CHAPTER ONE
DREM
The Year 138 of the Age of Lore, Wolven’s Moon
Drem looked up from his horse’s steady gait. Through the stark branches above he glimpsed the sun sinking into the mountains ahead, a pale glow behind snow cloud and leafless branches. In a matter of heartbeats twilight was settling upon them like a shroud.
We must stop soon, else the horses risk snaring a leg.
He glanced to his right, saw Cullen riding with his cloak pulled high, face hidden in shadow. Ahead of them, Keld looked as if he had no thought for stopping, the scarred huntsman loping through the trees much like his wolven-hound, Fen.
Grief drives him, and hate.
And fear, if he is human.
Drem blinked, trying to dispel the image of Gulla the Kadoshim, twitching and jerking upon the blood-soaked table in the mine, then rising transformed, teeth long and gleaming, eyes red as coals.
It felt like a dream, no, a nightmare, even though it had been less than a day and night since it happened. Too-vivid memories of the battle at the mine leaped out in Drem’s mind like rabid beasts: images of Gulla sinking his teeth deep into the throat of one of his acolytes, of feral things, part man, part beast, snarling, clawing, of winged half-breeds screaming their malice, of Fritha, beautiful and cold as the ice-laden forest, black sword in her fist. And Sig the giantess, friend to his father.
Friend to me.
And now she is dead. Because of me.
A restless anxiety was growing within him. So much had happened in so short a time, giving him little chance to feel anything; instead he had simply reacted, mostly just trying to stay alive. Now, though, they had been travelling all night and most of the day, and he had had time to think.
So much change. I wish I was with Da, that we were trapping together, out in the Bonefells, just the two of us. And now he’s gone as well.
As dangerous as that lifestyle had been, it was familiar to Drem, an old cloak, and it had fitted him well. All of this was so different, so new. He felt agitated, like when his legs ached and he just needed to get up and walk around, except that he couldn’t do anything here to help himself; there was no way he could return to the familiar that felt so comforting to him.
His hand crept to his neck, looking for the steady reassurance of his pulse.
One, two, three, he began to count.
“Camp,” Keld said as he emerged from the darkness, raising an arm and smashing a hole in a frozen stream with the butt of his spear.
A good spot, Drem thought, noting the spread of trees about them, the stream, huge boulders to the right, sheltering them from the cold wind that hissed out of the Bonefells, as well as providing a measure of protection from predators.
On two legs or four.
In silence they set to making camp. Cullen took the horses, hobbling them, removing saddles and rubbing them down. Drem found a spot for a fire and, drawing his hand-axe from his belt, began chopping through the thick rind of ice, then scooping away the softer snow until he reached the frozen ground beneath. He gathered stones, chopped kindling from a dead lightning-blasted oak and prepared a small fire. Before he set to lighting it, he trimmed thin branches from a willow beside the stream, spent a while weaving them into a latticed fence, then staked it along one side of the fire-pit he’d dug. A screen against any eyes that might be following them from the east.
Some tinder from a pouch at his belt, flint and striking iron for sparks, some cold breath upon it and then fragile flames were clawing in the snow, hissing and hungry.
A shaking of the ground made Drem look up, one hand reaching for the bone-hilted seax at his belt. A shadow the size of a boulder shifted within the trees, but Drem’s grip relaxed as Hammer, the giant bear, lumbered into their small clearing.
Hammer was Sig’s battle-bear and had borne them from last night’s chaos, carrying Drem, Keld and Cullen away, crashing through tree and shrub, no thought or time for careful steps or hiding their passage, just a driving knowledge that they had to escape, to put as much distance as possible between them and Gulla.
Hammer had run to exhaustion, bringing them back to Drem’s hold in less than half the time it would have taken them on horseback. There they had dismounted, removed the saddle, harness and battered mail shirt from Hammer’s body, packing it away in paniers and saddlebags. They’d tended to the wounded bear and fed her some foul concoction that Keld said was called brot, then led Hammer and fresh horses into the darkness, knowing they could not wait until dawn.
They had agreed to head west, using the cover of the forest to screen them from eyes in the skies, avoiding the town of Kergard, and then to turn south when they reached the western rim of the Bonefells. Drem had voiced his worry for the townspeople of Kergard but knew there was little they could do to help them. No one in the town had believed him before, and besides, he did not know if there was anyone in Kergard left to save. To Drem’s horror, scores of the townsfolk had been at the mine, secret acolytes of the Kadoshim, including Ulf the tanner, a man Drem had once thought of as a friend.
So, they had committed themselves to speed. Pursuit from the mine was likely, and they had to use every moment given them to reach Dun Seren and the Order of the Bright Star.
Drem had led to begin with, his knowledge of the terrain making him the obvious choice to steer them through the darkness. With the rising of a pale sun they had mounted their horses and Keld had taken point, his wolven-hound Fen scouting ahead. Hammer had followed them, grumbling doleful growls, taking herself deeper into the woods, though never quite out of sound or sight.
She feels grief for Sig, just like Cullen and Keld. More, maybe. They were rider and mount for more years than Cullen has drawn breath. Probably longer than Keld has lived, too.
Keld strode to the bear, unbuckled the saddlebags she was carrying, then checked over her wounds and patted her neck. She rubbed her huge head against the huntsman, almost knocking him from his feet.
“Ah, lass, we miss her, too,” Keld muttered, tugging on one of the bear’s ears. She seemed to like it, a mournful rumble escaping her throat.
Fen loped into the clearing, eyes glowing in the firelight. The slate-grey hound dropped a hare at Keld’s feet.
“A hot meal for supper, then. Thank the stars, I’ve had enough of brot,” Cullen said, his obvious pleasure at the thought infectious.
Keld skinned and gutted the hare and set it on a spit over the fire, fat dripping and hissing. A flapping of wings came from above as a white crow descended from the branches, landing on Cullen’s shoulder.
“I was wondering where you were, Rab,” Cullen said to the crow.
“Rab watching, protecting friends,” Rab squawked, then hopped from Cullen’s shoulder to the pile of guts and offal that had been stripped from the hare. He pecked noisily.
“But the love of slime and foul things drew you back to us,” Cullen observed.
“All must eat,” the bird croaked as it swallowed an eyeball.
“Fair point,” Cullen said.
The dead can’t eat, Drem thought, his mind filling with his father, Olin, and Sig, grief a wave rising within him, whipped high by the winds of exhaustion. His body ached, everywhere, a thousand cuts and bruises from the fight at the mine, and from before that. He raised a hand to his throat, rubbed at the scar where he’d been hung from a tree in his courtyard, twice. A memory of Fritha’s face. Sweet, kind Fritha, with her blue eyes and freckles, a face he had trusted. Thought he’d begun to love.