Darkburn Book 2: Winter by Tayin Machrie - HTML preview

Chapter 1

“There are five of us now,” said Charo. He tried to smile at the woman because he was terribly afraid that she would climb on her horse and ride away. There was nothing here for her to stay for. Everything was in ashes: his house, his family, his friends, his whole world.

Sometimes, at night, it seemed as though the town and its inhabitants were still burning.

But when he awoke, shivering on the hard unsympathetic ground, Obandiro was stark and silent. The ashes had been slowly cooling for a week now; although the fires, he thought, must still seethe unseen in a few smoking buildings, where sudden small collapses now and then occurred like mocking forgeries of life.

Charo had nothing left to stay for either. But he had nowhere else to go. And then there were the others: the responsibility for them weighed heavy on him. Now he suddenly hoped this woman wouldn’t turn out to be a useless deadweight, another burden on his shoulders. If that were the case then maybe it would be better after all if she just rode away.

She was looking up and down the street again, taking everything in. Her face was familiar so he must have seen her in the market before the… Before. But he had never spoken to her.

When she looked back at him her gaze was no longer stunned. It was intense and focused.

“Where do you sleep?”

“We found a cellar,” Charo said. “I’ll show you.” Now he didn’t know what he wanted.

She would make up her own mind anyway.

So he led her down the Cross-street, the elegant horse following them, to the ruins of the inn. The yard was blocked by the remains of a burnt-out cart. Charo stepped over it and past the grey approximations that might once have been the innkeeper and an ostler or a guest. If he had cared to search what was left of the bodies he supposed he might find some identifying badge or buckle. But he had not cared to search the bodies. Whoever they were, it could make no difference now.

The inn had neither door nor roof. Within its walls of sooty flaking stone, the counter and the furnishings were turned to shapeless stumps of charcoal. Two pewter tankards lay amidst the ashes on the flagstoned floor, melted and distorted.

As the woman entered after him, Charo picked up the branch of fir which he had walked half a mile to find and brushed away their footprints in the courtyard. In the street it didn’t matter, because the ash was so well-trodden anyway by the feet of the men who had done this. But it was important to leave no new trail of footprints leading into here.

He had told the others to stay down in the cellar while he went out in a vain search for some vessel to hold water. All they had was one warped tankard. So many things they needed, and he didn’t know how to find any of them.

The trapdoor to the cellar was behind what once had been the bar: the rusted hoops of barrels lay across it. The barrels, spilling out their beer, had probably saved the trapdoor from being completely burnt away. Its wood was blackened but intact.

Charo lifted the concealing hoops aside. Beneath them the trapdoor was already propped slightly ajar, to allow air in.

“It’s me,” he said into the opening, and saw the small yellow pool of a lamp being unshielded. He let himself down the ladder into the cellar and the woman followed, a little clumsily.

Only two of the other three were there. They were already on their feet and staring at the descending woman in something close to fear: certainly not delight.

“That’s Elket,” he said, pointing at the older of the pair. “She’s fifteen, the same as me.

That’s her brother Dil. He’s nine. And this is…” He paused. He had forgotten the woman’s name. The other two were like statues in the lamplight.

“I’m Yaret Thuleikand,” said the woman. “I’m the grand-daughter of the old weaver Ilo, from the farmhouse on the forest road. I’ve just returned from travelling. My farm is burnt out, no survivors, everything the same as here. I am very glad to find you.” Her voice was low but matter-of-fact. Charo was glad she wasn’t crying, because they had done enough of that and it really didn’t help.

The others seemed stricken dumb.

“Where is your fourth?” asked the woman, and finally Elket answered.

“She’s gone out.”

“She’s not supposed to,” said Charo, exasperated.

“I couldn’t stop her,” said Elket. “How could I stop her? You know what she’s like. She said she was going to look for eggs.”

“Eggs? Where does she think she’s going to find eggs?”

“She said near the chicken huts,” said Dil. “She said some of them might have escaped and be roosting nearby.”

“She’s mad,” said Charo. “I wish she wouldn’t do this.”

The woman sat down on the nearest barrel and glanced around. There were plenty of beer barrels inside the spacious cellar, although not much else. It was high enough for them to stand up in. The roof beams had been protected from the fire by the flagstones laid above.

There had been three hams hanging from the beams, but they had eaten all except the second half of one. There were still two big rounds of cheese – they had finished off the other two – and a sack of red roots in the corner. None of them liked red roots, which were pungent and stained everything they touched, but Charo supposed they would have to start eating them soon. They had been a popular fried snack in the inn, before.

Before. Everything was before. There was a huge burning line dividing then and now. It separated him from everything that he had known, everything normal. The days passed mostly blank and numb and the burning line with his family on the far side of it didn’t seem to get any further away. The separation just got deeper. More uncrossable. More permanent.

He tried not to think about it. He had quickly learned that it was better to concentrate only on the present, not the past or future. He didn’t often succeed.

But the cellar had been safe till now. It had been a giver of gifts. As well as the food, there were several large jars of lamp-oil, and three lamps. There was beer in some of the barrels, but he had no intention of letting anybody drink it. Luckily none of them showed any wish to.

“What’s the name of your fourth?” asked Yaret.

“Shuli,” answered Elket.

“How old is she?”

“Twelve.”

“She’s not,” put in Dil. “She’s says she’s twelve but she’s really only eleven and ten and a half months.”

“How long has she been out?”

“About an hour,” said Elket.

Yaret nodded. “I walked all through the town and saw nobody,” she said. “She’s good at keeping hidden. I expect she’s safe enough. Has anybody else been through Obandiro since this happened?”

Charo answered reluctantly. “The men who did this.” He did not know what to call them, but gestured at his hair. “Men with… things on their head. They’ve been back twice since the, since the first time. The last time they came through was five days ago.”

“Stonemen,” she said. “I know them. How many were there, do you think?”

“When it, when it, when it happened, there might have been about two hundred, I suppose.

