Her half-smile simply eased into a purer sort of wistfulness and she walked away to disappear into the shifting banks of fog. Orman knelt on his haunches with Keth and Kasson, who were minding the fire. ‘Where’s Shortshanks?’

‘With them,’ said Keth – or was it Kasson? He was no longer certain he had them straight after all.

‘Sleep,’ said the other. ‘We’ll trade off watches.’

‘What of Bear?’

They shook their heads. ‘He will not come to the fire,’ said one. ‘He says he does not want to smell of smoke but I think he doesn’t like fire when he’s raising the bear.’

‘Raising the bear? So it’s not some sort of spell? He truly is a shapeshifter?’

‘Have you not heard all the old tales? It was quite common, once. Now he is the last.’

‘And the morrow? What is the plan?’

But the brothers appeared to have used up their store of words, and merely glanced to one another, shrugging.

Orman lay down on a brushed-together bed of dried leaves and needles, facing the fire, and watched the tendrils of mist rising from his drying leathers wend their way up to the surrounding billows and there mingle among them.

*

Dawn came as a diffuse pewter-grey light. The fog cover remained; if anything, it had thickened. The cold was intense. Frost glazed the blades of his hatchets and the grass blades and brush crunched underfoot. Vala motioned them on; she appeared to be able to penetrate the dense soup of haze. Orman reflected that, while she might claim they shared an ancestry, he still couldn’t see a damned thing.

They descended a dividing ridge into another valley, this one not so steep. Fog still obscured all the distances; trees stood as ghosts, boulders emerged like cave openings into darkness. Distantly, Orman could make out many voices and the jangle and ringing of equipment.

‘They are searching the fog,’ Vala snorted. ‘Fools.’ She motioned to the Reddin brothers. ‘Time to push them in. Spread out. A slow sweep down the side.’

The brothers nodded and moved off. They were readying their shields when the mist swallowed them. ‘What of us?’ he asked.

‘We will stay together. We are after the same thing.’ She motioned him off a little. He refreshed his grip on his hatchets and stepped aside until Vala became a shadow amid the haze. Then he began edging his way down the valley side.

Men and women called to each other further down the slope. Their accent was strange, yet he could understand some of the basic words. Outlanders. He considered shouting confusing orders, then decided a silent approach would be best.

The clash and grating of weapons sounded from his right, followed by the yell of a wounded man, cut short. As Orman felt his way down, a figure emerged ahead from the coursing banks of fog. It was a man shielding his gaze to peer up into the haze.