Beneath the dusty cloak he wore only a battered jerkin of black leather, knotted down the front, and below that crossgartered breeches and tattered deerskin boots. From a thick leather belt round his waist hung a Hunnish chekan, a short hatchet with a curved and spiked iron head, and a blackened rope lasso. At the other side hung a fine sword, more of Persian or Byzantine than of Hunnish make, with elaborate gold scrollwork in the handle and a scratched leather scabbard that betrayed a shape something like a Spanish blade, with a sinuously swelling then tapering blade and a long, lethal point. Crossways on his back he carried a leather quiver of arrows and the short, lethal sprung bow of the steppes. His hands were bunched into fists on the pommel of his crude wooden saddle, knotted and gnarled with thick veins, the hands of a very strong man. The skin was as weathered and aged as the wind-furrowed skin of his face. All told of a man who had endured years of ice storms and bitter desert winds and maddening noonday suns, and ridden on unbeaten, unbowed.

‘So,’ said the stone horseman, his voice a soft rasp. ‘Chanat. Still alive.’

Chanat said nothing. For an old man, it was true, was nothing but a burden and a shame to his people; he should have died sword in hand on some bright, bloody battlefield long ago.

‘I, too,’ said the horseman. ‘Still alive, and come home to claim my own.’

It was him after all. Chanat looked up again. It was him.

There was another horseman approaching from the east. This other was about the same age, perhaps a year or two younger.