‘Can I ask you a question?’ Drem said, looking up at him.

‘Course you can. I might not have the answer, but asking never hurt nobody.’

‘Truth and Courage. Have you ever heard that before?’

Asger snorted. ‘Not heard it used, but I know where it’s from. Thought everyone did.’

Drem just looked at him.

‘It’s the battle-cry of them at Dun Seren. The Order of the Bright Star.’

Drem nodded, feeling something shift inside him.

Drem shovelled the steps to his cabin free of snow, piling it in banks to either side, then scraped the last of the ice clear. Once it was done he sat on the steps.

After Asger had left he’d felt a little life return to him; maybe it was the porridge, or the fact that another human being had cared enough to come and find him, he didn’t know. He still had that weight of grief in his heart and belly, like a cold, hard stone, but he didn’t feel incapacitated by it, at least, not for the moment. He’d finished his porridge, got up and let the goats and chickens out, checked on the horses in the stables, stood by his da’s cairn, rested a hand upon it and shed some more tears, and now he was here. Thinking.

He was grateful for Asger’s visit, grateful for the act of kindness in it, though it was a dim, distant gratitude, his grief too raw and potent a thing for other emotions to make any kind of lasting impression. And he was considering Asger’s offer. Leaving was what he and his da had been about to do, after all. Though Drem knew that his da had a different destination in mind.

But Drem liked Asger, had always thought well of him, and the offer was a good one. A new life. A fresh start. Just the thought of some kindness and company was a tempting enough reason to go, without the fact that there were men not so far away with a blood feud against him. That wasn’t going to go away, either. And, as much as he felt like his heart was broken, that all of the colour of life had just drained away, the thought of being skewered upon the end of Burg’s or Wispy’s blades was still not an appealing one.

And he’d been thinking on other things, too. Things that he needed to sift through first, before he fully faced up to Asger’s offer. He’d been thinking on his da’s last words. His cry of Truth and Courage, how that had still been so much a part of him, even after sixteen years of living a new life with Drem, that it had burst from his lips at such a telling moment.

A life-or-death moment.