*
For an hour and more they ride without exchanging a word. The day is strangely quiet, or maybe it’s always like this in the hour after dawn on a winter’s morning, and it’s just that Tova is always too busy fetching water and lighting the fires in the kitchen and the chamber to notice. It’s colder even than yesterday, and the hovel is hardly out of sight when she’s feeling glad of her new cloak. Her breath makes clouds before her face and leaves a trail behind her as she rides. Beorn leads the way. He alone has any idea where they’re supposed to be going. Fog hangs like a shroud over everything. Over the waterlogged ings. Over the slopes and the woods. So thickly that in places Tova can barely see more than fifty paces ahead.
On narrow, crumbling tracks and rutted droveways he leads them, past fields recently ploughed, around dense thickets. She thinks they’re travelling west, or possibly north, but since the sun is hidden it’s hard to tell. She can tell he’s impatient. He’s always a short way ahead, stopping every so often to check that they’re keeping up. They can’t go much faster; the frost has made the earth hard and a thin layer of ice clings to exposed stones, so they have to tread cautiously.
All the while Beorn keeps his bow in hand. The arrow bag at his side hangs open. A feathered shaft waits to be drawn. Is he nervous? If so, he doesn’t look it.
Tova is, though. At the slightest sound she glances about, expecting someone to come charging out of the swirling murk and strike them down. But no one does, and every moment that passes when they don’t feels like a gift.
*
They descend into a wide valley where the air is cold, the ground hard with frost. The mist hangs thickly, even though by now it must be mid-morning. They edge their way down the steeply winding track. They’re halfway to the bottom when, a short way off the path, she glimpses a dark heap upon the frosty ground. Unmoving.
Her heart stops.
‘Look,’ she says, pointing. The other two stop and turn at once. She wonders that they haven’t already noticed, but maybe they’re distracted or else their eyes aren’t quite as good as hers.
She doesn’t need to ask what it is. Even as they leave the path and ride towards it, she knows. And it isn’t long before she makes out a head, a pair of legs, a hand splayed out in front of her as if reaching for help that didn’t come, nor ever will. It’s a woman, not much older than herself, lying sprawled on her front with her head to one side. Sixteen, maybe seventeen winters; no more than that, Tova thinks. Frost clings to her lips. Her blue eyes are wide, and her mouth hangs agape, as if death caught her suddenly. The back of her skull is decorated with a deep gash, dark and crusted. Her hair, copper-brown and fine like Tova’s own, has come loose from her braid and is matted against her cheek.
Tova sits, frozen to the saddle, her hand clamped to her mouth as she tries to resist the urge to spew. Beorn squats down by the woman’s side. Gently he touches the back of his hand to her cheek, as if she might just be sleeping and he doesn’t want to wake her.
‘Cold,’ he says after a moment. ‘Dead several hours already. Since yesterday, I’d say.’
Nor is she the only one. Behind Tova, Merewyn gives a stifled cry; she’s spotted another, and another still close by, and a second pair not ten paces beyond them. Two young men with wounds to their chests that suggest they at least had the chance to see their killers before the light passed from their eyes. A woman Merewyn’s age, and next to her a fair, round-cheeked boy who can barely have been beyond crawling and was probably her son. They lie contorted, their limbs at angles that make no sense. The woman’s jaw is smashed, her face a mask of blood. The child’s neck is twisted, his chest crushed.
‘Trampled to death,’ Beorn says as he gazes, unblinking, down upon their broken bodies. ‘They rode them down from behind.’
‘They do that?’ Tova asks. ‘They use their horses as weapons?’
‘Believe me,’ Beorn says. ‘Whatever tales you’ve heard about their cruelties, the truth is much worse.’
She doesn’t need to see it to believe. She can imagine it all too clearly. Here, mailed men upon their snorting beasts, kicking up dirt as they gallop; there, folk fleeing the naked swords of the foreigners. The very earth trembling; the pounding of hooves at their backs, relentless, with every heartbeat growing louder and closer, closer and louder. Screaming, willing their feet faster. Then nothing.
At least it would have been quick.