Maquin did not know what they were saying, but he saw Alben’s gaze shift to the giant bairn, then back to the giantess.

She stood suddenly, her body hard and ridged as a slab of granite. Men behind Alben reached for their swords, but Alben did not flinch.

‘Tiocfaimid, ach is eagal dom go bhfuil gealltanas tugtha agat nach fÈidir leat a chomhlÌonadh,’ the giantess said.

Her voice resonated in Maquin’s chest.

‘Time will be the judge,’ Alben said. He drew his sword and struck the chains on the post, shattering them.

‘We are moving out, now.’ Alben turned and strode away. The giantess and her bairn followed.

‘What did you say to them?’ Maquin asked.

Alben did not look at him as he marched from the tower.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CORALEN

Coralen pulled on the oar, feeling muscles contract in her back and shoulders, her torso swaying forwards and back with the motion. It had been like learning to ride all over again, the rhythm of it at first strangely alien, the dip and lift of the oar, pulling against the resistance of the Afren’s dark waters, using the sway of her body to help not hinder, and on top of that, to do it in perfect time so as not to snare her oar in another rower’s.

I’ve got it now, though.

The first night after their escape from Uthandun Corban gathered all of the oarsmen from the eleven ships they had stolen, over three hundred men. He had repeated the offer he’d made during the raid – told them that they were free. He suggested that they row both for Corban and for themselves now, away from the pirates who had made them slaves, and be put ashore at a safer location.

Some had demanded their freedom then and there. Corban had let them go, no more than a score of them, staggering into the gloom of the Darkwood. The rest had stayed.

Many were close to death, weak and emaciated, but Coralen had been surprised to see the effect a mouthful of brot had upon most of them.

Corban had asked one other thing from them and, more than anything else, that seemed to convince them of his sincerity.

He asked them to train his own warband up as oarsmen.

She’d received a lot of strange looks when she’d volunteered. She’d ignored them. Her body could cope with it, strong and supple after year upon year of sparring, though in truth after the first shift she’d spent at an oar her hands were blistered and weeping, and her back and shoulders were in agony. When she woke the next morning it was worse. By the third day she was getting used to it.