‘None of us are unfamiliar with death,’ Galak said in a bitter hiss as he swung on to his horse. ‘We each face the silence as we must, Rint.’

‘Will you face it with every word in winged flight, Galak?’

‘Better that than harsh and cruel! It seems all you do is cut these days.’

Rint settled into the saddle and took up the reins. ‘No, all I do is bleed.’

They set out, pushing deeper into the ancient hills. The old lines of rise and descent had been carved through in places by thousands of years of hoofs from migrating herds, and down these tracks floods had rushed in the wet seasons, exposing bedrock and an endless wash of bleached bones and the crumbling cores of broken horns.

Rint could see the old blinds, constructed from piled stones, arcing in fragmented lines along slopes overlooking the old migration tracks. He could see signs of runs where beasts had been cut away from the main herd and driven off cliffs. Here and there, massive boulders rested atop hills, each one bearing painted scenes of beasts charging and dying, and stick figures wielding spears; and yet upon not one of these wrinkled tableaux was there a line denoting solid ground. Instead, these remembered hunts, these eternal images of slaughter, all floated in a dream world, uprooted and timeless.

Only a fool would not see death in such art. No matter how enlivened the beasts depicted, they were all long gone, slain, carved up and devoured, or left to rot. To look upon them, as he did when he and his companions rode past, was to see a dead hand’s longing for life, but a life belonging to the past. Every scene was a broken promise, and upon these hills now had settled a pall of silence.

If the dead spoke to the living, they did so in an array of frozen images, and this doomed them to themes of loss and regret. He well understood Feren’s warning. This was a gristle one could chew without end.

Lifting his gaze, his eyes narrowed. The eastern sky was grey, smudging the line of the horizon. He thought back to the Jhelarkan’s words and felt something grow taut within him.

‘Is that smoke?’ Ville asked.

Rint nudged his mount to a faster pace, and the others joined him. There was nothing worth saying. The chattering of speculation would simply give voice to fear and so fill the gut with bile. Smoke hung above Riven Keep. It could be as simple as a grass fire, spreading out across the plain.