The smell of fried onions permeated a hot, summer's afternoon. A carousel spun on its axel of thick grease, its stench mingling with the odour of cheap perfume and Hot Dogs.

Inside the musty confines of her red and yellow striped tent, a palmist winced and withdrew from the hand lying palm up on a scuffed table, concealing tattooed fingers that declared HATE.

Clamping her lips shut, the palmist pushed money back towards her brassy client, 'I've paid up front, you old bitch.' The harshness in the girl's tone rasped aggression at the old lady's rebuttal.

'Yea, the future. Make it good.' A gang member popped her bleached head though curtains, peering into a shaft of dancing dust motes.

'Your lines suggest a bloody past life,' the palmist spoke, unafraid of her client and her jeering retinue outside. Sneering, the girl spat chewing gum down onto an ethnic rug of many colours. 'You will die as you did centuries ago,' the palmist continued with a sigh. 'You will be slaughtered by the blade of a younger avenger.'

The gang leader's sneer collapsed. Outside, sounds of the fairground diminished and only the palmist's wind charms sang and, as they sang of another time, another place, images came into the girl's mind like a horror DVD, roaring in stereo, clashes and screams amid a terrible clamour.

And then her own voice, a War Lord's voice bellowed out to his army of fierce warriors but that voice suddenly fell silent as the War Lord's head tumbled from his shoulders, down onto the trampled, bloodied ground beneath the hooves of his enemy's black, wild-eyed stallion.