Bodies were scattered across the path, twisted in death. Eight, ten, Sig counted, checking them carefully. Keld was not amongst them, though Sig found his huntsman’s axe embedded in the skull of a shaven-haired man. Sig put her foot on the man’s head and wrenched the axe free. All of the dead had shaved heads in common, like those they had found at the Kadoshim’s lair. Many of the death wounds were ragged tears, flesh torn and ripped. One of Keld’s hounds, Hella the brindle bitch, lay strewn across the path, bodies piled around her, a bodiless arm in her mouth, strips of frayed flesh and sinew hanging at the shoulder. A score of puncture wounds crusted dark with blood ranged along the hound’s side, her back leg almost chopped clean through.

Sig knelt by the dead hound and put her hand on its head a moment.

‘Thank you, Hella, faithful hound, for your sacrifice. You will be avenged.’

‘Ach.’ Cullen spat. ‘Keld will take this hard.’

Aye, if he still lives, Sig thought. Keld would never have left Hella like this. He’s either slain or captured. She felt a stab of fear for her friend, quickly morphing into a swell of rage.

They will pay for this.

Beyond the dead was a small cabin, situated just around the bend. It looked like a goat-herder’s hut. Elgin and a handful of men approached it, Elgin kicking the door down with one booted foot, sticking his head in.

‘Empty,’ he called over his shoulder.

A squawking drew Sig’s attention. She looked around for Rab, couldn’t see him at first, then spotted the crow down by the stream at the bottom of the slope.

‘Come, come,’ Rab was squawking, hopping about upon a rock, bobbing and shaking his head, muttering to himself.

‘QUICK!’ Rab screeched.

Sig made her way down the slope, skidding and sliding on slick, goat-cropped grass, the sound of others behind her.

Rab had found Keld’s other hound, Fen, lying upon the corpse of another shaven-haired man, a long, bloody knife still gripped in the man’s fist. His throat was a red, ragged wound.

The hound’s hind legs trailed in the stream. He was covered in wounds, one ear missing, but he was still alive, his big chest rising and falling.

‘Poor Fen,’ Rab croaked mournfully. ‘Sig help Fen?’

‘Aye,’ Sig grunted, ripping a strip from her cloak and soaking it in the stream, then setting to washing out the hound’s wounds, fingers gently probing for broken bones. Footsteps thudded around them as Elgin and a few others joined them.