I want to ask about Bardán, where they’ve put him, whether he’s somewhere warm and comfortable, but I can’t. Gormán brings back a coil of rope. He hands it to me and I tie one end to Ripple’s collar. He fetches a lantern, the kind that burns oil. Be safer than the torches some of the fellows are carrying; I don’t fancy walking in among the trees with one of those. It’s dark as dark now. Moonlight hasn’t got a hope of breaking through those clouds. At least the rain’s stopped. For now. I think of the girl out there somewhere. Wood-wise this Cara may be, but it’s no night for anyone to be on their own in the forest. Chilly enough to freeze your bones.

‘We’ll have hot soup ready when you get back,’ says Mistress Della. Sounds as if she’s been crying. ‘Go safe, all of you.’

We’re off, then, Gormán and me and Ripple. For the first bit we walk with the fellows who are checking the main Winterfalls track, the way I’d ride if I was going home. After a while we part company. The other men go on in the direction of the settlement, and Gormán and me head off along a side way, snaking into the woods.

‘You know the girl,’ I say. ‘If she wanted to get home quick but not be spotted, which way would she choose? What paths does she know?’ Seems to me that on such a wet day, Cara wouldn’t have wanted to be dawdling in the woods admiring the scenery.

‘Cara knows all the paths,’ Gormán says. ‘She knows her way to every corner of Wolf Glen. She’s never been lost, not even once.’ He speaks proudly; I’m guessing he was the one who taught her to find her way. ‘She must have had an accident,’ he says. ‘Hurt herself. Or had some other mishap.’ He doesn’t say she might have fallen victim to some evil bastard, and I don’t either. No need to put it into words. Every man who’s out looking for the girl must have that in the back of his mind. ‘Or she didn’t head up here at all. Could she be at your house? Would your friend be back there by now?’