It was cold, the sky above was overcast with clouds heavy and silver sheened, threatening snow, the marshlands were a grey, damp, mist-filled world of mosquitoes and croaking frogs. They’d been lying on this hillock since sunrise, and the sun was now melting into the western horizon.

‘Camlin, I—’

‘Shut up,’ Camlin breathed, pointing.

Something was moving, off to the left, a shiver amongst the long grass and reeds – a movement opposed to the wind. Steadily it kept creeping forwards, then stopped, within sight of the figure sitting against the tree. A hesitation, a hundred heartbeats, two hundred, then it was moving forwards again. Two men broke from cover, stooped low, moving swiftly and silently in a loop around the figure against the tree until they had the willow’s trunk between them and the reclining warrior.

Stealthily they crept up, single file, the first drawing a knife from its sheath.

Camlin pushed himself onto his knees, tugged an arrow from the ground in front of him, slowly lifted his bow.

The first man was right behind the sleeping figure, by the spear. He raised his knife.

Camlin drew the arrow to his ear, held his breath, sighted, released. It struck the second man, piercing leather vest and linen shirt to sink deep into his back. At the same moment the first one buried his knife to the hilt in the sleeping man’s chest.

There was an explosion of straw, the man with the knife tugging his blade free, looking at the shape against the tree, then at his collapsing companion, then straight up to the hillock where Camlin was drawing his second arrow.

It punched through the knife-wielding man’s chest, hurling him onto his back. He thrashed in the grass a moment, movements weakening, then he was still.

Camlin and Vonn climbed to their feet, Camlin groaning from the stiffness in his limbs, and they hurried down the hillock.

‘That’s the third time this has worked,’ Vonn said to him, shaking his head.

‘Aye,’ Camlin agreed. They’d been hunting these scouts for four nights now, each time using the straw man to lure their enemy in and then kill them. So far it had been remarkably successful. Six men dead in three nights.

Camlin checked the two dead but knew before he saw their faces that neither one was Braith.

Can live in hope, though.

He drew a knife, bent and cut his arrows free of the two dead men, checked them over for food and coin, then saw Vonn standing above him, frowning.

‘Old habit,’ he said with a shrug as he dragged and tipped one corpse into the stream. ‘Check our friend, eh?’

‘He’s a straw man wrapped in a cloak,’ Vonn said.

‘Aye. Check the cloak’s not ruined – can’t have a pile of straw leaking out of his belly, can we?’

‘He’s fine,’ Vonn said.

‘Good. Give me a hand with this one, then.’