Any other night he would have brushed the fool’s talk aside. But the name of Old Bear gave him pause. One of the last of the high valley hunters. Seemed to come and go as he pleased from Blood Holdings. Rumours were that he’d served as a hired spear for the Heel clan years ago – back when he had both eyes. And the Reddin brothers, Keth and Kasson. They’d been among the eleven who’d returned with Longarm. Serious and quiet both of them. So quiet few knew which brother was which.

‘Why me?’ was Orman’s short answer, his forearms on the table, one to either side of his leather tankard.

Gerrun jerked his head, agreeing with the question. He took a quick sip, wiped his mouth. ‘Old Bear says he knew your father. That’s why. Says he even met you.’

Orman nodded. It was years ago. His father had been a sworn man to Longarm’s predecessor, Eusta. Eusta the Ill, she’d been known, as she’d always been sick with this or that. His father had been a borderman, had even slipped into the Blood Holdings now and then – and had taken Orman along a few times.

And had told him about the ghosts. The Iceblood Holdings were haunted, his father had explained the first night as they pressed close to their small fire. Haunted, he said, by the spirits of all the dead ancestors of the various clans: the Heel, the Bain, the Sayer, and all the others. And sometimes, his father whispered, leaning close, his great spear Boarstooth across his lap, if you listened very carefully you could hear them too.

And later he did hear them – or thought he did. Voices calling. It seemed as if the very land itself, the Iceblood Holding, was speaking to him. Now, thinking back some five years, he wondered whether he’d imagined it all. That perhaps he’d only heard things because his father had suggested it.

A joke played on an impressionable boy.

He did remember meeting Old Bear on one of those trips. The fellow had his name from the great brown shaggy hide he wore wrapped about himself, its head thrown up over his own like a hood. The rotting pelt had stunk even then – imagine how it must reek now. Unless the old fool had gotten himself a new one.

He thought he understood Bear’s real message now. He knew that his father had shown him around the lower vales of the Holdings. And he’d delivered the message all without leaving his mouthpiece, Gerrun, any the wiser.