He found the strength to scream, even knowing that it would not do him the slightest bit of good.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: SIG

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

SIG

Sig saw the smoke first, grunting at Cullen and pointing. Keld was somewhere in the woods to the north, only the flash of fur showing that he and Fen were close. They’d just passed a derelict hold on their right, the main cabin with two splintered holes in it, a cairn in the yard. Sig would have stopped, but something whispered to her of haste. They’d planned to stop at Kergard, but the place had been heaving like a kicked nest of wasps and so Sig had made the decision to ride on in a wide half-circle around the town, so as not to be seen. The trader Asger had given clear directions to Olin and Drem’s hold anyway, and after almost two ten-nights of travelling ever deeper into the ice and snow, Sig was eager to be at her journey’s end.

‘I don’t like the look of that smoke,’ Sig said.

‘Isn’t that close to where we are heading?’ Cullen asked.

‘Aye,’ Sig grunted. ‘Some speed, I think, and loosen your blades. The frost—’

‘I know,’ Cullen said, checking his sword and knife in their scabbards, ‘it can make the blade stick.’

‘You’ve learned something, then,’ Sig said, muttering to Hammer beneath her, the bear shifting from a lumbering walk to a lumbering run.

‘Oh aye,’ Cullen nodded, touching his heels to his horse’s ribs. ‘Maybe because I’ve been told the same fact five times a day, every single day since we left Dun Seren.’

‘Well, it gets—’

‘Cold in the north. I know.’

For once Cullen sounded short of humour.

A shape appeared in the sky: Rab, flapping towards them at great speed.

They’re going to kill him!’ the crow squawked, turning in a tight spiralling circle about Sig and Cullen.

‘How many?’ Cullen called up to the bird.

‘Ten, twelve. Lots dead already,’ Rab cawed down at them.

‘Tell Keld,’ Sig said, snapping a command to Hammer, who leaped forwards with a ground-shaking growl. Sig shrugged her cloak from one arm and drew her longsword as Rab bolted towards the snow-laden trees.

A fence and open gateway appeared at the end of the track they were speeding down, black clouds of smoke billowing in the wind. Sig saw figures in a courtyard, growing larger by the heartbeat as Hammer’s loping run ate up the ground.

Flames crackled up into the sky, a barn engulfed, roaring, and there were men gathered beneath the branches of a tree, hoisting on a rope that had been thrown over a branch, a figure dangling on the end of it, fingers clawing at the noose about its neck, feet kicking.