Camlin looked at him, didn’t want to say, because he was my chief, for a while. I took orders from him, helped him kill your Queen’s shieldmen, your King’s first-sword, capture your Queen and your Princess.

Edana filled the growing silence. ‘Camlin helped to rescue me from Morcant in the Darkwood. He drew his sword and stood between us.’

‘Of course, I remember now,’ Pendathran said, eyeing Camlin suspiciously. ‘You were one of the brigands that we hunted down in the Baglun.’

‘I was,’ Camlin said. Can’t deny that.

‘And I recall taking you back to Dun Carreg as a prisoner.’

Aye, that’s true enough. Eighty men after twelve of us. And things were different then. I’d rather run and live than fight and die.

‘So if we were to try and prod him, how would you suggest we go about it, Edana?’ Roisin asked. Pendathran and Drust shared a look.

Edana and Roisin have swept in here like a summer gale. The two men don’t know what’s hit them.

‘Camlin is a master huntsman and tracker; during my escape to Domhain he masterminded a number of ambushes against over-whelming odds.’

Camlin almost blushed at that, feeling heat flush his neck. Don’t think anyone’s ever spoken about me like that before.

Then he realized that all eyes in the room were upon him.

He blinked.

‘Well?’ Pendathran said.

Good question. What should we do? He remembered Morcant upon his warhorse in the village square, tall and proud, his words to the village elders. A mixture of threat and bribe.

‘Someone needs to take that chest of silver from Morcant,’ he said.

Camlin blinked as the blindfold was removed from his eyes. Drust stuffed the rag into a hemp bag and moved on to the next person beside Camlin, lifting their blindfold too. It was Vonn.

‘I don’t see the need for that,’ Vonn muttered as Drust carried on down the line, pulling blindfolds from another dozen men.

‘Makes sense to me,’ Camlin said quietly to him. ‘Less that know the way to Dun Crin, the safer it is. A tortured man will talk in the end, no matter how brave he thinks he is, but you can’t tell what you don’t know.’

‘Just feels like we’re not trusted,’ Vonn muttered.

Camlin raised an eyebrow at that. Something I’m used to. Can’t blame Vonn for feeling like that, though, the way everyone looks at him as soon as his da’s name is mentioned.

‘It’s not just us,’ Camlin said nodding down the bench, where warriors who had been at Dun Crin before them were having blindfolds removed.

Vonn looked but didn’t comment.

They were sitting in a long barge with about thirty warriors, now standing and clambering onto the riverbank, a force picked to go and get Morcant’s chest full of silver.