Something loomed behind them, taller, broader, a giant stepping close, a bloody wound between shoulder and chest.

‘Gunil,’ Sig whispered.

He stood and stared at her. There was a glimmer in his eyes that spoke of memory, but it was quickly replaced by something else, a sick half-madness, like his bear’s.

‘What have you done to him?’

‘I found him floating face-down at the bottom of a waterfall, closer to death than I thought possible,’ Gulla said. ‘He betrayed you at Varan’s Fall. Hated his brother and so gave you up to us. The ambush was his design.’

‘You . . . lie,’ Sig groaned.

Gulla smiled, too many teeth glistening. ‘He has been a useful tool since then, and no doubt will be again.’

‘You could turn her,’ Fritha said to Gulla, her head cocked at an angle, studying Sig. ‘Two giants in your service.’

‘There’s no blood left in her to drink,’ Gulla said.

Sig’s sword slipped from her fingers.

‘Very well, then.’ Fritha stepped forwards and rested the point of her black blade against Sig’s sternum. ‘Gunil, help me,’ Fritha said. The giant stepped closer and wrapped his huge fist around Fritha’s, who looked Sig in the eye and smiled.

‘Gunil,’ Sig whispered, could barely believe that he was standing before her. It gave her more pain than the thousand wounds her body had taken.

Fritha laughed, and then she and Gunil pushed on the sword, slowly.

Sig hardly felt the blade enter her body. She couldn’t feel her hands, arms, legs, everything going numb, drawing in to some central point, deep inside. Her vision speckled, darkened at the edges. She felt some pain, then, grunted with it, saw that at least half the blade’s length was sheathed inside her flesh.

‘Hold,’ Fritha said, still staring into Sig’s eyes, savouring her pain, her death. Gunil stopped.

‘We shall hunt down your friends. Kill them slowly, like this. Or turn them,’ Fritha said, cold as the starlit night.

No you won’t, Sig thought.

She shouted at Fritha, then, as the world narrowed to a single point of light, though it came from her lips as little more than a whisper.

‘Truth and Courage.’

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE: RIV

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

RIV

Riv opened her eyes. She was lying on her back, looking up. Above, she could see the thick timber beams of a roof. A beam of sunlight, motes of dust. She heard birdsong. The familiar creak of branches, scraping, soughing in a breeze.

Where am I? Not home. Not my barrack. Not even Drassil, I think. Though she was not sure how she knew that.

And then the weight of memory fell upon her.

Kol, Israfil.

Mam.