He turns to face her, and suddenly it’s a different Beorn she sees. His shoulders hang low. His eyes are watery. Those eyes, which she thought were empty, which she thought betrayed no feeling.
‘Of course they deserve better,’ he says. ‘But we can’t undo what has already been done, can we? We can’t give them back the life that’s been taken from them. Whether we lay them in the ground or leave them in the open, it doesn’t make any difference. It’s all the same in the end, isn’t it?’
*
They make their way slowly by drovers’ tracks and winding woodland paths. Beorn reckons the men who came this way are long gone, but he’d prefer not to take the risk.
They skirt the bounds of half a dozen more manors to which the torch has been put. Even from several miles away they spy the fires. Smoke rises in great plumes, twisting and coiling, blacker and thicker than before, a sign that the enemy have been here recently. Nothing moves, save for the birds circling overhead and those gathered down in the fields: angry clusters of black feathers, squabbling and shrieking at one another over the flesh of some unlucky person or animal. They never come close enough for Tova to see which. She’d rather not know.
And still no survivors.
She keeps praying they’ll come across some. Even just one person who has somehow managed to escape, or who might perhaps have been spared. She has heard that sometimes raiding bands will let one person escape. Just one, so that he or she will go and tell others elsewhere of what has happened. All day long she guards that small hope, in the same way she might cup her hands around a candle flame to keep it from blowing out. But as the hours pass and still there is no sign of anyone, the harder it is to keep that hope aglow. The flame grows ever colder, ever dimmer, while the darkness enveloping her only deepens.
She trails behind the other two, following in their hoofprints, her head bowed, hardly daring to look up in case she should happen to catch a glimpse of another smoke-spire or yet more bodies. Beorn calls to her, urging her on, but his voice seems far away and she hardly hears him.
*
A flicker of movement amid distant ruins. Too small to be a person, she thinks, although it was gone before she could say exactly what it was. An animal of some kind. Maybe just a deer.
She halts anyway and squints, trying to make it out through the fog, hoping it will show itself again. But she knows that the longer she waits, the further ahead Merewyn and Beorn will be. She doesn’t want to be left behind, on her own.
She’s just about to give up when she spots it padding out from behind a smoking heap of timbers, its head low, sniffing the ground. Bigger than Cene, Skalpi’s running-hound back at home, his favourite and hers too. This one is longer-legged and thinner in the waist. Its coat black all over. Searching forlornly for some trace of its lost master.
It stops. Turns its head. Sees her.
For a moment it just stands there. Its eyes meet hers – as stunned to see another living being as she is, probably. Unsure whether what its eyes are telling it is true. Bewildered, wondering where everyone has gone. Why there is no one to feed it and take it out running.
Then it’s hurtling across the furrowed field, barking and barking and barking some more, in relief and in joy. As she would if she were it.
She gets down from the saddle. It bounds towards her, jumping up at her, tongue lolling out of its mouth. She kneels down and lets it lick her face, laughing as it jumps up at her and she’s nearly toppled over. Laughing at the rough feel of its tongue and the warm stickiness it leaves on her cheek. Its tail wags vigorously as she fusses over it.
As playful as Cene. She wishes they hadn’t left him behind.
She digs in her saddlebag for some treat she can offer, and finds a parcel of cloth containing thick slices of dried bacon. She unfolds it and tosses a slice on to the ground. It’s gone at once, swallowed in a single gulp.
‘Girl,’ Beorn calls. ‘Leave that thing alone. We don’t have any time to waste. Don’t be giving it any more of our food, either. We don’t have much as it is.’
She crouches down and hugs the animal to her while it licks eagerly at her greasy, salty fingers, and sniffs at the roll of cloth in which the rest of the meat is wrapped. It looks up at Beorn then wriggles free and turns to her, gazing plaintively with wide eyes, letting out a little whine at the same time.
She asks, ‘Can’t we bring it with us?’
‘You know we can’t.’
‘It could keep watch at night, guard our camp, warn us of any—’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m not having that thing trailing us, getting under our feet, growling and barking and giving us away to our enemies.’
She looks hopefully up at her lady, who keeps her distance, gazing at the hound with a mixture of pity and disdain.
‘He’s right, Tova,’ Merewyn says. ‘I’m sorry.’