Maybe more. I don’t really know.”

“What about when they came back?”

“We were all in the cellar so we only heard them,” Elket said. “I think they came into the inn but they didn’t find the trapdoor. They tramped around outside a lot.”

“The second time they came back while I was out,” said Charo, “looking for food. I heard them coming. They weren’t quiet. There were only about ten of them and they walked up and down the streets and then they went away.”

“Searching for survivors,” said Yaret. “Or people who might have escaped and returned later. You have had none of those yet, I suppose?”

“They’re still waiting till it’s safe,” said Dil. Charo winced. He knew that Dil had hopes and didn’t want to squash them. But he had to be realistic.

“No one else has come back yet,” he said. He thought the four of them were the town’s only survivors, but he had never said it aloud. Although his voice had broken last year the words made it crack as if it were breaking all over again.

“Well, I have come back now,” said Yaret. “One more question, and then you may start asking me your questions instead. When they returned, did the stonemen bring with them any darkburns? They are the hot, burnt creatures that–”

“We know what they are,” he said, before she could start describing what they did. “No.

We didn’t see any. Not since that first, that first time.”

“Good. Now: your turn.”

Charo didn’t have as many questions as he had expected. He knew she was a travelling pedlar, but it didn’t really make much difference where she had been and for how long, and he didn’t really care. He asked who had lived with her – and had died – at her farmhouse. The only other thing he could think of to ask was,

“Is that your horse outside?” It didn’t look like a weaver’s horse.

“You’ve got a horse?” asked Dil eagerly.

“It was given to me,” said Yaret.

“Who by?”

“Friends, far away. It’s a long story.”

“Can you ride it?” Dil demanded.

“I can.”

“Good,” said Dil, and he then asked a much more useful question than any that Charo had thought of. “Is there food at your farmhouse?”

At that, Yaret smiled.

“Oh, yes,” she answered. “Quite a lot of food. There is a cellar nearly as big as this one, with oats and flour and roots and apples and cheese, all safe and unburnt.”

“They’re not red roots, are they?” said Dil.

“No. They’re yellow ones and sweetroots.”

“Hurray!” Dil cheered. And then the trapdoor lifted and Shuli’s surprised face looked down at them.

“There’s a horse outside,” she said.

“And there’s a strange person inside,” said Yaret. “What if we all go out, and find somewhere to sit where we can see each other properly, and talk for a while?”

So they all climbed out of the cellar. Yaret again seemed slightly clumsy – of course, she was an adult, so not nimble – but when she walked over to her horse he noticed that she had a limp.

“I saw you near the Dondel bridge,” said Shuli.

“And I did not see you.” Yaret introduced herself to Shuli, and asked, “Did you find any eggs?”

Shuli uncurled her hand. There was a small brown egg inside it.

“They’re roosting on the other side of the orchard,” she said. “Some of them, anyway.”

“Well discovered,” Yaret said.

“I think so,” said Shuli, and she put the egg down carefully just inside the ruined gateway to the inn.

“We’ll go to the burial ground,” said Charo, because he felt he ought to be in charge, and wanted to get a suggestion in before Shuli did. “We can sit down there and talk, away from the, away from the town.” He meant away from the bodies.

“Can I take the horse?” asked Dil, and Yaret let him hold the bridle. Elket said nothing as she led the way. Shuli walked at the back, probably so that she could watch the woman. She was nosy about everything. Charo did not know where she found the energy.

The new woman was nosy too, or at least, she was looking hard at the bodies in the streets.

She need not have bothered because none of them were recognisable. He suspected that there were many more that were not even recognisable as bodies, but had been devoured entirely by the fire. He said nothing about them, and neither did she. Dil was the only one who talked, pointing out buildings as if they were still there and Yaret was a casual visitor to town. The joiner’s yard, the fletcher’s shop. There was nothing left of them. Yaret merely nodded.

But the burial ground, outside the southern edge of town, was relatively untouched by fire.

The memorial stones and the paved paths between them were blackened, and some of the stones had fallen – or had been pushed over – but that was all. They could sit on the curved stone bench in the middle, in the remembrance circle, and look at each other. They had seen each other so little in daylight for the last few days that Charo was shocked at how grubby and tired and thin the others looked.

“A good choice of place,” said Yaret, and unstrapping one of her saddlebags she began to hand food and a waterskin around. The biscuit was slightly gritty and the cheese stronger than he was used to, while the dried fruit was of a kind unknown to him; but it was all very welcome.

“Have you come across much food apart from what is in your cellar?” Yaret asked.

He shook his head. It was a worry although personally he really didn’t mind much if he starved to death. Except that it might not be a pleasant way to die. And it wouldn’t be fair on the others.

“And the cellar is also where you sleep?”

He nodded.

“A hard bed,” she commented.

Charo shrugged. It was another thing that didn’t really matter, given what had happened to Obandiro. He hoped she wouldn’t start asking them about that dreadful night. She was bound to want to know.

Thankfully she did not ask, but merely looked around her as she ate her biscuit, until she said,

“Is this where you hold evening council?” Although she addressed nobody in particular Charo answered.

“No, we have it in the cellar.”

“We did,” said Shuli, “to start with, but then we stopped.”

“That was your fault,” said Dil.

“It was boring,” Shuli said.

“We stopped,” said Charo, “because there seemed to be not much to say.”

Yaret nodded, her eyes moving thoughtfully from one to another of them in turn. Then she wrapped up the uneaten end of her biscuit.

“Although it is not quite evening,” she said, “I wonder if you would consent to hold the evening council here, now. I for one feel badly in need of it.”

“I suppose so,” said Charo. He glanced at Shuli. She was the person most likely to make trouble.

“I pray you all to attend this one time,” said Yaret, “because it is important to me.”

“All right,” said Shuli. “I don’t mind.”

“Very well. We will start with Oveyn, for all those who lie around us.”

She began the incantation and the others joined in. Charo felt it was meaningless. He had stopped saying Oveyn because it was not adequate for what had happened. Nothing was.

