‘Best be on with it, then.’
Drem stopped at the gates to Fritha’s hold and stared at the wreck of her cabin. A cairn stood to one side, between the cabin and some stables.
Drem had returned to the cabin the same day as he’d given Asger his package. He’d found it exactly the same as the last time he’d seen it – no kin or friends of Fritha and Hask to raise a cairn over the body.
Apart from me, he’d thought. So he’d carried Hask’s corpse out into the yard, and the hound’s, too, laying Hask and Surl side by side, and then gathered rocks from the field behind the cabin, loading them in a wain he found in the barn, and bringing them back to pile over the two bodies. When it had come to saying some words for the dead he’d stood there silent a while, thinking with sadness that Hask’s only mourner was a stranger who knew almost nothing about him.
I knew his granddaughter, though. And to have raised a woman so fine and brave and kind – well, he must have done something right.
And so Drem had said so, spoken words out loud to the stones and snow, adding something about the hound’s loyalty and Hask’s spirit.
He waved a spear at my da, that was spirit enough!
Then he’d left.
But before carrying the bodies into the yard and raising a cairn over them, Drem had spent half a day going over the destruction of the cabin; every splinter of wood, every handspan of the room, the floor, the walls, the gaping entry and exit holes, meticulously checking both bodies, their wounds, fingernails, teeth, claws. Everything. It hadn’t been pleasant, limbs part-frozen with the cold, blood congealed and black.
Now, as he thought of what he’d found, his hand drifted down to a pouch at his belt, fingertips through his gloves brushing it. Then he turned and looked to the snow-heaped forest, saw the track Hildith and Ulf’s hunting party had made through the snow, and followed after them.
Drem stood in the woodland twilight, looking at the trampled ground. Searching. He found the buckle from his da’s belt, amidst forest litter and something darker. He didn’t want to look too close, didn’t need to. Ahead of him lay the path the white bear had trampled, the one he and his da had been following it along, branches splintered to ruin, bushes and undergrowth trampled and torn. And to Drem’s right lay another path, the destruction that the other ‘bear’ had caused in its attack, leaping out from the darkness. Drem stared into it, all shifting shadows and the rare glitter of daylight on ice.
Behind him he heard the distant baying of hounds, somewhere north and west of him, Ulf’s hunt picking up the scent of the white bear. He kept his back to it.
That is nothing to me.
He thought of his da then, an act of choice, of will, basked in the memory of him, felt the grief stir in his belly, and something else, anger, fire in his veins. He thought of the decision he’d made when he declined Asger’s offer to leave Kergard and travel south, and the reasons why.
Two reasons to live, I said to Asger, though I didn’t tell him what they were. One, to finish Da’s quest. To go to Drassil and cut Asroth’s head from his shoulders. But I need the Starstone Sword to do that.
And the second reason, to see justice done for my da.
He tugged off a glove with his teeth and reached down to the pouch at his waist, pulled out a cloth and opened it carefully, revealing a few strips of torn, tattered leather. He’d found them within the jaws of Surl, Fritha’s hound, and another strip hanging from one of the hound’s paws. They hadn’t matched any item of clothing within the cabin.
If I find the Starstone Sword I will find the answer to who killed my da. A bear, yes, though not a white one with only four claws on its right paw. And it wasn’t alone. Bears don’t pick up swords and walk off with them, and nor do they wear leather clothing. It wasn’t the bear that struck me on the head, but a person. Whoever or whatever it was, it played a role in my da’s death, and now has the Starstone Sword.
Drem wrapped the strips of leather back up and placed them in his pouch, then methodically went over his kit. A skin of water across one shoulder. A bag slung across his back, full with essential gear: tinder and kindling, flint and striking iron, fish-hooks and animal gut for the stitching of wounds, a roll of linen for bandages. Medicinal herbs – honey, sorrel, yarrow, comfrey, skullcap, seed of the poppy. Oats for porridge and strips of salted pork. A slab of cheese. And a pot. He wore layers of clothes, linen, wool, leather and fur, his bone-handled seax and his da’s axe at his belt, as well as his sword, and a thick-shafted spear in his fist.
And courage in my heart, and vengeance on my mind.
Drem breathed deep, his back straightening, and then he stepped off the path and into the splintered gloom made by his father’s killers.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
RIV
Riv approached the walls of Drassil. They rose tall and forbidding before her.
They had marched back from Oriens as fast as the White-Wings could travel. Riv had rushed to Kol, Aphra and the other captains in that grisly glade deep within Forn Forest, telling them of her suspicion that they had been lured from Drassil for a reason. At first Aphra would not entertain the thought, instead had ordered her to leave, to get back into rank before she was punished for more insubordination and rule-breaking. But Kol had called her back and questioned her rationale behind the suspicion. Meanwhile scouts were sent out into the forest, reconnoitring deeper to search for any signs of recent life or the vaguest hint of a trap.
They had come back shaking their heads.
Kol had ordered horns blown and an organized retreat. Then they had turned around and marched as fast as they could physically manage for Drassil. Kol had led many of the Ben-Elim ahead, and he had returned to their column on the east road two days ago, announcing the dark news that Kadoshim had indeed raided Drassil, a bold attempt to set Asroth free from his gaol of iron. Many had fallen, he reported, but the Kadoshim’s plan had been thwarted.
Riv’s first thought had been for her mam, and for Bleda. She had asked Kol, who said that they were both alive, easing her mind.
After that the horror of Kol’s news had seeped into her. Just the brazenness of the attack had shocked Riv deeply.
A hundred and thirty-seven years since the Battle of Drassil, and never once have the Kadoshim attacked this fortress, whether in raid or assault.
Why now?
And how would they free Asroth from a cage forged from starstone? I thought that was impossible.
She wanted to ask Aphra, to talk about the possibilities, but her sister had been consistently tight-mouthed and aloof with her since Oriens.
What is wrong with her? She has never been so unkind and bad-tempered before.