Footsteps behind her, Cullen supporting Keld, behind them Elgin and a handful of his men. Sig shook the acolyte again, and a scrap of parchment slipped from where it had been stuffed inside his shirt. Sig dropped the acolyte and snatched up the parchment, unfolding and reading by the firelight as Cullen and Keld reached her.

‘What does it say?’ Elgin asked, as Sig shared a grim look with Cullen and Keld. She showed the message to Elgin – one word scrawled upon it.

Anois.

‘What does that mean?’ Elgin shouted over the wind and the hungry flames.

Cullen slapped Sig’s arm, pointed through the dark. In the distance a pinprick of light appeared, flaring brighter, roaring into crackling life. And then, further away still, another flame flickering, another bonfire igniting. The sensation of creeping dread that had been haunting Sig swelled in her veins, making the hairs on her neck stand on end.

‘It is a word from the Old Tongue,’ Sig said, not taking her eyes from the string of beacons that were appearing like stars in the darkness. ‘And it means: Now.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: DREM

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

DREM

Drem woke to his da’s boot kicking the wooden leg of his bed.

‘It’s still dark,’ Drem mumbled.

‘Things to do,’ Olin answered, giving the bed leg another kick for good measure, then turning and leaving Drem’s room. For a moment Drem thought about rolling over; the change in routine unsettled him. He liked to see the grey of dawn before he rose.

‘Drem,’ his da’s voice called, insistent.

With a groan, he hauled himself out of bed. It was a painful experience, and not just because the net of sleep still had a few hooks in him. He was battered and bruised all over from his fight in Kergard.

Fight! Beating, more like.

Five nights had passed since the skirmish at Kergard’s market. His da had helped Drem to the wain and, with Fritha climbing in as well, they’d returned home as quickly as possible. Before they left town, Calder the smith, one of the original members of Kergard’s Assembly, had told them that the trappers Drem had fought with were new to Kergard, having arrived that day. Apparently they were all kin, and were looking to find work and a roof at the new mine on the shore of the Starstone Lake.

‘A lot like them coming up from the south,’ Calder had said with a grimace. ‘They don’t like what the Kadoshim are up to, or the Ben-Elim’s rules; fair enough,’ Calder said, ‘but they’ll not come up here and act like there are no rules at all.’

Drem pulled his breeches and boots on, wincing as muscles complained and bruises throbbed. His nose was swollen from where he’d been headbutted, and he was still blowing thick clots of blood from it.