None the less he now felt a certain relief in hearing Yaret speak the familiar words.

Then he realised that she was saying a longer version than he knew, and it gave him a shock. It did not only offer thanks and honour to the dead but spoke of them as standing by the shoulders of the living. It spoke of them becoming one with earth or trees or skies, as was ordained by powers beyond thought. He knew that this was Ulthared and it made his scalp tingle.

Yaret finished, touching her hand to her forehead, and studied their faces. Even Shuli was looking faintly stunned.

“I have said the last part which is Ulthared,” said Yaret quietly, “although you younger ones in particular would not normally be made acquainted with it for some years to come.

But there is no-one now to tell you the Ulthared lore except myself. So I think I have to impart some of it early. Not all. And of course I do not know it all myself.”

They were silent for a moment. Then Dil said in an awed voice,

“Can you say it again?”

“Tomorrow evening,” answered Yaret. “Now it is time for news, if you are willing. But for my part I feel that anyone unwilling does not need to speak. Do you agree?”

Since she was asking rather than commanding them to agree, Charo said, “Just for this evening, maybe. But I think it’s important that everyone joins in or there’s no point.”

“Elket never says anything,” said Shuli.

“I have heard Elket speak,” said Yaret mildly, “so perhaps seldom would be more accurate.”

“I’ll go first,” said Dil. “It’s always youngest first.” Yaret turned on him a long, thoughtful look and said nothing. To Charo’s astonishment Dil began to squirm.

“Please may I go first,” he said.

“Please do,” said Yaret.

“My news is that somebody arrived today, and we don’t know yet what she is like, but she did bring some food and she has more in her own cellar and we hope that she is good.”

“Shuli next,” said Charo.

“The hens are roosting behind the orchard. I think they’ve settled there. I found an egg.”

“Elket.”

“Somebody arrived,” said Elket, and left it at that.

“Now you,” said Dil to him.

“I think you summed it up, Dil,” he said. “Somebody arrived. Thank you for the food. We hope you will not go just yet.”

“I will not go just yet,” she said.

“Your turn,” said Dil.

Yaret did not speak immediately. Then she said quietly, “You know my news. It was your news two weeks ago. It is that everything has changed. And everything will keep on changing; and not always for the worse.”

“That wasn’t news,” objected Shuli.

“Forgive me.”

“Now best thing,” said Dil. “Can I do best thing first?” Charo realised that Dil had been missing evening council. Perhaps he had been wrong to let it drop.

“Go on,” he said. “Best thing today.” It was really meant to be Thanks-saying, but they were following the simplified children’s version of evening council for Dil’s sake.

Dil beamed. “We’ve got a horse! I mean, it’s nice to have you here too, but we’ve got a horse!”

“He likes horses,” explained Elket.

“She’s called Poda,” said Yaret, “and really she should be rubbed down properly before nightfall. She’s worked hard these last few days.”

“Can I rub her down?”

“Anyone who wishes can,” said Yaret. “She’ll enjoy that. I have a brush in my pack.”

“Then that’ll be my best thing ever today,” announced Dil. He sounded even younger than usual. To Charo it seemed that Dil did not fully grasp the catastrophe that had come upon them. Sometimes he appeared to just ignore it; although at nine he should have better sense.

But Elket protected him, perhaps too much.

“Shuli’s turn for best thing,” he said.

“I found an egg,” said Shuli. “Elket’s turn.”

“We have the promise of more food,” said Elket, “in the cellar at your weaving place.”

Now Yaret looked at him. He knew what the obvious thing to say was. Of course her arrival ought to be the best thing of the day. But everything was so confusing. He did not know what she would want to do with them or what might happen. In one way she had upset everything.

“Your coming here,” he said, because he had to.

“I hope it will be,” Yaret answered gravely, “but you cannot know that yet.”

He nodded and bit his lip.

“My turn,” said Yaret.

“It’s finding us,” said Dil.

“Yes, it is. I don’t know how you four come to be here, and you don’t need to tell me now.

Tell me later if you wish. But I am very glad to find you.”

She looked at Charo, so he said, “Now. Plans for tomorrow. Dil?”

“I want to ride the horse,” said Dil. “Please.”

“Find more eggs,” said Shuli.

“Find more food,” said Elket. “Not just eggs. Anything.”

Charo took a deep breath. “Work out what we’re going to do,” he said, because it now seemed slightly more possible than it had been before.

“Those are all good aims,” said Yaret, “and since my brain seems to be rather slow at present I think I should just fall in with all of them. So tomorrow morning, if you are willing, I will take Dil and Elket and the horse back to my farm, and load up with provisions there and bring them back. If Shuli wishes for help in hunting eggs I will do that on our return.”

“I don’t need any help,” said Shuli.

Yaret bowed her head in acknowledgement. “And then,” she went on, “at tomorrow’s evening council, we can start to work out what we’re going to do.”

Chapter 2

Dil was in ecstasy.

He had never been atop a horse so fine, so grand, so high-stepping. He had hardly been on any horse at all apart from the miller’s old dray horse; and Poda was completely different.

Charo had said that Poda looked like a nobleman’s horse and Dil was ready to agree.

Last night he had rubbed her down diligently and today her coat gleamed like a ripe conker. He bobbed in the saddle and was not entirely comfortable, but he was very happy.

Elket and the new person walked alongside. Dil knew she was a woman in male mode but sometimes he forgot. He forgot her name too. Yaret. That was it. She was most important to him as the owner of the horse.

He didn’t understand how a weaver could own such a good horse, however. That was something to be explained later on that evening, after the council, when Yaret had promised to tell them the story of her travels. She was going to explain her leg as well. He had nearby collapsed in amazement last night, in the cellar before bedtime, when she had said,

“Ah, just to warn you. This one’s wooden,” and had pulled her own foot off. Pulled it right off! And then passed it over for him to look at! He rehearsed the story to tell his friend Armendo and then remembered that Armendo was not there. At that, the panic began to grip him and it made him grip the horse in turn until she grew restless.

