‘Shut up.’ She thrust a finger at Cull. ‘Find the cows. They’ve wandered off again.’

Cull bowed low. ‘Yes, my chick.’ He headed off.

‘Why did you bring him?’ she called after him.

‘Because he is Lost!’ Cull shouted back, and laughed. He continued on, chortling to himself as he went.

The Iceblood woman now cast her sceptical eye to Kyle. ‘What did my fool of a husband mean, lost?’

Kyle cleared his throat. ‘Stalker and his brothers, ma’am. We were in the same mercenary outfit years ago. He made me a Lost.’

The woman grunted at this, eyed him up and down. ‘Hmph. I see it now. So, Stalker made you a Lost, did he?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Well, then. Better make yourself useful.’ She pointed to the trees behind the cabin. ‘There’s a cache back there. We might have a smoked haunch or two left. Bring one in.’

Kyle inclined his head. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Name’s Yullveig.’

He nodded again, ‘Yullveig.’

It took him some time to find the cache. It was a hut very high up in a tree. All the lower branches had been cut away. The ladder that led up to it consisted of staves of wood lashed to the trunk. They were fixed very far apart. After thrusting the haunch of venison into a burlap sack the only way he could manage the descent was to tie the sack to his belt.

He returned to the cabin and knocked on the timber jamb. Yullveig invited him in. The little furniture within – a table, chairs of lashed wood, and a bed – were all on a scale that made him feel an infant. It didn’t help that when she urged him to sit his feet barely touched the dirt floor.

‘I must apologize for Cull,’ she said as she minded the pot simmering over the stone hearth. The steam wafting from it smelled of parsnips.

‘Apologize? For what?’

The answer brought a small smile to her otherwise severe lips. ‘He fell climbing a cliff when he was a child.’ She tapped her head. ‘Never been the same since.’

‘Ah. I see.’

‘But he has a good heart,’ she said, adding, ‘Too good, his brothers said.’

Kyle peered about the rather cramped cabin. ‘There are just the two of you?’

‘A son and a daughter. Baran and Erta.’ She started slicing the haunch. ‘Cull left with two sons and returned with one. Not that I am complaining. He left at my urging.’ She pointed the knife at the remains of the Greathall. ‘In his absence the hall was burned and everyone killed by lowland raiders. Just the four of us now.’

‘Yet Cull won’t kill the trespassers.’

‘No. He says death does not erase death.’ She cast him a significant glance. ‘A view not popular here among the Holdings, you can imagine. Our son did not understand. Damned him as touched. He’s off fighting now and Erta with him. Defending the Holding.’

‘I’m sorry.’