Then they were marching out onto the plain that surrounded Drassil, Riv’s heart leaping at the sight of her home, the white-winged banner snapping in a cold wind above the gates. She looked closer and forgot all about Aphra for a short while.

New cairns had been raised in the plain before Drassil’s walls, the reality of the tragedy that had befallen their home, their friends and kin, hit her, all of them, a silence falling over the White-Wings and giants as they marched past in sombre mood.

The carcass of a Kadoshim was nailed to the battlements above the great gates; Riv was not the only one who stared up at it as she passed through the gateway. Its head lolled between wide, leathery wings, eye-sockets dark holes excavated by crows.

Further above on the battlements she glimpsed a dark-skinned face, staring down at her, and she felt some warmth spark into life in her belly, welcome after the unsettling anger that was lurking in her veins.

It was Bleda.

The flagstones of the courtyard were stained with blood, even though eight nights had passed since the attack. The stains were faint, just an echo of what it must have been like, but Riv saw them.

Blood always leaves a stain.

It felt good to walk into her barrack, the fire-pit roaring, a deer turning on the spit, fat sizzling and crackling in the flames. A dash up to her chamber and it did not take long for Riv to unpack her and her sister’s kit, all of it already shining spotless, as Riv had tended to it each night on the road. When she finished, Jost and Vald tried to tempt her with a cup of wine in the feast-hall, but she felt the call of the weapons-field. As she stepped onto the turf she saw Bleda on the field, where he usually was, at the archery range. Riv felt a little flutter in her belly and increased her pace, only for it to drop like a stone as she saw Jin appear from behind him.

‘Well met,’ Bleda said to Riv as she approached them, and she thought she saw the hint of a smile ghost his lips, just for a moment. His hair was longer than she remembered, no longer close-cropped like the White-Wings, as it had been for so many years. It stuck out at angles, giving him a scruffy appearance. Riv supressed the urge to smooth an unruly tuft behind his ear.

Bleda gripped his double-curved bow, a quiver of arrows at his belt. And he had a bandage wrapped around his shoulder.

‘You were injured in the attack?’ Riv said, hurrying forwards and reaching a hand out to Bleda’s injury.

‘Aye.’ he nodded, his serious face back in place.