Camlin raised his hand and the group split, more than half of them looping away east with Drust, setting a perimeter. Camlin waited a while, giving them time to reach their marks, then with a nod to those behind him he moved quick and silent across the open ground to the first buildings.

By the time he reached the central square he knew they were alone. The village was as they had left it, inhabited by a horde of flies and maggots, the bodies of the dead a little more decayed, a little more chewed upon. He threaded his way through the putrefaction, trying not to breathe any more than he needed, then reached the roundhouse doors. They were still wide open, fresher dead littering the floor amongst the more seriously decomposed. Camlin saw one of his arrow shafts poking from a throat.

The chest was gone, a depression in the ground where it had sat.

A lot of silver in there to leave that kind of dent.

He sent a warrior to tell Drust; the red-haired warrior returned with the messenger soon after.

‘A waste of time, then,’ Drust said as he strode into the courtyard, pausing and doing a double-take at the scattered dead.

‘Elyon’s bones,’ he muttered.

‘Not Elyon’s,’ Camlin said.

‘Back to Dun Crin, then,’ Drust whispered, not able to tear his eyes away from the heaps of tattered flesh and bone.

‘There’s another option I’d advise,’ Camlin said.

‘What?’

Camlin pointed to wheel tracks in the dirt. He bent down, picked at a pile of horse dung close by.

‘They took the chest out on a wain, no longer than a day ago. This dung’s fresher’n your breath.’

‘So?’

‘We should follow it. See if there’s a chance of snatching it.’

Drust shook his head.

‘Risks are too high. And we can’t move across this open ground – no horses. Morcant catches us, we’d be ridden down.’

‘True enough, but I’m not suggesting we stroll through the meadows. Most could stick to the waterways, just a couple of us out keeping an eye on the trail.’

‘If the trail follows the marshes.’

‘Aye, again, true enough. But I’ve more’n a hunch that Morcant is taking his silver through the villages around the marsh.’

‘I’ll not risk my men’s lives on a hunch.’