Drem reached the acolytes swarming around Sig’s prone form, arms rising and falling. He swung his sword and short axe, screams and grunts, blood spraying as he cut and carved his way through them. Then the ones in front of him leaped into the air.

No, not leaping, thrown.

And Sig rose from amongst them, blood sheeting her face, a flap of skin hanging from her cheek, one eye swollen closed, the rest of her body a similar miscellany of wounds, shield upon her back dented and splintered, but she grinned to see him, blood on her teeth, her sword in her fist.

‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ she growled.

‘Friends are a rare thing,’ he said to her.

They fought back to back, then, turning, stabbing, cutting, Drem’s limbs growing leaden, his very bones aching as blows shivered up his arm, breath a hot rasp in his throat.

Gulla’s daughter descended upon them, swooping, stabbing, wheeling away. Sig snatched a weighted net from her belt, swinging it around her head like a lasso and releasing. It wrapped around the half-breed, wings and all, the lead weights’ momentum swinging them in snaring loops, and the creature crashed to the ground.

A space cleared around them, hooded, shaven-haired warriors pausing, panting, bleeding. Sig spat a glob of blood. Drem saw a figure on the edge of the clearing, hooded in acolyte’s robes, emerging from the shadows and stabbing another acolyte, then slipping back into the darkness.

What?

A figure stepped into the space around Sig and Drem, slender and tall, fair hair shaved from her head.

Fritha, the Starstone Sword in her hand.

She stopped before Drem, out of reach of his blade, held a hand up to the acolytes behind her, a command. For a long moment she regarded Drem with her sheer blue eyes, which he had once thought bright and beautiful. Now he just thought they were cold. A bandage was wrapped diagonally around her shoulder and back.

‘Put your weapons down,’ she said to him. ‘You cannot win. Put them down, and live.’

‘What, to become one of those half-men?’ He shuddered. ‘Or like that?’ He nodded to Burg’s form on the table, still lying there, curled up like a bairn, twitching and jerking. Cullen fought nearby; silhouetted figures were climbing onto the table, pushing Cullen away from Burg.

‘That would be too great an honour. But no, not a Feral. My shieldman, maybe.’ She smiled at him, then, and it did not have the effect upon him that it used to.

‘You lied to me,’ Drem said, thinking of all the deceptions, the smiles and lies behind those eyes.

‘I saved your life,’ she said. ‘I could have killed you, let them slay you in the forest. I forbade them.’

‘Why?’