‘Well, I think I got their attention,’ he said through ragged breaths.

Men were visible on the path now, the first one straining to control three hounds, all barking frantically and straining on their leashes.

‘Didn’t think there’d be three,’ Maquin muttered, pulling one of the many knives he carried. ‘Woodsmen usually hunt with two.’

He stood and let their pursuers see him.

The first man let the dogs go, all three of them bursting along the path towards Maquin. They were big grey-coated hounds with broad heads and wide muzzles, the type she’d seen bring down boars when accompanying Aquilus on hunts. Their bared teeth glinted in the twilight.

We’re dead.

One pulled ahead of the others, tongue lolling, so close that Fidele could see the muscles of his chest and shoulders bunching and flowing with each ground-eating stride. He stumbled on something across his path and suddenly the undergrowth was in motion, a long branch whipping out of nowhere, sharp spikes slamming into the hound’s flank, impaling it a dozen times. It howled, squirmed, the howls slipping to a whine, then it slumped, blood dripping from its mouth.

The other two hounds paid it no attention, surging past.

‘Remember, do what I told you,’ Maquin hissed as he spread his feet, crouching, drawing another knife. Fidele shifted the weight of her spear, eyes focused on the nearest hound. It was thirty paces away now. A heartbeat, and it was twenty. She shuffled involuntarily backwards, heard the roar of the river behind her, set her feet.

The hound jolted to a stop, one leg wrenched into the air, its body swinging around, dragging on the branch that it was now snared to. Fidele held her breath but the snare and branch held. The other hound powered past it and leapt at Maquin. As she rushed forward, she glimpsed Maquin tumbling away, the hound slamming into him.

Finish your task, she screamed at herself as she ran forwards and plunged her spear into the snared hound’s chest. Dimly she remembered Maquin telling her to stab it in the belly, that it would be softer there, at the same time feeling the spear head slide on bone. She put all her weight onto the shaft and pushed, felt the spear slip past ribs, deeper, into something softer, the hound whining, snapping and writhing. It shuddered and then collapsed.

She pulled on her spear but it was stuck; she tugged more frantically, then heard the shouts of men running towards them down the track. A hundred paces, closing quickly. She left her spear in the dead hound and turned.

Maquin lay beneath a pile of fur, the last hound slumped on him.

He’s dead. Fidele rushed to him, feeling as if her heart was lurching in her chest, and heaved the dog away. Maquin groaned and she felt a tide of relief wash her.

‘Thought I was dead,’ he blinked.