“What is it, Dil?” said Yaret, who was walking beside him.

“Elket,” he said. “Do you think Armendo is still hiding in the woods?”

“It’s possible,” said Elket. “You never know. He might be.”

“How long would he have to hide before it’s safe to come out?”

“A bit longer, perhaps,” said Elket. “Until those men, you know, have really gone away.”

“The stonemen,” said Dil soberly, his joy at the horse all dissipated. He shouldn’t have thought about Armendo. But how could he just forget him? He missed Armendo and it made him ache in the middle of his chest.

And he missed Ma and Da almost as much, Ma anyway, although they seemed to be already further away somehow – Ma especially. He had cried lots those first few days, hoping Ma would reappear and comfort him; but really he knew that she wouldn’t. He thought he had already got used to her not really being there, because she had been so busy with the baby for so long. And the baby had been so ill. It might have died anyway, even if. Even if.

If. Not.

Go away, he said silently, go away, go away, and although he was not quite sure who he meant they did go away after a few minutes and left him sitting on the proudly-stepping horse and with a farmhouse just coming into sight. It was burnt, of course, all the houses were, but as they entered through the non-existent gate he found the ashen shapes on the ground quite easy to ignore. He and Charo agreed that they weren’t people any longer.

“Are they still people?” he challenged Yaret, ready to put her right if she said yes.

“Not like us,” said Yaret. “I think not. No.”

“I keep thinking that we ought to bury them,” said Elket.

“Again,” said Yaret, “I think not. Not just yet, at any rate. It would be a huge and difficult job and it isn’t really necessary as far as hygiene goes. Also the disturbance to the ground would be quite obvious.”

“To those stonemen,” said Dil. “If they come back again.”

“Yes. At the moment, undisturbed as they are, those – those effigies that were once bodies

– they protect us. They make the town seem uninhabited, untouched. We might regard them as our guardians.”

Dil looked at the blackened shape nearest the house and at once his perception of it changed. It was now a guardian, a burnt and almost magical thing. It seemed to have acquired a different sense of life.

“Guardians,” he said. “That’s what they are.”

“At present guarding our food,” said Yaret. She helped him climb down off Poda, which he found he was quite glad to do after all.

“Ouch,” he said.

“It’ll take you a while to get used to riding so far. You’ll have to walk back home anyway, because Poda will be carrying a lot of weight.”

That sounded encouraging. And when they entered the burnt farmhouse and descended the ladder to the cellar he saw that there was plenty of food here. Elket stood next to him and just sighed, a great sigh of relief. It was the same way Ma used to sigh after Da had gone out for the day. But that was before…

No. No. Go away.

It went away quite easily this time, because there was so much to look at and discuss and do. What to take first? A bit of everything, they decided, so long as they could carry it. Oats, flour, apples. Dil found a bag of dried peas but Yaret told him to leave those where they were.

“We might need them in the spring,” she said. Dil didn’t understand why peas would be important in the spring and not now, but before he could ask Yaret, she picked up a sack of oats and gave a cry of pleasure at what lay underneath.

“Ah! Excellent,” she said. “These will be useful.”

Dil ran over to see what she’d found. It seemed to be only a pile of old empty sacks and some folded cloth. Yaret unfolded it. It was a long woollen piece, rather blotchy and mildewed. She sniffed it.

“Hmm,” she said. “But we can wash it and use it as a blanket. The winter weather will come soon. Do you get cold at night?”

“No,” said Dil.

“A bit,” said Elket, and he remembered that Elket had given him her cloak. It made him feel slightly guilty but not much because she didn’t have to.

“We can stuff some of the sacks with heather or dry grass,” said Yaret, “or even bedstraw, if we can find any, to make ourselves more comfortable at night.” Dil had been quite comfortable at night. But then Elket had told him he could fall asleep anywhere. She said he could fall asleep on the blade of a knife.

There were no knives or anything so useful down in the cellar. There were some candles and soap, however, which Yaret took. They loaded apples into one of the sacks and carried the cloth and everything else back up the ladder to the horse. Yaret filled the saddle-bags until they bulged and threw a sack of oats over the saddle. When Poda tried to reach round for it with her nose, Yaret smiled and then looked sad.

“My donkeys used to like oats,” she said.

Dil did not want to ask about the donkeys because he assumed they were now black sticks inside one of the burnt sheds. But she went on,

“I had two donkeys. One of them went lame by the river Thore and I had to leave them both behind. So they’re probably very happy running free up there, with the wild donkeys for company.”

He breathed more easily again. “What are they called?”

“Dolm and Nuolo.”

Elket said, “By the river Thore? Isn’t that an awfully long way away?”

“It is.”

“Will the donkeys be in your story tonight?” asked Dil.

“Oh, yes. They play quite an important part. And so does Poda, and another horse called Narba.” Yaret was staring at the sheds but he had the feeling she was looking at something much more distant. Charo did that too sometimes.

He was suddenly quite glad that Yaret was here. Charo was all right but he wasn’t yet a man. Yaret wasn’t a man either but she was half-way; and she was nearly twice Charo’s age, she said. It meant that she seemed to know a lot of things. And she was very calm.

“Before we go,” she said, “let’s look around for anything else that we can salvage. I’m thinking about anything metal and tools in particular.”

So they divided up the farm buildings between them and had a rummage in the ash. Dil knew that he was getting very dirty, and he had no other clothing to change into, but neither had anybody else so it didn’t matter.

He found a spade without a handle, and a garden fork with one prong melted like a worm but the others still proudly straight.

“Good,” said Yaret. “Those could be very useful. We’ll leave them in the kitchen here for now.”

Elket had found in one outhouse a jug – not metal but pottery, with only one thin crack – a metal carding comb, and a whole bunch of iron spikes lying by a wall.

“They were for fencing posts,” said Yaret. “Again, let’s leave most of the spikes here.

