Sig saw the smoke first, grunting at Cullen and pointing. Keld was somewhere in the woods to the north, only the flash of fur showing that he and Fen were close. They’d just passed a derelict hold on their right, the main cabin with two splintered holes in it, a cairn in the yard. Sig would have stopped, but something whispered to her of haste. They’d planned to stop at Kergard, but the place had been heaving like a kicked nest of wasps and so Sig had made the decision to ride on in a wide half-circle around the town, so as not to be seen. The trader Asger had given clear directions to Olin and Drem’s hold anyway, and after almost two ten-nights of travelling ever deeper into the ice and snow, Sig was eager to be at her journey’s end.
‘I don’t like the look of that smoke,’ Sig said.
‘Isn’t that close to where we are heading?’ Cullen asked.
‘Aye,’ Sig grunted. ‘Some speed, I think, and loosen your blades. The frost—’
‘I know,’ Cullen said, checking his sword and knife in their scabbards, ‘it can make the blade stick.’
‘You’ve learned something, then,’ Sig said, muttering to Hammer beneath her, the bear shifting from a lumbering walk to a lumbering run.
‘Oh aye,’ Cullen nodded, touching his heels to his horse’s ribs. ‘Maybe because I’ve been told the same fact five times a day, every single day since we left Dun Seren.’
‘Well, it gets—’
‘Cold in the north. I know.’
For once Cullen sounded short of humour.
A shape appeared in the sky: Rab, flapping towards them at great speed.
They’re going to kill him!’ the crow squawked, turning in a tight spiralling circle about Sig and Cullen.
‘How many?’ Cullen called up to the bird.
‘Ten, twelve. Lots dead already,’ Rab cawed down at them.
‘Tell Keld,’ Sig said, snapping a command to Hammer, who leaped forwards with a ground-shaking growl. Sig shrugged her cloak from one arm and drew her longsword as Rab bolted towards the snow-laden trees.
A fence and open gateway appeared at the end of the track they were speeding down, black clouds of smoke billowing in the wind. Sig saw figures in a courtyard, growing larger by the heartbeat as Hammer’s loping run ate up the ground.
Flames crackled up into the sky, a barn engulfed, roaring, and there were men gathered beneath the branches of a tree, hoisting on a rope that had been thrown over a branch, a figure dangling on the end of it, fingers clawing at the noose about its neck, feet kicking.
Sig was almost at the gates when the first man heard her. She guided Hammer off the track, cutting across deep snow, saw a man turn and look straight at her just before Hammer smashed through the post-and-rail fence that enclosed the yard. He was shaven-haired, a vicious smile on his face from laughing at the man at the end of the rope.
The fence fractured with a deafening crack, an explosion of splinters, one piercing the man staring at her, straight through his eye. He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. Others ducked or leaped away from the noise. Hammer smashed straight into those that remained, a boulder amongst twigs. Bones snapped, flesh tore, men screamed and died, flying through the air in myriad directions. Sig swung her sword, cutting the rope, the man at its end dropping to the ground. He coughed and heaved, body convulsing, hands ripping the noose free from about his neck.
Good, he lives.
There was movement to Sig’s right and she swung her sword, took the head from a man attempting to stick his spear in Hammer’s flank, saw it fly spinning through the air, the man’s body stumbling on a few paces before it collapsed. Another ran screaming at them and Hammer split him open with one swipe of her paw, claws raking him into bloody strips of meat and bone. Hooves drummed, and Sig twisted in her saddle to see Cullen ride into the yard, his spear skewering a man brandishing a sword at him. Cullen left the spear in the dying man, drew his sword and then rode at two more shaven-haired men who were hovering between fight and flight. His mount crashed into them, sent one spinning to the ground, the other swinging his sword at Cullen’s legs, but Sig knew that Cullen was more than their match.
She looked about, assessing for more danger.
None stood before her or close to the tree. Three figures were sprinting away from her and the courtyard, northwards towards the treeline that edged the hold. Rab flapped and landed on a branch before them, dislodging snow in a heap upon the head of one of the men. He looked up and opened his mouth to curse, but then a shape was bursting from the shadows of the trees, a huge, grey-streaked hound, thickly muscled, jaws gaping wide. Fen slammed into the man, teeth clamping around his face and throat, the momentum of his leap sending them both crashing to the ground, rolling in a spray of snow. The man was screaming, battering at the hound as their roll slowed and came to a halt, Fen scrambling on top. A savage wrench of his head, as if it were shaking a caught rabbit, a spray of blood, and the man was abruptly silent.
The other two men had paused a moment, but they were running now.
One collapsed, falling back into the snow, clutching at an axe that suddenly sprouted from his chest. Bloody froth bubbled from his mouth. Keld emerged from the trees, running, another axe in one hand. His eyes fixed on the last man standing.
He was a shaven-haired warrior, sword in hand, a wispy red beard growing from his chin. He knew he had no chance of out-running Keld, so accepted his only option and swung his sword at the onrushing huntsman. Keld caught the blade with his axe, twisted, and the man was crying out, his blade falling from his grip.
‘I want him alive,’ Sig bellowed, Keld swirling round the red-haired man, his arm already moving, whole body committed to his blow. Sig saw him try to check it, but there was only half a heartbeat to do it in, the axe shifting its angle a fraction, the blow chopping into the base of his neck instead of his skull, and judging by the way the man screamed as he collapsed, there would be no coming back for him.
Too late.
Keld looked at Sig and shrugged, mouthed Sorry. Then the huntsman chopped his axe into the man’s head, silencing the screams.
Sig slipped from Hammer’s back, patting the bear’s neck, and strode to the man on the ground. He was sitting up now, just staring at her.
‘You must be Sig,’ he croaked.
‘Aye,’ Sig said, feeling the grin split her face, for she recognized this man before her, could still see the shape of the boy in the sharp lines of his face, echoes of his mam and da, too.
‘Well met, Drem ben Olin,’ she said, crouching and giving him her hand.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
RIV