, Cale spoke to him softly from beyond the bushes to his right.

“IdrisPukke, I’m coming in and I don’t want you taking my head off when I do.”

“Thank God,” said IdrisPukke to himself, letting the bow sink downward and easing the bowstring.

There was a good deal of clumsy rustling and then Cale emerged in front of him.

IdrisPukke sat down, let out a long deep breath and started fiddling inside his pocket for his tobacco.

“I thought you might be dead.”

“No,” replied Cale.

“What about the guard?”

“He’s dead, yes.”

There was a grim laugh from IdrisPukke.

“You’re a caution, and no mistake.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Never mind.” IdrisPukke finished rolling his tobacco and lit up.

“Do you want one?” he said, gesturing with the cigarillo.

“To be honest,” said Cale, “I don’t feel very well.” And with that he slumped forward in a dead faint.

Cale did not wake up for another three weeks, during which time he came close to death on more than one occasion. Partly this was due to an infection caused by the arrowhead that had lodged in his shoulder, but mostly it was because of the medical treatment given him by the expensive physicians who had tended him night and day and whose ruinously stupid methods (bleeding, scraping and defusculating) had very nearly achieved what a lifetime of brutality at the Sanctuary had failed to do. And they would have succeeded if a temporary easing of his fever had not allowed Cale to recover consciousness for a few hours. Confused and disorientated on opening his eyes, Cale found himself staring at an old man in a red skullcap gazing down at him.

“Who are you?”

“I am Dr. Dee,” said the old man, who went back to placing a sharp and not especially clean knife to a vein in Cale’s forearm.

“What are you doing?” said Cale, pulling his arm away.

“Be calm,” said the old man reassuringly. “You have a bad wound in the shoulder and it has become infected. You need to be bled to let the poison out.” He took hold of Cale’s arm and tried to hold it still.

“Let go of me, you bloody old lunatic!” shouted Cale, though he was so weak it came out not much more than a whisper.

“Hold still, damn you!” shouted the doctor, and fortunately it was this that carried through the door and alerted IdrisPukke.

“What’s the matter?” he said from the doorway. Then, seeing Cale was awake, “Thank God!” He came to the bed and bent down low over the boy. “I’m glad to see you.”

“Tell this old fool to go away.”

“He’s your doctor-he’s here to help.”

Cale pulled his arm free again. Then winced at the pain in his shoulder.

“Get him away from me,” said Cale. “Or by God I’ll cut the old bastard’s throat.”

IdrisPukke signaled the doctor to leave, something he did with considerable show of hurt dignity.