It seemed that everyone spoke at once. The girl ran to her father. He put his arms around her shoulders, and bending his head, spoke quietly to her. “We’ll be leaving now, Sil. Right away.”

“But… I never got to go to the market! Papa, it wasn’t my fault!”

Vev had knelt by Raven. He turned and shouted angrily, “Damn it all, he’s broke my boy’s jaw! He’s broken it!”

Other men were flowing out of the canteen now, blinking in the daylight like a pack of nocturnal animals stirred to alarm. Their faces were not kindly as they looked at the scout and then the boy writhing on the ground.

My father demanded, “Nevare, why are you involved in this? Where is Parth?”

Parth, his moustache still wet with beer, was behind my father, a latecomer to the scene. I suspected he had stayed to down the last of his mug, and perhaps Vev’s, too, when the man had abruptly left the table. Parth shouted, loudest of all, “Praise to the good god! There’s the boy. Nevare, come here at once! I’ve been looking all over for you. You know better than to run off and hide from old Parth. That’s not a funny trick to play in a rough town like this.”

My father’s voice, pitched for command, would have carried through a battle-field. Yet he did not shout. It was the way he said, “Praise whoever you like, Parth, but I’m not deceived. Your time in my employ is finished. Take your saddle off my horse.”

“But sir, it were the boy! He run off, almost as soon as you went inside…‘

Parth’s voice trailed away. My father was no longer listening to him.