Fisher shook his head; he considered taking up his glass, but reconsidered and left his hands crossed on the table. ‘I will not speak of them.’

‘Then they are there. Thank you.’

Fisher bit his lip. Gods! He was a bard! The stories he could tell of the Forkrul! But he took up the glass and drank instead. ‘I will not encourage you in this.’

‘Neither do you dissuade me.’

‘That is not for me to decide. Each of us possesses a Wyrd – a fate – and nothing we do can undo it.’

Jethiss thought about this while the birds roosted overhead, cooing and fluffing their feathers, and the rain pattered, hissing. He answered, musingly, ‘You think everything is foreordained?’

‘No. I believe we follow our natures. That our natures determine the choices we make. In short … we do it to ourselves. There is no one else to blame.’

‘Not even the gods?’

Fisher threw back the last of his wine, sucked his teeth. ‘The gods are determined by our natures. But if you decide to quibble them down to nothing more than mere causation – then why have them at all?’

‘Things happen regardless?’

‘It is a logical deduction.’

The Andii nodded, sleepily. ‘I suppose some other justification would have to be found, then, for their existence.’

‘I suppose so.’

Jethiss pushed himself to his feet. ‘Well, there you have it. The world’s troubles sorted out over a cask of wine.’

Fisher smiled fondly. ‘A nightly ritual.’

‘I am off to find some bedding.’

‘Good night.’

Fisher sat alone in the amber glow of the dying embers. He listened to the rain pattering and wished the night would whisper an answer to the quandary he faced. To survive, these Icebloods – we Icebloods – must retreat north, ever higher. Yet, if the legends and tales were to be believed, a peril far greater than any human invasion slumbered there. A threat to all, no matter what breed or kind.

What was he to do? He listened again, intently, but the night seemed only to sigh. He answered the whisper with a sigh of his own.

* * *

Kyle entered the sprawling besiegers’ camp wrapped in a ragged dirty cloak with its hood raised, a battered shortsword beneath at his side and dirks at his belt. The white blade he now carried wrapped in leathers and firmly tucked in his shirt. No one challenged him as he came walking in from the west, no picket or posted guard, and this alone convinced him that this mob was doomed to failure.

It was a bright and lingering twilight, the sky a beautiful shade of purple. He stopped where a gang of fortune-hunters, now soldiers – of a kind – lingered beneath the awning of a tent. ‘I’m looking for the Shieldmaiden,’ he said.

‘Who isn’t?’ answered one, and took hold of an imaginary set of hips before him. ‘This time of night, hey?’ Kyle ignored him and continued east, as the man’s gaze had flicked in that direction when he’d spoken. ‘Hey!’ the fellow called. ‘Where’re you from?’