Drem had been digging pits since he was ten summers old. How deep? he’d asked his da all those years ago. Twice your height, his da had said to him. Back then his da had been digging the pit with him, breaking up the soil and Drem doing the shovelling. Now, though, eleven years later and Drem did most of the digging himself, his da setting other traps along their hunting runs with noose and rope. He had to remind himself that he didn’t need to dig hunting pits twice his height any more, not now he’d grown into a man, and a tall one at that. It still made him uncomfortable to stop, though. He liked to do things the way he was told the first time, didn’t like change. With an act of will, he slammed the pickaxe into the ground one last time, felt it connect with something solid that sent a shiver up his arm.

‘Sounds like you’ve found the mountain’s root,’ Olin said. ‘Come on, let’s eat.’

Drem yanked the pickaxe free, threw it up to his da, then his shovel; last of all held his spear shaft out. Olin grabbed it and held tight as Drem pulled himself out of the pit. His da grunted with the strain, even though he seemed to be made of muscle lean and knotted as old roots.

Drem turned and looked at his handiwork.

‘You chose a good spot,’ Olin said, looking at a well-worn path that the pit cut across. It led down out of the foothills they were standing in towards a fertile plain, the ground around the river there soft and marshy.

Drem smiled at his father’s praise.

Together they cast a lattice of willow rods over the pit, then a thin covering of branches and leaves, finally some bark and lilies.

‘To an elk that tastes nicer than hot porridge and honey on a winter’s day,’ they said together, the end of their ritual, and then they turned and made their way up a steep slope towards their camp, the river foaming white alongside them.

The sun was a line of fire on the edge of the world by the time Drem was turning a spit over a small fire-pit, fat from a quartered hare spitting and sizzling as it dripped into the flames.

‘Smells good,’ Olin grunted as he finished tending to their packhorses and furs, then came and sat down, wrapping a deerskin about Drem’s shoulders and pulling one tight about his own. Drem felt cold now that he had stopped digging, the night’s chill seeping into his bones. Rolls of skins surrounded them, tied and piled high. It had been a bountiful hunting season, and now they were almost home.

Drem carved the meat with his favourite knife, the wide blade was wicked-sharp and longer than was usual for a hunting knife.