Andrew Waggoner has always hung around with the losers in his school, desperately hoping each day that the school bullies—led by Drake—will pass by him in search of other prey. But one day they force him into the woods, and the bullying escalates into something more; something unforgivable; something unthinkable. Broken, both physically and emotionally, something dies in Waggoner, and something else is born in its place. In the hills of the West Country a chalk horse stands vigil over a site of ancient power, and there Waggoner finds in himself a reflection of rage and vengeance, a power and persona to topple those who would bring him low. Paul Cornell plumbs the depths of magic and despair in this brutal exploration of bullying in Margaret Thatcher's England.