The smell didn’t improve much once they’d rumbled through the open gates, Olin nodding to the man on guard duty. Kergard wasn’t ruled by a lord or king, the Desolation was free of such rulers and authority, free even of the Ben-Elim for the time being, as it was newly settled land. A group of Kergard’s founders had worked together in the building of the village and had decided on a democratic council with no one man to lead or rule them. They’d called themselves the Assembly, and over the years some had died or left Kergard, while some of the new settlers had been invited to join the Assembly, but the core of the Assembly was still the same as it had been some twenty years ago. Ulf the tanner was one of them. Between them they organized a tithe from those who lived within the village’s walls, and that tithe paid for roads, building repairs, labour and, amongst other things, for a small unit of guards. It was the Wild, after all, and crops, herds and homes often needed defending from the predators that lurked and roamed within the dark and storm-racked north. Most of the guardsmen were older men, retired trappers and huntsmen, whose days of roaming the Bonefell’s were behind them.

Drem guided the ponies through busy streets of hard-packed earth, more people about than he had ever seen in Kergard before. They made their way through the village and towards the eastern fringes, where Ulf’s tanning yard was situated. Drem could smell the place before sighting it, the sharp tang of his lime-water vats and the sickly stench of fat-scraped hides lying thick as smoke in the air.

Ulf met them with a grin and a bag of silver, and set two of his sons to unloading the wain of its pelts while Olin and Ulf chatted, mostly about mead and sore heads.

A woman entered the yard as they were talking, tall and stern-faced, an otter pelt cloak about her shoulders. Two men walked a step behind her, both muscled and scarred, belts brimming with axe and knife.

‘Hildith.’ Drem nodded a greeting. She ran Kergard’s mead-hall, had helped build it with her own hands and was one of the original members of the Assembly.

‘Still alive, then,’ Hildith said to Drem and Olin.

‘Aye,’ Drem said.

Just, as he thought of the white bear.

‘Forgive me, but I cannot stand here in conversation,’ Hildith said, pulling a sour face. ‘The smell is too much. I’ve come for my new boots and cloak, Ulf.’

Ulf ran to fetch them and Olin led Drem back to their wain, now unloaded.

‘Come see me at the mead-hall and tell me your trappers’ tales,’ Hildith called after them.

Olin raised a hand.