Something had woken him.

Maybe the cold. He was shivering enough for his teeth to rattle. There were no clouds above now, the sky a panoply of stars, the thin crust of snow on the ground had frosted to ice and was glittering in the starlight. Trying not to make any noise, he rolled over, the snow crunching, sounding loud enough to wake the dead.

Braith was sitting against the tree, his head drooped to one side, his surviving warrior curled in a blanket while Rafe was standing on the stream’s edge, spear in his hand, staring out into the darkness.

His watch, then.

One of the two hounds growled, its ears pricked. There was a rustle amongst the riverbank and they were both bounding forwards, snuffling amongst the reeds. Rafe followed them, spear levelled, then the hounds came out, tugging at something between them. Camlin heard the wet ripping sound of amphibian flesh.

Some poor frog’s having a bad night. He thought of his fate approaching with the rising of the sun. I sympathize.

The hounds finished tearing apart whatever it was they’d found and settled to wolfing down their respective pieces. Rafe lowered his spear and went back to stamping his feet and blowing into his hands.

Camlin looked at Braith, felt a wash of hatred for the man, swiftly tempered by the knowledge that he was just a man, like him, who’d made his choices and was seeing them through.

Sometimes they lead to a pot of gold, other times they get you bitten on the arse, or see you watching your fingers go under the knife, one by one. What I’d give to take him with me, though . . .

He heard a thunk, behind him, between him and the stream. He looked about but no one else seemed to have heard it, Braith still with his chin on his chest, Rafe staring in the opposite direction. Even the two hounds now seemed to be sleeping deeply, chests rising and falling. He rolled over slowly, saw something sticking in the turf and snow. A glint of iron, a leather-wrapped hilt.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Slowly he rolled over again, his back and bound hands to the knife, shuffled backwards a handspan, stopped as Braith muttered in his sleep. Another wriggle backwards, then waiting, eyes checking Rafe, the hounds, Braith, the other warrior. Another wriggle, checking again. Eventually, as a grey pallor seeped across the sky, he felt leather brush his fingertips.

‘Wake up,’ Braith said and kicked Camlin’s boots. With a groan Camlin squirmed onto his knees, holding the rope that had bound his hands tight behind his back.

‘You’re like a landed fish,’ Braith said. ‘Which is an appropriate analogy, because today I shall be gutting you, like a fish.’ He smiled, no humour in it. ‘But let it not be said that I am a cruel man. Dai, help him up.’