“Good boy,” she breathed, and since there was no other choice possible, she took the last few steps up to the clifftop. The moment she set foot on level ground she was all but bowled over, for the hound that bounded up to greet her was healthy and strong, and it came close to sending her straight down to the ocean far below in its frenzied excitement. Now Guard reached the top, and the two of them, like as peas in a pod, ran and chased and sniffed in ecstasy, tails thrashing furiously in the delight of reunion. Shadow. Shadow had disappeared with Rona, that was what Eyvind had said. But it seemed Shadow had come here alone. There were no warriors, there was nobody at all, only the moonlight and the stones.

“Good girl,” she murmured, setting the wolfskin down a moment to rest her arm. She stroked the bitch’s head, feeling the wet warmth of its tongue against her fingers. “Well done. Now we must move on. I need a horse, and I’ll have to catch it in the dark. And then…” She could not dwell on the difficulty of doing this, on the impossibility of riding thus burdened. What would Rona say? She imagined her old friend by the fire, stirring a pot of something fragrant—gods, she was hungry—and gazing at her wryly. You’re a priestess. Make things happen. Some help that was.

Shadow had ceased to leap about and now headed off along a near-invisible path, turning her head as if to check whether Nessa followed. Guard stayed close by his mate’s side. It seemed he, at least, had found some untapped well of inner strength, and would keep going beyond the point of utter exhaustion. Perhaps what he had found was hope. Picking up the wolfskin, easing cramped fingers around the other precious item she bore, Nessa followed the two hounds across the dark fields to the east. There were farms not far away. At least, there had been farms not long ago, three snug cottages separated by walled fields, with well-tended beasts, including a horse or two. The men who looked after the stock there had perished at the Whaleback. There was no telling where the women might be. It was toward those dwellings that Shadow was leading them. They walked onward under the moon.

Shadow kept a wide berth around the first house, where the shutters hung splintered and broken, and something made a rhythmic banging in the freshening breeze. There was no sign of life. The second house was burned to stones and rubble, and across its outer yard objects lay scattered: a woollen shawl rent almost in two, a child’s shoe, a basket whose cargo of shriveled turnips lay scattered on the ground. Was that blood, or merely some natural darkening of the soil here in the corner where a stile straddled the stone dyke? Shadow jumped up; Guard followed, clumsy in his weakness. Nessa scrambled after them and did not look back. Later, when this was finished, there would be time for sorrow, for grieving, for the rituals of farewell.