Drem limped along beside his da and their string of packhorses, not for the first time wishing he was sitting upon the back of one of those horses, rather than struggling along beside it with his ankle throbbing. The fact was, though, that they had too many furs and skins to carry, and when faced with the prospect of leaving those skins behind or walking . . .

Olin had been happy to leave a bundle or two behind, but Drem knew how long and hard they’d worked for those skins, risking life and limb, and they needed them to sell if they wanted to eat through the winter.

The palisaded walls of Kergard loomed higher the closer they came to the new town sitting upon the rim of the Starstone Lake. Noise and activity rolled off it like heat from a dung heap.

‘It looks bigger,’ Drem said, and that was because it was. Bigger than when he had last seen it, six moons ago. Fresh-built holds and houses of timber and stone, roofed with thatch and sod, spilt down the slope and into the meadow and woodland about Kergard’s walls.

Olin didn’t respond, just stared with a frown upon his face. Without a word, he led their lead-pony off the main road to Kergard and onto a rolling meadow, skirting the town and heading north-east, towards their home. He had been like this since their discovery in the foothills three days ago. Drem saw his da reach out and put a hand upon the lump of black iron they’d hauled from the elk pit, wrapped and hidden now within half a dozen skins.

He is convinced it is starstone metal. And it is strange: twice as heavy as it should be, and a black that seems to suck light into it. I’ve never seen anything like it. But starstone . . . ?

The more Drem thought about it, though, he had to admit that there was a slim possibility that his da was correct, regardless of how farfetched the likelihood seemed. Besides, his da was a practical man, not given to wild theories or flights of fancy. Local legends told how the lake beyond Kergard was supposedly a crater formed by the original Starstone as it crashed to earth. He looked back over his shoulder at the foothills they had only recently left, one hand coming up absently to stroke the bear claw that he had tied to a strip of leather about his neck.

Behind those hills reared the jagged teeth of the Bonefells, looking as if they were holding up the sky. He squinted his eyes and tried to imagine the Starstone coursing over those mountain peaks, spitting great gobs of fire and smoke and blazing a trail of flames.

He blinked and nodded to himself.

Who is to say that part of the Starstone did not crack and fall away as it plummeted to earth.