He listened, but all he heard was his own hoarse breathing. He took one clumsy hacking swing at the door, croaked, ‘Come on!’ He listened again while he held his breath. Something was there. He was certain of it. Why wouldn’t it come? Why this agony of waiting? Won’t it just end it?

After a time he could no longer hold his chest tight and his shoulders sank. His face was chilled by tears. ‘Come on,’ he moaned, utterly exhausted by the waiting.

Gods, man – won’t you just end it?

* * *

They crossed the West Whitewater on the second day of climbing. It ran steep and swift out of the high valley. Orman’s breath caught as he stepped ever deeper into its icy course. He carefully picked his way between submerged boulders while the torrent surged as high as his waist. The charging water pulled at his legs and he relied upon Boarstooth to keep his footing.

Ahead, Old Bear seemed to have merely leaned into the course and bulled his way across. His ragged bear cloak had danced and whipped atop the waves as the stream appeared to be attempting to yank it from him. He climbed the opposite bank, guffawing, slapping at his sodden leathers, and Orman could actually hear his great booming laughter over the roar of the mountain stream. The Reddin brothers followed, while Gerrun brought up the rear.

They climbed steadily, half the time descending steep rocky ridges as the Old Bear’s path took them from one high valley to a higher, until it seemed to Orman as if the snowcapped peaks of the Salt range loomed directly over his head. Legendary birthplace of the Icebloods themselves. What the old legends named Joggenhome. They were now long past the point where the ghosts first came to him as a boy, and this time he saw them too: grey translucent figures in the distance, watching from among the trees and rocks. Many held spears, some shields. Some wore helmets and mail coats, others only leathers and ragged cloaks. He would have remarked upon them but for seeing the others ignore them – and so he chose to as well.

On the third evening they ate a stew of rabbit and roots and berries that the Reddin brothers had collected. One of the brothers cooked it in a smallish iron pot over a fire, and they served it out in wooden bowls. Orman’s bowl warmed his hands in a very welcome manner. The other brother tossed over flatbreads, like cakes, that they’d baked overnight in the ashes of yesterday’s fire.

Old Bear sat in the glow of the fire, hugging his spear. His ruddy lined face seemed to glow like heated metal in the dancing light.

From what Orman could remember of his father’s tales, they were currently in lands claimed by either the Sayer clan or the Bain clan. ‘Which Hold is this?’ he asked Old Bear.