They’re heavy. We’ll just take a couple with us.”

She washed the jug at the little spring and they all drank from it. The water tasted good.

There was a spring behind the inn but the water from it tasted smoky and bitter. Charo said it would improve.

“And I found more cloth,” said Yaret. She seemed to think that cloth was important. It was probably because she was a weaver. “It was in the dye-baths. They must have almost boiled dry; but the cloth seems to be all right, just a bit shrunken. I’ve rinsed it and put it in the cloth-shed to dry out. We’ll take it back next time.”

He liked the sound of that. “Next time, can I ride the horse again?”

“It might be someone else’s turn. Like Shuli’s. Does she ride?”

“I don’t know,” said Dil. “I didn’t really know her much before.”

“She lived with an aunt and uncle just outside the north edge of town,” said Elket. “She said she woke up when the moonlight fell on her face through the window and then she heard people marching past and smelt a smell and had a strange feeling, so she climbed out of the window and went to see what was happening. And when she saw what was happening she ran away.”

Dil knew that this account was not entirely true, because there had been no moon that night. He thought Shuli had probably been up to no good, but there was no point saying that, and in any case it seemed like telling tales.

Yaret paused. “So they came at night?” she asked.

“Before dawn,” said Elket. “It was still dark. My mother woke us up – she was awake every night with the baby – and she pulled us out of bed and told us to run. I only had time to grab some clothes and then she pushed me out of the door and just said ‘Look after Dil.’

We’re on the west-side so we ran straight out across the field towards the woods. There was fire to our left. We could smell – the smell – and we felt – so – so weird and shaky that after a bit we couldn’t move and we had to sort of sit down. Nobody saw us in the field. We were invisible. But we could see fires starting up all over the place and they spread so fast and burnt so high, so high you wouldn’t believe, and then there was a lot of shouting and everything was just burning, burning everywhere. And then as soon as we could move again we ran into the woods.”

Dil listened. This was the most that he had heard his sister speak since it had happened. He knew that she was missing a lot out. They had seen more than that – people on fire – those

men running after them with swords, black against the roaring orange dazzle of the flames –

the one that – the ones – Go away, go away, go away, go away. It wouldn’t go. He ran over to the horse and began to stroke her frantically, making sure she wasn’t scared. He didn’t want her to be scared.

“It’s all gone now,” he said to her. “It’s all gone.” And eventually it was. The horse was warm and quiet and solid and didn’t seem to be so scared any more.

Yaret and Elket were still talking, in low voices, but he didn’t want to listen to them. So he stayed to stroke the horse until Yaret came over with an apple and some biscuit and they ate that before they set out home. He gave the horse half of his apple because she was such a good horse.

As they left Yaret turned to look back at the farmyard, and nodded. She had already brushed the ash across the kitchen floor with a piece of bushy shrub she’d found somewhere, so that no footprints were visible. Now she did the same in the farmyard.

“We do that at the inn,” said Dil. “It was Elket’s idea.”

“And I am copying it, because it’s a sensible idea,” said Yaret. She smiled at Elket, who said nothing now, as if she’d done all her talking in one go.

He didn’t mind the walk back home. Some of the woods were still nice and not burnt at all although they smelt of smoke. Dead leaves crackled underfoot the way they were supposed to. There was a squirrel and a jay.

“Nuts!” he said eagerly. “Cobnuts! Look, look!” There was only one hazel-tree with nuts and the squirrels had already had a share, but he could still fill both his pockets until they were knobbly. The others filled the jug.

Closer to the town they passed many of the no-longer-human shapes, but now that Dil knew who they were he didn’t mind them. They were the Guardians. He felt that they approved of the day’s work. It was very pleasant to arrive back at the inn and show the food and everything else to Shuli and Charo. He felt triumphant, as though he had saved everyone.

A bit, anyway.

“I found a few cobnuts too,” said Charo, “but not as many as you, Dil.” He looked at Yaret. “And I did what you suggested.” He held open the small bag which she had given him that morning. “You were right; there were still quite a lot of beans beyond the south-side in someone’s garden.”

She peered into the bag. “Good. These we will keep in a cool, dark corner of the cellar, for sowing in the spring.”

Now Dil thought he understood about the peas. They were for sowing too. But that worried him. It meant that they would still be here to sow the peas in spring. It meant that they would still be here to pick the plants in summer. It meant that there would be nobody else to do it for them, and maybe no other food. He felt himself start to go tight as the aching gripped his chest again.

Yaret looked at him. “Just in case,” she said. “Because I think there will be many other stores of food to find, and other people to join up with. But it is always good to be prepared for everything you can.”

“All right.”

After that it got better again. Shuli arrived not with eggs but amazingly with a whole chicken.

“A fox had just got it,” she said. “I chased it away. Can we cook it?”

Charo pulled a doubtful face. “I don’t know. I’m worried about smoke. We haven’t tried making a fire yet,” he told Yaret.

“I can understand that. And it has not been too cold. But now is perhaps a good time to try a fire, while the weather is dry and the whole town is still smoking slightly. At least it

appeared to be from a distance. There are probably embers still smouldering in places, so any smoke you make will be disguised.”

“We’ll need dry wood,” said Shuli. “Cutting down trees won’t work. They’ll smoke like mad.”

“Perhaps around the edges of the town,” suggested Yaret, “would be the best place to look, where wood stores may be partly burnt but not entirely.”

She looked at Charo, who said decisively, “In that case, we’ll all go out again now, to look for dry wood, so that we can cook the chicken. Bring back all that you can carry.”

“We can store it in the outhouse,” Shuli said. “It still has nearly all the tiles on the roof. I climbed up to check.” Dil wished he had done that.

But he was allowed to go with Yaret and the horse, although he did not ride it. Shuli went with them this time. Shuli said they ought to try the forge because it used so much wood for fuel. Dil thought it would all have been burnt, but she said there was a wood store by the stream, and sure enough there was. Fire had caught its edges but it had not burnt entirely.

