“Gorodishko,” Darger said. He got out the map and pointed. “It is just a little further down the road.”

“You do know how to read a map, I hope?” the prince said sneeringly. Without waiting for a reply, he rode off. The riderless horse he took with him, to tether to the rear caravan so it might walk off its sweat.

Darger took out the map again and glowered down at it. “I did until today.”

But though day turned to dusk and the air grew chill, Gorodishko failed to appear.

Darger had resigned himself to admitting failure and was casting about for a likely spot to pitch camp when he saw, far ahead, a spark of light by the ruins of an ancient church. As they approached, the light grew and resolved into a campfire built on a patch of bare earth between church and road. A hooded figure sat hunched by the fire. He did not stand at the caravan’s approach.

“Ho! Friend!” Darger cried. When the man did not respond, Darger galloped ahead of the rest of the party. At the fire, he dismounted and approached with his arms held up and away from his sides, to show his peaceful intent. “We are looking for a place called Gorodishko. Perhaps you can help us?”

The man’s head bobbed, as if he were chewing away at something with all his might. Still, he did not speak.

“Good sir,” Darger said, enunciating his words clearly and slowly in the hope that this fellow, doubtless a foreigner, had some fluency in English. “We are in need of a tavern of the better sort or, failing that, a-”

The man shook himself furiously and his cloak flew open to reveal ropes binding his arms to his sides and both legs together. All this Darger saw in a flash. In that same instant he saw too that the man had been tied to a post to keep him sitting upright, and that stakes had been pounded into the earth to anchor further ropes holding him immobile.