The animal-roar again, a sad thing, closer, louder, vibrating through the snow-slush and into the soles of Drem’s boots. Most in the room ignored it, the big man’s legs twitching, but nobody moved to tend whatever it was that made such a sound. The stench of excrement was stronger, too, insinuating itself into the back of Drem’s throat.

He moved on, a lifetime of trapping having taught him silence and patience. He knew instinctively when to wait, when to move, and how to tread as silent as a fox. But there was no light-footed trick in the world that could avoid footprints in snow. He tried to follow well-used tracks, his footprints mixing with a stream of others.

A stable block stood before him, a torch burning outside it, fixed atop a post. Drem froze in the shadow of a building and stared. In time a head loomed over the stable-door, but it was no horse. A bear, dark-furred, huge, its eyes baleful. It opened its jaws and let out a sound closer to groan than growl.

Is that the bear that killed my da?

Drem’s fist tightened on his spear, the urge to run over and plunge it into the creature’s chest sweeping him.

Wait. The hunter is patient.

In answer to its mournful groaning another sound echoed around the encampment, a chorus of howls and whines.

‘Shut your row,’ a voice called out. Drem’s head snapped around to a dark hollow, dense and thick behind the bear pen. He crept along the building’s wall to get a better view and saw an open space, a long table set within it, legs of timber thick as trunks. Shapes were scattered upon the table, unclear in the darkness.

Strange, a table out in the open.

Behind it was a huge boulder, rising like a cliff face. As Drem moved to get a clearer view, the stench grew worse, fetid and cloying.

A man stood in the boulder’s shadow, wrapped in furs and cloak, a spear in his hand that he rattled against the rock, clanging on iron, and Drem saw darker shapes in the boulder, iron bars slatted across them.

Cells, dug into the rock face, iron-barred gates.

‘Shut your row,’ the guard shouted again as strange howls and whines echoed out from many cells, haunting, chilling Drem’s blood.

As Drem watched, the man walked a dozen paces, turned to face the wall, his back to Drem, and urinated up the rock face. Drem hurried across the open space, long legs speeding him, the man hearing him at the last moment, turning, urine steaming in the icy cold, but not quick enough to avoid Drem’s spear-butt in the head. He dropped with a grunt, cloak hood falling away. Another shaven-haired man.

Drem hit him again, just to be sure.