The two warriors on the riverbank looked dusty and fed up: they were a long way from camp, and lord Telamon would not be pleased that they hadn’t found Hylas’ trail. One was swatting midges and glaring at the noonday Sun, while the other used his helmet to douse himself with water.

‘Over here!’ shouted their comrades further downriver.

‘At last,’ grumbled the one with the helmet, and the pair moved off to join their companions, pushing through the giant fennel on the bank – and quite unaware of Hylas, hiding on the other side.

Their voices drifted towards him. ‘It’s the Outsider’s tracks, all right.’

‘By the look of them, heading downstream.’

Yes, you go on thinking that, Hylas told them silently. When it came to tracking, Crows were no match for an Outsider; they hadn’t spotted that he’d set a false trail.

He waited till they were long gone, then started upstream. The important thing now was to shake the Crows off his trail. Once he was rid of them for sure, he would think about the dagger.

After climbing for a bit, he came to a rocky stretch where the river went crashing and foaming over rapids. Tamarisk and walnut trees gave good cover, but beneath them it was hot and airless, and swarming with midges.

Hylas felt battered after his fight with Telamon, and the cut on his forearm throbbed. His head was throbbing too, although he couldn’t remember bumping it on his way down the gully, and despite the heat of the Sun, he felt slightly shivery.

He was also angry with himself. He’d had Telamon at his mercy, on his knees and half stunned. If it had been the other way around, Telamon would have killed him without hesitation.

So why couldn’t I kill him? thought Hylas. Because I’ve never killed anyone? Or because he was once my best friend?

Or was I scared? Is that what stopped me? Am I a coward, like my father?

Above the rapids, he came to a green meadow, noisy with crickets, and spiked with purple thistles as tall as men. Thick woods hid the river, echoing with birdsong.

Hylas had no idea where he was. All he knew was that the mountains rearing above him marked the border between Messenia and Lykonia – and that the highest mountain of all, Mount Lykas, was somewhere to the east – although out of sight. He’d grown up on Mount Lykas. He knew every goat trail, every ravine and secret pass, every lightning-blasted tree. If he could climb high enough, maybe he could see it; then he’d know where he was.

Of course, Telamon might guess that this was exactly what he would do, but that was a risk he’d have to take.

He had his knife, slingshot, waterskin, and the Marsh Dwellers’ bag of provisions. Sitting under a tree, he ate a chunk of dried eel and half a reed-pollen cake. The eel was rancid, the cake gritty and dry, he had to wash them down with a drink – although as the waterskin was made of trout hide, that tasted fishy, too.

The Marsh Dwellers had also given him medicines: a little wovengrass pouch containing a slimy yellow salve, and a smaller one full of black powder.

‘The salve is for your jellyfish stings,’ they’d said. ‘The powder is poppy-seed tea, good for marsh fever; but you need to take it as soon as you feel it coming on.’

Like everything else, the salve smelt fishy, but it had helped with his jellyfish blisters, so Hylas smeared some on his grazes and on the cut on his arm, and it eased the pain a bit.

When he got to his feet, his blood soughed in his ears and his head throbbed; but it wasn’t the ache he got before a vision, it felt like too much Sun, so he ignored it and started upriver.

He nearly walked straight past the hoofprints in the mud.

They were bigger than a donkey’s, and had clearly been made by a horse: a horse who’d stopped to drink, spreading its forelegs wide to reach the water, as horses do. After that it had cropped some fennel, then headed upstream, as Hylas was doing now. As it went, it had dragged its tether behind it: at one point in its trail, Hylas spotted faint drag-marks.

He found Jinx around the next bend in the river. The rope attached to his bridle had snagged in a thorn bush, and the stallion was making it worse by attacking the bush. He kept lunging at it, then sidling round and lunging again. He seemed not to have realized that by going in a circle around it, he was shortening the tether and thus restricting himself even more.

Hylas waited till the tether was wound so short that Jinx was well and truly stuck; then he stepped slowly into the open.

‘Steady there, Jinx,’ he said quietly, so that the horse wouldn’t think he was sneaking up.

Jinx flattened his ears and tried to rear – but the tether held him fast.

‘Steady,’ repeated Hylas, approaching the horse from the other side of the thorn bush and holding up his hands, so that Jinx could see that he wasn’t holding a stick.

After tugging so long at his tether, the stallion’s mouth was raw and bleeding. His flanks bore scars from old beatings, as well as fresh, oozing weals: it seemed that despite the horse’s value, Telamon hadn’t spared the whip. No wonder Jinx hated and feared all men.

‘Steady, Jinx.’ Hylas put out his hand to let the horse catch his scent.

Jinx showed the whites of his eyes, flattening his ears and flaring his large round nostrils.

‘Remember me? I rode you once, two summers ago.’ As he talked, Hylas started disentangling the rope, careful not to look Jinx in the eye or get too close, which would make him feel trapped. ‘I gave you food, remember? You stomped on the cheese, but you ate the olives. Then you ran away.’

Again, Hylas extended his hand. Jinx tensed. Hylas waited. Then he laid his palm very lightly on the horse’s shoulder. Jinx shuddered and snorted, shifting from foot to foot. ‘That’s good,’ murmured Hylas, gently stroking the hot, sweaty muscles. ‘You know I won’t hurt you, don’t you, Jinx?’

Again the stallion’s nostrils flared; but he was listening. Hylas thought he might be getting somewhere.

All at once, Jinx jerked up his head and set his ears right back, rolling his eyes and snorting with alarm. The next instant, Hylas heard it too: men’s voices, somewhere downriver. The Crows were better at tracking than he’d thought: it hadn’t taken them long to find the right trail.

‘Sorry, Jinx,’ muttered Hylas, ‘but I’ve got to get out of here fast!’ Wrenching the tether free of the thorns, he scrambled on to the stallion’s back, grabbed a handful of mane, and dug in his heels.

Jinx hated the Crows as much as Hylas did, and after his first outraged squeal at having a man on his back, he shot off across the meadow. Hylas clung on, bending low against the horse’s straining neck, and praying that he could manage to stay on.

Shouts behind him, and an arrow hissed past his thigh. Another thudded into the grass by Jinx’s foreleg.

Galloping round a spur, they plunged into a thicket of willows. Branches whipped Hylas’ limbs. He clung on grimly. If he fell off now, he was finished.

Now they were bursting out of the willows and lurching up a hillside thick with bracken and pines, then skittering down a steep, densely wooded slope. At the bottom, a fallen sapling blocked the way. Hylas tugged on the tether to guide Jinx around it, but the rope was only attached to one side of the bridle and the stallion ignored him, leaping over the sapling and coming down with a thud that nearly threw Hylas off his back.

On and on they went, up hills and gullies, around spurs, while the shouts of the Crows faded behind them. Hylas’ arms and legs were screaming for rest, he couldn’t stay on much longer. Jinx was also tiring. And he seemed to have decided that he’d had enough of this infuriating human, for suddenly he swerved and made straight for a low-hanging branch, to scrape Hylas off.

He’d tried that trick two summers ago, and Hylas ducked just in time.

Jinx tried another trick, jolting to a sudden halt, to pitch Hylas over his neck. Again Hylas was ready, and managed to cling on.

Finally, Jinx seemed to realize that the simplest way was the best: he put down his head and bucked.

Hylas went flying, and landed in a juniper bush.