‘Enough,’ Olin snapped. ‘Let it lie, Drem, I’ll not be changing my mind.’

Drem sucked in a deep breath, weighing up the worth of continuing.

Once he makes up his mind, there’s rarely any changing it. For now.

Drem loved his da, but more and more of late, he was feeling frustrated at how his da treated him, avoiding questions, treating him like a bairn.

Twenty-one summers old. I’m a man.

His da rolled his injured arm, the one Drem had stitched.

‘How is it?’ Drem asked him.

‘Itching,’ Olin said, then shrugged. ‘A good sign. Your ankle?’

‘Throbbing. I’ll live.’

‘Aye, well, let’s get this finished, stable the ponies and we can look forward to some hot food, a cup of mead and a bowl of hot water to soak our feet in, and we can compare injuries.’

Drem liked the sound of that and the thought of it put some fire in his limbs. It made the job of finding and dusting off the buckets and barrels of quicklime, salt and oak bark less of a chore.

Drem’s belly was rumbling by the time they finished bringing the ponies in from the paddock and settling them in the stables. As tempting as it was, they’d learned the hard way last year that you didn’t leave animals outside through the night. The north had predators that liked the taste of horse.

The clouds were low and bloated, the sun just a faint glow on the horizon when they left the stables and made their way across the small yard to their cabin.

The sound of approaching hooves broke their companionable silence, growing steadily louder. They paused on the cabin steps, Drem noticing his da loosening his knife in its sheath and taking a step closer to the wood axe that was leaning against a timber post.

It was Ulf, the tanner. He trotted into the yard on a bay pony that looked too small for him, raised a hand in greeting and dismounted stiffly, approaching them with his halting gait.

‘Thought you were back,’ Ulf said with a grin, pointing at the smoke rising from the chimney.

Ulf was a few summers younger than Drem’s da, but looked older. Mostly grey with a few streaks of black still in his hair, fat-bellied and fingers stained with the chemicals of his trade. He was one of the few people for whom Olin had more than a passing time, and last winter they had spent many an evening round a fire in each other’s company.

Maybe it is because he was like us, once. Before his injury.