He’d loved his brother so deeply, the sudden rush of this memory so vivid and clear in his mind’s eye, that he thought for a moment he could smell his brother’s sweat. It was like a punch in his gut. A groan escaped his lips and his vision blurred, tears filling his eyes.

‘Are you all right?’ Riv asked him.

Bleda blinked, swayed in and out of tree-cast shadows.

‘I . . .’ he said. ‘My bow. How?’

‘I saw it in the dirt, that day in Arcona. Just picked it up, I don’t know why. I should have given it to you a long time ago, I don’t know why I didn’t. I just . . .’ She looked at him strangely, then shrugged and dropped her head. ‘I’m sorry.’

And looking at her, hearing her words, Bleda felt almost overwhelmed by another rush of emotions. Anger, that his bow had been so close, all these years, this physical, touchable link to his brother, to his home, when all else he had was fragile memory, faint and transient as morning mist. But the other emotion surging through him was joy. It was almost like having his brother back, ghost-like memories wreathed about and through this bow like the sturgeon glue they had used to bind it. Joy at seeing his bow, touching it, a feeling of wholeness that he had lacked for so long he hadn’t realized it was gone. Until now.

Staring at Riv, these two emotions warred within him, back and forth, rage and joy, joy and rage.

Joy won.

‘My thanks,’ he whispered, and allowed himself the ghost of a smile as he looked upon the bow in his hands, his fingertips moving from the worn, leather-bound grip to the smooth, recurved lines of its limbs, horn on the belly, sinew on the back, all washed in countless coats of lacquer, the last flick of the bone ears where the gut string was attached.

‘I’ve tried to care for it,’ Riv mumbled, and Bleda could see that she had. He gave a little tug to the gut string, felt the dryness of it, knew it would fray and snap with much more pressure.

That’s simple enough to remedy.

The rest of the bow looked almost the same as it had ever been.

‘You have, I can see,’ Bleda said. ‘It is in fine condition.’

She smiled at him, then, warmth and happiness radiating from her.

She is like the sun when she is happy, like a furnace when she is angry. I have never known anyone so utterly opposite to my people. All seething emotion bound within a sack of skin, blood and bone. Only when alone with our kin or Clan are we Sirak able to be like this. When in front of our enemy the cold-face is king.