There was a man crushed up against them on the other side—the man who had hitherto been at the head of the column. He was tall and stringy like a hungry cat, and just as mean looking, hunched over his knees with his face buried in his forearms and a shag of iron-grey hair falling over his shoulders.
Ciaran nudged him. "You—don't make any sign. Game to take a chance?"
The shaggy head turned slightly, just enough to unveil an eye. Ciaran wished suddenly he'd kept his mouth shut. The eye was pale, almost white, with a queer unhuman look as though it saw only gods or devils, and nothing in between.
Ciaran had met hermits before in his wanderings. He knew the signs. Normally he rather liked hermits, but this one gave him unpleasant qualms in the stomach.
The man dragged a rusty voice up from somewhere. "We are enslaved by devils. Only the pure can overcome devils. Are you pure?"
Ciaran managed not to choke. "As a bird in its nest," he said. "A newly-fledged bird. In fact, a bird still in the shell."
The cold, pale eye looked at him without blinking.
Ciaran resisted an impulse to punch it and said, "We have a means of freeing ourselves. If enough could be freed, when the time came we might rush the Kalds."
"Only the pure can prevail against devils."
Ciaran gave him a smile of beatific innocence. The scar and the missing tooth rather spoiled the effect, but his eyes made up for it in bland sweetness.