Exhausted after the escape, Vis reaches a small village with Cian at dawn. The villagers are initially wary, but their attitude changes as soon as they recognize Cian as a draoi; they welcome both men, feed them, and offer shelter. Cian explains that he will spend the morning performing rites and settling disputes, while Vis, overwhelmed by pain and fatigue, falls asleep inside a family's hut.

Vis wakes to shouting only a short time later. Cian tells Vis that King Fiachra's men and Ruarc's men have arrived too quickly to outrun, though Cian still believes help may come. After briefly wondering whether Vis may truly be unusually strong, Cian gives Vis the rowan staff and orders him to stay hidden while Cian delays the hunters. From the window, Vis sees the approaching warband led by the huge warrior Mel ap Mor, with three unnerving wolfhounds ranging ahead of the riders.

Cian confronts Mel ap Mor on the road and appears to invoke the protections and treaty that should shield a draoi, but Mel ap Mor ignores him, repeatedly demanding to know where Vis is. Without warning, Mel ap Mor cuts Cian's staff in two and beheads him. The warband immediately turns on the village: the dogs attack, the riders spread out, and the huts are burned to drive people into the open. Hiding with two young children, Vis realizes the hunters are not merely searching for him but killing witnesses as they go.

The children's father slips back into the hut, and Vis quickly devises an ambush. Vis exposes himself at the window to lure in a lone warrior, while the farmer waits behind the door with a scythe. The attack partly fails: the farmer wounds the intruder's arm, but the warrior kills him with a spear. Vis charges in anyway, is struck aside, and takes a deep spear wound in the side while trying to stand between the attacker and the children. The children's mother then reenters the hut, wounded but unnoticed, and kills the warrior from behind with the scythe while Vis keeps the man's attention.

As the fire spreads through the roof, Vis and the mother push the children out the window and watch them reach the forest. Vis refuses to leave at once because he knows the hunters will not stop until they believe he is dead. After kissing her dead husband goodbye, the woman silently understands Vis's plan, gives him the bloodied scythe, and escapes after her children. Alone in the burning hut, Vis covers the farmer's body with his cloak, then raises the scythe over the dead warrior's left shoulder, preparing to mutilate the corpse so the pursuers may mistake it for his own body.