It is late and the moon is high. I want to sleep, but I cannot because I am in someone else’s home. Olvin’s family are huddled silently in a corner of the simple dwelling, and one of Aldur’s men is standing in the middle of the room inspecting the blade of his short sword.

I have been translating for hours, communicating Aldur’s demands to Olvin. It has been a slow, painful process. Aldur wants boats to transport him and his men across the Inner Sea. Olvin asks where, making reference to tides, winds, currents, and things I don’t understand and cannot express. Aldur refuses to elaborate and simply repeats his demands, insisting that seven days’ food and water are gathered. There are raised voices, threats, confusion. I struggle to keep up.

Finally some kind of agreement is reached. Aldur forces all the men of the village onto the quayside to prepare the boats, and I am left alone with Olvin’s woman, her sister, and several small children who have hidden their faces in the womens’ skirts.

I burn with shame and regret. Shame that I can do little more than follow the warriors’ orders, and regret that I didn’t trust my vision and warn these people.

“You don’t look like them,” says Aldur’s man. He speaks my language with an accent that I can’t place. “You look like Merrenese.”

“I don’t know where I’m from,” I say. “I don’t know what Merrenese is.”

He peers at me suspiciously, then shrugs.

Aldur comes into the hut, vital and energised. Gods, does the man never rest? He beckons me, and vanishes outside again. I drag myself upright.

“Quick, laggard,” grunts Aldur’s man. I stagger after the warrior.

I walk towards the boats and the sea, my eyes adjusting from lamplight to moonlight. The warriors, the Fighting Twenty, are not labouring. They have arranged themselves to separate the men from the village. Some are facing me, some are facing the boats. All have blades drawn. There is a poise of attentiveness and focus to every single one of them, and I wonder how such well-drilled, well-organised fighting men could find themselves needing the assistance of a tiny, isolated fishing village.

Aldur walks back towards me from where he’s been supervising the work. “Follow,” he says, and heads away from the village and the sea into the darkness.

I trot after him towards the river. The Stone Ship glints in the moonlight, faintly reflected in the flowing river. Aldur guides me towards a stand of bushes some way from the Ship and positions me behind it.

“Speak quietly, stay hidden,” he says. He doesn’t whisper, but lowers his voice and dulls the hard sounds in words that could carry over distance. “Tell me where you are from.”

I sigh inwardly. Any explanation I give is going to seem like evasion. “I don’t know where I am from. My memory has gone.”

Aldur grips my face with one of his hands and turns it until I am staring him in the eyes. “I ask again, where are you from?”

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The bruise on my face throbs. I try to lock my eyes onto his. “I tell you by the gods of the soil, sea and sky, I do not know where I am from. I do not know who I am. My memory is lost.”

He frowns in disbelief, then releases me and turns his attention towards the Stone Ship. “These people, they sing to one another. Can they communicate without words? Just by making sounds?”

“Yes, a little. There are sounds for simple words. They use them on the boats for speed.”

“Ha!” He grunts triumphantly. “I suspected. Also, there are forty-two men, if you count the lads strong enough to strike a man down. How many do you think are over there by the boats?” He doesn’t wait for the answer, he knows I have no idea. “Thirty-seven.”

I see a flicker of movement down by the river. My tired brain does not immediately grasp the importance of what he is saying. As my eyes adapt to the dark, I see huddled figures moving along the riverbank. They’re carrying something long. I realise it’s one of the ladders that bore Ang Fromah to her resting place, and it’s the missing five fishermen carrying it.

“Not a sound,” growls Aldur.

The scene unfurls with sickening predictability. The men prop the ladder against the Stone Ship and one by one they scale it and drop into the structure. They’re looking for the kidnapped women. It’s the most obvious place to look, there are few other hiding places nearby. There is silence for a few moments, then a muffled shout, then silence once more. Then one by one the five men re-appear, but only as corpses that tumble lifelessly over the side of the Ship into the shallow water of the river.

“Follow,” says Aldur, and I trail after him towards the river. The Stone Ship is silent. “People are predictable,” he says. He’s reverted to his normal voice.

“Are you holding the women in there?” I ask. “It’s a sacred place to them.”

“If you think I would tell you where the women are, you’ve lost more than your memory. You’ve lost what little wit you ever possessed. Sacred? Tell that to those five heroes who just climbed in there with revenge in their minds.”

One of the dead bodies is tangled in weeds at the side of the river. The other four have floated out of sight. Aldur grabs the dead man by the arm, drags him out and flips him over. His neck is cut deep from side to side. New blood leaks out of the severed vessels, mingling with the river water. There’s a jagged rent in his garment too, where he’s taken stabs to the body. I want to recognise his face and remember his name but I can’t bear to look at him and turn my eyes away.

“Another lesson,” says Aldur. “Always I have to give lessons so that people understand. Mere words are never enough.”

He has dragged the body back to the quayside and I have trotted along with him like an obedient dog. At his coming, his men order the villagers to stop and listen. Aldur drags the body to Olvin’s feet and spits on it. “Fools, both of you,” he growls. He jabs a finger at the dead man. “Fool.” He jabs a finger at Olvin’s chest. “Fool for letting them play the game of heroes.”

Olvin is stunned, his arms hanging limply by his sides. He stares at the body as if he doesn’t understand what he is looking at.

“The other four heroes have floated down the river. That’s the kind of water-grave you people appreciate.”

The villagers gather around the body with a collective moan of anguish. One man breaks through and drops to his knees, gathers the limp dead body into his arms and just sits there rocking back and forth as if comforting a sick child. I don’t know whether the dead man is a son, a brother, or a lifelong friend, it’s too dark to tell.

Aldur steps up onto a fish barrel. “Your women are safe. They will be returned when you have given me what I asked for.”

The villagers’ faces turn to me. I sing a translation. One by one they return to their tasks, excepting the one man who kneels holding his dead loved one.

Aldur pulls one of his warriors aside. “Throw the body into the sea. I’ll have no wailing women or screaming children. Any complaints, start punishing. Hurt them enough, but do nothing that will stop them sailing those boats.”