Orman laughed as well. ‘Yes – how will they ever tell us apart? So, what’s going on? What in the name of the ancients are you doing here?’

‘Your plan was accepted, Orman. We’re working with the Losts.’

‘My plan? It wasn’t my plan. Was one of the Lost hearth-guards’ … Cal, I think.’

The old man made a face as if insulted. ‘Of course it was your plan! No dim hearthguard of the Losts could come up with a decent plan!’ He grinned anew. ‘Only the Sayers.’

Orman just snorted. Then he drew a hard breath, tensing himself. ‘Any word … on Jass?’

Old Bear lost his grin. He cleared his throat as he limped along. ‘No, lad. He’s a hostage of the Bains. They’ll keep him safe. Don’t you worry. It’s the old ways.’

‘And Lotji?’

‘He’s out there somewhere. It’s one big running battle. We’re trying to herd them together. Us ’n’ the Losts. But they just ain’t organized. Just a bunch of raiding bands, all independent.’ The man grumbled under his breath. ‘Like herding cats.’

‘Well … I’m for Lotji.’

The big man shook his head. ‘Don’t do it, lad. He’ll run you through with Svalthbrul.’

‘I’ll just have to take my chances.’

But Old Bear would not stop shaking his shaggy head. ‘No, lad. Don’t you lot there in Curl tell the old tales?’

Orman snorted his scepticism. ‘You mean that it never misses?’

‘That’s right, lad. Svalthbrul, once loosed, never misses its mark.’

He had no answer for that. Yet Buri had advised he challenge Lotji; he must know the truth of those old tales, if anyone did. And, anyway, he really had no choice in the matter. It would be confronting Lotji, or abandoning everything he believed about himself. It was no choice at all.

They found a stream and Orman cleaned and bound Bear’s shoulder. Then they headed south, down the valley. The shadows lengthened; the sun sizzled atop the ridge to the west. Twilight already pooled in the depths of this particularly steep mountain vale. Orman was considering finding a place to settle in for the night when he heard the clash of fighting echoing from the very bottom of the valley. He and Bear broke into a trot, started jogging down the forested slope.

He glimpsed figures through the trees running parallel to them. Too many to be any allies of theirs. In his rush he’d left Bear behind, and now he broke through a dense thicket of tearing brush to nearly fall into a shallow stream. Halfway across the rushing water, hunched amid gleaming wet boulders, were the Reddin brothers with Vala, Jass’s mother. Even as he watched, arrows glanced from the rocks; they were pinned down by a band of archers on the opposite shore.

Lowlanders came charging out past the line of bowmen, making for them. Bodies lay in the stream all about the hearthguards and Vala, like boulders themselves. The rushing waters coursed over them as over any other obstruction.