Unspoken went: if too many don’t die in the battles to come.

There was quiet pride in his voice: “We’ve done it before and more than twice; this is the oldest Dun in the Clan’s territory, after Dun Juniper. And Dun Juniper’s . . . different. This was the first of our farming Duns, and the pattern for the others, so.”

The bigger house was the Aylward household, where her man’s family dwelt. Her marriage-kin now. She took a deep breath. No task grew easier and no danger grew less because you flinched from it. Just as she did they both heard soft quiet steps coming from below. Hands went to weapons, and Edain made a brzzzzzllll sound between his teeth, the buzzing trill of some local bird she didn’t know. The like answered it, and they relaxed; then a man and three dogs came into sight.

“Dickie,” Edain said, slipping the arrow back into his quiver.

His younger brother was just eighteen and hence a little younger than Asgerd herself, in a kilt but barefoot, with only a sleeveless shirt below his quiver and a bow in his hand and a dirk at his belt. He had a kin-look of Edain, but his long queue of hair was a brown ruddy with the tint of old rust, his face half-covered with freckles where it wasn’t pale, and his build more lanky. Two of the dogs were just out of pup-hood, two years or so with heads and feet still a little large for their frames; the other was a gray-brown bitch of six or seven. All three were enormous, mastiff-Dane crosses with a strong trace of timber wolf.

“Stay, Garbh,” Edain said.

The bitch came over to him, sniffed politely at Asgerd’s hand, accepted a ruffling of the ears, then sat down by her master with a thump of tail against packed dirt and leaned her massive barrel-wide head into his thigh. A slight lift of the lip to show fang kept the younger dogs well mannered when they showed an impulse to leap about. They were the get of a sister from Garbh’s litter, and had accepted her authority instantly.

“Edain,” the younger man replied, and: “Sister,” to Asgerd with a casual nod.

And he’s always just taken me as I am, Asgerd thought gratefully. Neither too friendly or hiding behind formal manners, more as if he’d known me from a baby and remembered me sitting on the porch sucking my thumb. Right now I think he wants to talk to his brother, though.

“I’ll go down,” she said. “Your mother may need some help, with the feast preparing.”

“See you in a bit then, mo chroi,” Edain said.

The Aylward brothers squatted side by side with their bows across their knees, looking down at the Dun that was the home where they’d been born.

“That is a fine, fine figure of a woman you’ve found yourself there,” Dick said after an instant, nodding down the trail after Asgerd.