Dusk settled about them, that time when shadows were thick as mist, and up ahead Sig saw the darker shape of a cabin, a handful of outbuildings, a pig pen, judging by the smell drifting down the hill to her. Behind and above the cabin on the hilltop there was the silhouette of a large mound, with patches of the sun’s last rays gleaming through it.

What is that? An unlit bonfire?

Rab had returned, after scouting ahead, with the news that Keld was only half a league ahead. The crow had seen Keld dragged by his captors into the cabin that stood before Sig now. Sig’s first instinct was to charge in, screaming death and murder at her enemies, but she knew Keld would be the first to have his throat cut. So she was hoping stealth would serve them better; Elgin and the others were still mounted and waiting a short distance away for the sound of battle.

What are they doing here? Why is Keld still alive? Why didn’t they just kill him back on the path with his hounds?

She crawled closer to the cabin, maybe a hundred of her long strides away, then closer still, grass tickling her nose.

A scream rang out from the cabin, raw and full of pain.

Keld.

Sig was on her feet before she realized it, the others a few heartbeats behind her, and then she was running at the cabin, drawing a knife from its sheath at her belt.

A plan will only take you so far.

The thunder of her iron-shod boots, every breath loud as a drumbeat in her head, behind her Elgin’s men, running, steel hissing from scabbards. Another scream, long and lingering. The sound of a door opening on the far side of the cabin, footsteps on wooden boards, then mud. Sig pointed; three of the men with her peeled away to circle the cabin. The drum of hooves, distant.

And then Sig was there, leaping up the wooden steps and kicking at the door. It collapsed inwards, a cloud of dust exploding. As it settled, Sig saw the glow of firelight, faces turned, all staring at her, ten, twelve people, more in the shadows. And Keld, in the centre of the room, strapped to a frame similar to the one Sig had seen inside the Kadoshim’s lair, cross-shaped, his wrists and ankles strapped tight, stripped to the waist, drenched in sweat. Fingers were missing from his left hand, blood streaming down his forearm, dripping to the floorboards, pooling. He was spitting curses at his captors, foam flecking his mouth.

The closest shaven-haired man to Keld was standing frozen with mouth open, bloody knife raised.