‘Well, it’s a moot point in any case, since he disappeared.’

‘He’s not dead.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just know. So, Murillio, do we wait until Capustan?’

‘Agreed. And once there, we follow the example of Kruppe and Silverfox. We slip away. Vanish. Hood knows, I doubt anyone will notice, much less care.’

Coll hesitated, then said, ‘Murillio, if we find someone – someone who can do something for the Mhybe – well, it’s likely to be expensive.’

The man shrugged. ‘I’ve been in debt before.’

‘As have I. So long as it’s understood that this will likely mean our financial ruin, and all that might be achieved is a kinder end to her life.’

‘A worthwhile exchange, then.’

Coll did not ask for another affirmation of his friend’s resolve. He knew Murillio too well for that. Aye, it’s naught but coin, isn’t it? No matter the amount, a fair exchange to ease an old woman’s suffering. One way or the other. For at least we will have cared – even if she never again awakens and thus knows nothing of what we do. Indeed, it is perhaps better that way. Cleaner. Simpler . . .

The howl echoed as if from a vast cavern. Echoed, folded in on itself until the mourning call became a chorus. Bestial voices in countless numbers, voices that stripped away the sense of time itself, that made eternity into a single now.

The voices of winter.

Yet they came from the south, from the place where the tundra could go no further; where the trees were no longer ankle-high, hut rose, still ragged, wind-tom and spindly, over her head, so that she could pass unseen – no longer towering above the landscape.

Kin answered that howl. The pursuing beasts, still on her trail, yet losing her now, as she slipped among the black spruce, the boggy ground sucking hungrily at her bare feet, the black’ stained water swirling thick and turgid as she waded chill pools. Huge mosquitoes swarmed her, each easily twice the size of those she knew on the Rhivi Plain. Blackflies crawled in her hair, bit her scalp. Round leeches like black spots covered her limbs.

In her half-blind flight she had stumbled into a spatulate antler, jammed in the crotch of two trees at eye-level. The gouge a tine had made under her right cheek still trickled blood.

It is my death that approaches. That gives me strength. I draw from that final moment, and now they cannot catch me.

They cannot catch me.

The cavern lay directly ahead. She could not yet see it, and there was nothing in the landscape to suggest a geology natural to caves, but the echoing howl was closer.

The beast calls to me. A promise of death, I think, for it gives me this strength. It is my siren call—