They filled the sacks they’d brought. Now he understood why the sacks were important.

Sacks and peas. Yaret loaded up the horse. He noticed that she was watching Shuli. Yet she asked no questions, until she said, “Anywhere else?”

Shuli thought. “Holvet’s farm,” she said. “He must have had a wood store. He was a pig-farmer and kept a smokehouse.”

“We should check that for hams,” said Yaret.

“I already did. There aren’t any. The smokehouse is gone now.”

“Pity. Still, we’ve done well here. We’ll save Holvet’s farm for next time.”

“I’ll take a proper look tomorrow,” Shuli said.

Dil led the horse home. She obeyed him every step and stopped when he stopped. He thought he might already love the horse. Yaret didn’t seem to mind; she was still watching Shuli, who was looking around at everything. But they didn’t talk much.

Back near the inn Charo had found a place to build a fire. It was actually a real fireplace in the house two down from the inn. You couldn’t see it until you were right inside the ruined house, but Charo had cleared the cavity and the ashpit. There was still a bit of chimney over it although it went nowhere.

So they built a fire and put the chicken over it, spitted on one of the fence spikes they’d brought back from the weaver’s. They shoved some of Yaret’s roots into the embers and she added some of the red roots from the inn although they all protested.

“I like them,” said Yaret, laughing.

“Then you can eat them all,” said Shuli, “and leave the proper ones for us.”

When they went outside to check, there was hardly any smoke, not enough to matter. They ate the chicken with their fingers. It was tough but very tasty.

“Tomorrow I will look for wintergreens,” said Yaret. Dil opened his mouth to protest that he didn’t care for wintergreens, before closing it again. He hadn’t believed Elket when she told him wintergreens were important, but if Yaret said it then it might be true.

After the chicken they left the roots to continue cooking in the embers and walked down to the burial ground for council. He had so many things ready to say that they were almost bursting from his mouth. But he had to wait.

Yaret said Oveyn, as before, the Ulthared version which made them all listen almost without breathing. Dil thought it might take him another few goes to remember because it was quite long, and strange, but he decided that it sounded comforting even though he didn’t understand it. Then Yaret sat back while they had the council. Charo led it although he was not the oldest any more.

All the news and best things tonight were obvious, of course: food, horse, wood, chicken.

Dil surprised himself by adding the Guardians, and then Elket had to explain. Yaret said

almost nothing which was strange because she was the oldest. But this time she was quieter than Elket until the plans for tomorrow were discussed.

“We haven’t decided yet what we’re going to do,” objected Shuli. “I mean are we going to stay here or not?” Not staying here had not even occurred to Dil. It alarmed him.

“Where would we go?” he said.

“That is too big a decision to make all at once,” said Yaret. “There are several possibilities.” She waited but when nobody else spoke she went on. “We can stay here in the town, obviously. I think there will be more food and tools to be foraged from cellars and storerooms. It’s just that they are all buried in ash, but we can dig them out. There will be outlying gardens and fields still left untouched. There will be sheep out on the hills if we can catch them. I saw deer spoor in the woods so if they return there will be hunting.” Dil hadn’t seen the spoor and felt put out.

“What with?” demanded Shuli.

“My bow. We can make more bows. How many of you can shoot?”

“I can,” said Charo and Elket together.

“Sort of,” added Elket.

“I want to learn,” said Shuli.

“You’ll need a smaller bow than mine,” said Yaret, “but if we can make one I can teach you.”

“Me too,” said Dil, although he wasn’t sure.

“Not until you’re ten,” said Yaret gravely. That was a long way off; further than he could see at the moment. He was only just nine now. At first he hadn’t been sure that any future would happen. Everything seemed to have stopped. But Yaret was now talking about the future as something assured.

“As long as the stonemen don’t come back I think we could successfully winter in Obandiro,” she said. “Alternatively we could all move to my grandparents’ house; the cellar is big enough, but it is more isolated, and higher up, so it gets more snow. Or we could travel to another town – Byant is the closest – before the winter sets in, and see what the situation is there.”

There was a silence. “Do you think it will be the same as here?” asked Elket.

“We have no way of knowing until we go to see,” said Yaret. “I didn’t come through Byant. On my way from Coba the villages were untouched. But Coba is more than a week away, and things may have changed there too by now.”

“I don’t want to leave,” said Dil. “What if Armendo comes back and there’s nobody here?

What will he do?”

Shuli seemed about to say something. Then she stopped. Then she started again, and said,

“You know, he has a point. There might just be more people out there. Travellers, like you.”

Yaret nodded. “I think, for another week at least, we establish ourselves here,” she said.

“If the stonemen don’t return then I will ride out to Byant and see how things stand there. The days are shortening fast but if I go within the next fortnight I could be there and back before nightfall.”

“Don’t go yet,” said Dil, suddenly afraid of losing her, and the horse.

“No, I won’t go yet. Tomorrow’s plans?”

They all made suggestions. It was decided that they should look for more firewood, and for more places to store it. Yaret suggested that Shuli should scout for wood and she would go to collect it on the horse.

The others would explore houses, starting on the Cross-street, methodically looking for cellars and storerooms or anything useful hidden underneath the ash. Yaret said that anything metal would be good. Knives, pots, needles, hammers, spoons. And if they found a cellar,

they should check not just for food, but for pottery, candles, clothing, anything that they could use.

Charo said he would search the forge and after a moment’s hesitation, she nodded. Any building they went inside, she said, they needed to carefully remove any fresh-looking footprints afterwards.

“At present our tracks are not obvious on the streets,” she said, “but we need to keep an eye on that too. And just in case we see anyone approach the town, stonemen or anybody else, we should agree a plan of action and a signal.”

The plan of action they agreed was basically to hide; and later to meet up at one of four places on the perimeter of the town – the inn, the mill, the Northgate or the Dondel Bridge, whichever was furthest from the danger.

