"Beacon Hill? Sounds like somewhere in the scrugging Pit. Just outside Lordstown, huh?"

Beyond Beacon Hill, there was a flash of lighting. It lit the blackly amassing clouds for a beat or two, silhouetting the ironwork atop the hill. The momentary glare reflected brightly in the cobbles of the steep track. The thunder rumbled distantly, threateningly.

‘The storm’s not all that far off,’ Godrun judged; ‘We need to get this done swiftly. The iron beacon’ll not be the best place to be on a lightning night like this.’

Battered by the cobbles along the track, the defunct heart stuttered again. For the broken shell, it was a total non-happening; merely the heart seeming to try a beat now and again; as though from drive of habit. Inside, there was nothing left to feel anything as the heap of bloody flesh and bone was dragged up the steep and winding track to the top of the hill to the beacon post.

The being that had once inhabited the body was now sluiced away into the black nothingness that he had craved for.

Reaching the peak, the guards hauled the cadaver almost upright onto the beacon’s frame. Long ago, it had been the great beacon of warning and celebration – the iron framework that raised a man-sized basket where the fires had been lit. Of recent years, it had been the place where executed corpses were left to rot, and serve as an example to the whole of Lordstown.

The tight bindings were still wrapped around the bloodless wrists, and served well to fix the body in place, hanging naked and backless in the space between the beacon mast and one of the supporting struts. Knees almost touching the grass, arms stretched to the blackening midnight sky, the corpse hung.

Another rage of lightning flashed and roared silently around them. Suddenly crackling brilliantly onto the neighbouring peak of Corussa Cloud. Nervous of the jagged flashes that crashed to the ground not half a dozen chains away, the removal squad struggled to release the wrist manacles that hung there. Rusted, they couldn’t be forced open.

After a few moments’ hammering and cursing, they contented themselves with slinging the heavy chain round the uprights and tightening each iron shackle round the lifeless wrists in crude knots of rusting chain. Hurrying, jerking the cold stiff links tighter as the lightning seared again, keeping fearful eyes on the approaching fury-filled clouds.

Looking more to the sky than to the carrion, Godrun watched the storm building ever closer; black rolling clouds blotting out the few remaining stars. Fearful of the lightning blasting the iron beacon basket – as it was wont to do in every storm to come this way, he ordered the squad off the hill at the touch of the first few huge splats of rain. In two beats, they were retreating down the hillside like beetles from a termamound.

'The hounds of Beacon Hill can lay their claim to another this night,' the corpsman muttered, with a final, 'So be it' to his star.