Bleda just stood and stared at them, not knowing what to say, a storm of emotions swirling through him.

‘Welcome to Drassil,’ Kol shouted, spreading arms and wings wide in greeting.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: Drem

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Drem

Drem stumbled into his yard, feet and hands half-numb, still clutching his spear with frozen fingers, his vision blurred, body drenched with sweat, yet it was cold enough that he felt ice crackling in his hair.

A day and a half he’d run, expecting at any moment to hear the roar of a giant bear behind him, or the whisper of wings above, or the eerie howling of twisted, mutated things. His blind terror had lasted a good while but, by the coming of the first dawn, exhaustion had finally driven it off, and even as he forced his legs to keep moving, trudging through snow and ice, he had started to think. First and foremost, how to survive, how to get home, and he had used every trick and tactic his da had taught him in their years in the Wild to hide his tracks from an unwanted follower. He’d splashed up streams and down streams, entering at one point and exiting half a league north or south, doing the same at half a dozen streams that fed into Starstone Lake from the Bonefells. He’d climbed trees that grew tight and close, shuffling along branches onto a neighbouring tree, then onto the next, and the next, and the next, eventually climbing down and running on. He’d come across a fox’s den and taken his hatchet to a pile of frozen dung, smearing the softer faeces inside all over himself, to cover his scent from anything that might track him with its nose. He’d sought out higher ground forested by pine, where the snow-cover was thin upon the ground, the forest litter thick with spongy pine needles that sprang back and hid his tracks far better than ankle-deep snow.

And now, against all expectations, he was home.

He didn’t bother entering his cabin, just staggered into his barn, was greeted by goats and chickens that he’d locked up and left with enough food to feed them for a whole moon. He broke the ice in the water barrel and drank deep, found some eggs, cracked them and swallowed them raw, then locked the barn back up and set about saddling a horse in the stables.

‘Get on, girl,’ he said and touched his heels to his mare’s ribs, and then she was cantering from the yard onto the track that led to Kergard.

On the meadow before Kergard a great space had been cleared, tents and a roped ring set up, and beyond them the bars of what appeared to be an iron cage rearing high. Drem barely glanced at any of it, his eyes fixed on his path.

‘Ulf?’ he asked the gate guards.