The signal was more difficult to decide. Yaret suggested that they all try bird calls, so they sat there hooting and whistling and squawking until Dil was in a fit of giggles. They fixed on owl because they could all do a shrill “week, week” quite convincingly. It wasn’t very loud but it was better than nothing. He pointed out that owls sometimes called during the day, so an owl call wouldn’t sound too strange, but not very often, so there shouldn’t be many false alarms. And everyone agreed.

Dil felt quite happy by the end of council. There were plenty of interesting things to do and many of them used the horse. Charo had thought of lots of things before, but now that Yaret had arrived it was clear that there were things he hadn’t thought of. Dil hoped that Charo didn’t mind.

So on the walk back to the cellar he told Charo,

“I think you and Yaret both make really good leaders.”

“Thank you,” said Charo, sounding surprised. “But you know the whole point of the council is that we don’t have leaders.”

“I know. But all the same.” Dil felt quite glad that he was only nine and didn’t have to be responsible for anyone else. But he could still be leader of the horse.

Back at the inn he was allowed to brush the horse down and then Elket made him wash himself, and had a moan about his dirty clothes. Since it was starting to get dark and the roots were cooked, they took them down to eat by lamplight in the cellar. Yaret picked some large stones out of the fire and wrapped them in sacks and took them down into the cellar too.

When she unwrapped them and piled them up on the earth floor it was almost like having a little fire to sit near. But not a dangerous one. They ate the roots and listened as she began to tell her story.

It was going to be a long story, she said, and would take many nights to tell. It started with her grandparents and the two donkeys. Dolm was the male, the stubborn bold tough noisy one, and Nuolo was quiet and clever but also stubborn.

The donkeys and Yaret marched quickly through various towns and markets on their way to the first important bit. Which was a burnt-out farmhouse, and he seemed to stand inside it with her and feel the wind blow through. But it was all right because she had already made it clear that everybody got away in the carts, and took the horses with them, although she didn’t know where they had gone. But they were safe and it was also very far away and felt safer for that reason too.

He liked the story being so far away. It made it more of a story and less real. Next she was somewhere that she called the loft, where there might be lions, and then all of a sudden there was a horse galloping out of the forest, with no rider.

“My horse!” he cried, and Yaret looked at him and smiled.

“Our horse,” she said. “And I’ll stop there, and go on with the story tomorrow evening.”

Dil didn’t want to wait till tomorrow but then they had some singing and Yaret led them in a round. He was good at singing and didn’t lose his place once. When they began to get ready

for bed he realised he was very tired. It had been a much busier day than usual. The roots filled his stomach and the story filled his head quite nicely. He gathered it was going to be a rather scary story but so far he hadn’t had to tell any of it to go away.

Chapter 3

Huldarion walked forward to the edge of the escarpment. When he looked back, Thoronal stood on the skyline holding both the horses. Huldarion shook his head in faint irritation.

Why be so conspicuous when you didn’t need to be? But Thoronal thought he was invincible.

As well as always being right.

However, it didn’t really matter, since there was nobody to see them here. These uplands by the Darkburn head were as free of man as any place could be. A strange region; almost otherworldly. What had Rothir said that northern woman called the place? The Loft. It suited it. Remote, aloof.

Not so remote just now. Thield was camped only fifteen miles distant: the town of tents had moved for the winter, not to Bruilde’s meadows as it sometimes did but to a hidden wooded valley not too far away. Today he’d ridden here from Bruilde’s burnt-out homestead at Deloran, which he had visited to see if the northerner’s report had been correct.

When he got there the place was indeed in ruins, although he found unexpected signs of life. Two of Bruilde’s farmhands had returned and were dispiritedly sifting through the blackened debris; but of the whereabouts of Bruilde herself, they could tell him nothing. It had been a darkburn that was responsible, of course – in fact two darkburns, so they said, with a dozen stonemen following: they’d been spotted from the look-out in the cedar tree and Bruilde had organised a swift evacuation in the carts.

But once her household was a safe three miles from the fire, Bruilde herself had saddled up her horse and thrown some things into the saddlebags, and left. She couldn’t say where she was going, she had told her people, because she didn’t know herself.

Huldarion allowed himself a wry inward smile as he thought about Bruilde. At over seventy you might have expected her to settle down to quiet retirement. She was a determined woman, though, and once she took something into her head she carried it through. Wherever she had gone, he had to trust that she could look after herself – despite a crawling doubt that warned him that she had not been seen for several weeks now; and that she was old, and that every person’s body failed at some point.

“Be safe, Bruilde,” he said aloud, although it might already be too late for that. From this long cliff-edge he looked down upon the mysterious vastness of the Darkburn forest disappearing under distant layers of cloud. It seemed almost to steam. Possibly it created its own weather system. Down there, only a mile or so away, was the spot where the crawling darkburn must have pursued Eled before heading back into the forest.

Poor Eled. An admirable young man, lots of potential there if only he recovered.

Huldarion hoped Farwithiel was kind to him. At least Eled was safe. The Riders of the Vonn were all safe, for now: most of the patrols had returned from their far-flung journeys, and were back in Thield or dotted around various farms and villages south and east of Kelvha.

His own trip up to the northern Outlands had been annoyingly inconclusive. General Istard had been a positive. Being from West Vale, not Kelvha, he had the resourcefulness and toughness of those people. A keen and capable soldier, in Huldarion’s judgement; they had agreed that a watch should be kept on the Outland Forts over winter, and the country readied for attack early in the spring. In saying readied for attack the General clearly hoped to be the one doing the attacking.

But whether Kelvha would back him up was another question. The General would put in his reports, and Huldarion would make his deputations – wording still to be decided – and at some point he hoped to go himself to Inner Kelvha. Somehow he needed to win himself an invitation. He hadn’t been there for six years; and last time it had been in disguise. But Kelvha’s friendship was critical to him.

