Rafe threw Sniffer a strip of dried meat, the animal seeming to swallow it without chewing.

‘Go on, boy, after them,’ Rafe said, pointing into the distance with a flick of his wrist. Sniffer turned and loped ahead, his nose low to the ground.

‘How far ahead, do you think?’ Evnis asked him.

Rafe squinted into the distance. ‘Half a day,’ he said. The Baglun Forest was a solid wall to their right, curling away westwards as they rounded its eastern fringes. Behind them a hundred warriors sat upon their horses, a mixture of men from Ardan and Cambren, though all wore Rhin’s colours.

Rafe sucked in a deep breath, the air fresh and clean with dawn.

I am riding at the head of a hundred shieldmen, beside Evnis my old lord and new King; it is good to be home. Good to be alive. He had not felt like this for a long time. Ever? Certainly since Da died. He felt happy. But Evnis had been so full of praise for him, had treated him so well since they had ridden out from Dun Carreg, that he found it almost impossible to feel any other way. The only blight in the ten-night since they’d left had been on the first day, when they’d ridden down the winding slope of the hill that Dun Carreg was built upon, past the wind-choked copse of trees where he had had his arm ripped open by Corban’s wolven. Memories of that day had flooded him. Idly he ran a finger down the scar on his forearm, running near enough from elbow to wrist.

There’ll come a day of reckoning, mark my words.

He knew why Evnis had been so full of praise for him.

Vonn.

Rafe had brought the news that Evnis had wanted to hear. His son was back in Ardan. Not with absolute certainty, of course. But he knew that Edana had intended to flee to the marshes in Ardan, and that when Rafe had last seen her, standing upon a ship’s deck as it sailed away from a beach in Domhain, Vonn had been standing beside her. And that pleased Evnis.

‘Let’s be after them, then,’ Evnis said and kicked his mount on. With a clatter of harness and the drumming of hooves the hundred-strong honour guard lurched into motion. The sun rose steadily in the east and soon Rafe was sweating.

‘You were a friend to my Vonn,’ Evnis said after they’d ridden some leagues in silence.

‘I was, my lord,’ Rafe said.

‘We can dispense with the “lord”, I think,’ Evnis said. ‘At least when we are alone, anyway. I have known you since you were a bairn clinging to your mam’s skirts.’ Evnis smiled good-naturedly at Rafe. ‘What kind of friend was Vonn to you?’