Meanwhile he was living in the chilly tents of Thield. He didn’t mind; the cold seemed to ease the pain of his burnt side to some degree. Although Tiburé had brought some painkiller called belvane back from Farwithiel, he was reluctant to use it unless it became absolutely necessary. Not as addictive as ethlon, she had assured him, but still.

Thield held the additional comfort of company: that of those Riders with nowhere else to spend the winter. However, two of his closest friends – or counsellors, rather, for they were no longer the carefree comrades of his youth – would not be at Thield. Parthenal and Rothir had gone to stay with Rothir’s sister, a calm and practical farmer’s wife whom Huldarion admitted freely to himself that he wouldn’t have minded marrying if he could. He liked her very much. But he couldn’t marry her, of course, it had never even been a possibility: had never even been suggested by him. He had not shown by word or look or touch that he had any preference. Olbeth had chosen her farmer, and seemed content.

As for himself… He sighed. Marriage might be forced upon him soon, and dear stars, how he had sometimes wanted a woman in the last few years, but he wished it could be one of his own choosing. That looked increasingly unlikely.

He walked restlessly a little way along the ridge. It was easy for Parthenal. He knew that Parthenal had been hunting, up at the Outland forts. His friend had probably thought that nobody would notice; and maybe he wouldn’t have noticed, had he not been so attuned to Parthenal’s moods. Hunting … No, that was unfair. His human prey were unlikely to complain at being caught. They might complain about being dropped again so quickly afterwards.

Parthenal appeared unchanged by his last trip. Not so Rothir; he’d come back more set, more silent than before, if that were possible. Seeing the woman go over the cliff seemed to have affected him despite the surprisingly good outcome. Yaret. She sounded like a useful person; although Rothir had said little about her. He’d learnt more from Parthenal. He had gained the impression of something turning in the depths of Rothir’s mind, rising to the surface after long submersion. Perhaps it was the result of the stonemen’s unforeseen movements – the same sense of approaching conflict and resolution that he himself felt. The awareness that the long years of waiting might be coming to a head.

On this spot Rothir too had stood. A sound man. He did not spare himself.

Huldarion gazed down at the forest and a solitary goat on its edge gazed back. Unlike Rothir he had come here looking not for swords or saddle-packs, but for space to think.

So think. Stop rambling, he told himself: and he expected himself to be obeyed. Stand still and consider. What was the right thing to do?

He stood still and considered. He knew what he wanted to do: to forge an alliance with Kelvha, march on Caervonn and claim it back as lawful king. To claim Caervonn had been his wish for the past twelve years. That did not make it necessarily the right thing for him to do.

What would be best for Caervonn? If he loved his homeland as he hoped he did, he should choose what would be to its greatest benefit, not to his own. But he had so little information to go on.

Not much news had come out of Caervonn since his exile. Traders said it was prosperous enough: its terraces still alive with lights and music in the evenings, its craftsmen dextrous, its huntsmen successful, its satellite demesnes awash with grain.

But that was news from traders, not from Caervonn itself. There was no diplomatic route in. Caervonn had cut him off and shut him out. Its only ambassadors were murderous stonemen sent out to pursue him; if not by Olvirion’s command, then with his connivance.

From the people of the city itself, all he had were rumours.

It was the latest disturbing rumours that made him seek for answers now. Stonemen were marching through the fields, not marching on Caervonn but around it in a threatening flow.

And with them were the darkburns that had made the city so obedient to its ruler.

As for the self-styled king, Olvirion himself – was he even still alive? He was little seen and only from a distance. Some of the rumours spoke of doubles. And where Adon stood in all this was unknown, although he was bound to be somewhere, and dangerously so.

No, all was not well in Caervonn. But if Huldarion tried to take back his city uninvited he would be fought bitterly; and even if he were successful – which would need Kelvha’s help –

he would be resented and opposed. And in debt to Kelvha. Better to be invited back, although how that could be done he did not know. But he would certainly be more persuasive with Kelvha’s weight behind him.

Before any of this became possible he needed to put Kelvha into debt to him. So he had offered the forces of the Vonn to defend the Outland Forts and anywhere else that they might be required. It would not be the first time that the Vonn had fought for Kelvha, although most of those previous occasions had been mere border disputes. Still, that history meant that although Kelvha might sneer at his Riders in terms of numbers, they would not sneer at the Vonn’s ability in battle. That had proved itself.

So. That was what he wanted to do. But what ought he to do?

Moving his gaze upward from the vapours of the Darkburn forest and its hidden river, he sought for some message in the long unattainable coastlands of the sky. Give me an answer, he thought, although he knew that any voice he heard could only be his own.

Nevertheless. Advise me now. Help me to find some answer. He looked along those territories made of cloud and light and felt his heart empty upon some strangely glowing shore. Such a light. Such inhuman glory. We make of it what we will. But it is just itself.

Protect the land. Protect the people.

He stared out at the layers of light, thinking, well, that was my own voice. And an inane one at that. What it said was obvious enough. Protect the land. Protect the people.

Which people? My people? Caervonn’s people? All people? The people.

So not my people only. What I choose to do will affect far more than the Vonn. I have to take that into account. Protect the people.

Protect the land. Which land? It is all land. Why does the land come first?

The land always comes first. Without the land there are no people to protect. The land is sacred.

That was something he had never thought before. Momentarily bewildered, he cast his eyes down from the island kingdoms of the sky to the green clouds of the forest, a multitude of trees, each its own realm and of its own importance. Who was he to decide that his small kingdom should take precedence?

Protect the land. Then protect the people. Very well. That was something to think about, at least.

He turned to go, when a movement close by caught the corner of his sight. A small person had just stood there, surely? But when he looked there was only a lump of rock.

“So which are you?” he said aloud. “Are you land or people?”

Then he saluted the rock and smiled at his own folly; and set off walking back to Thoronal, still waiting on the skyline.

Chapter 4

Shuli was inside a chimney when she saw the returning stonemen.

It was the chimney of the bakery near the Northgate and only half of it still stood. But in the half that remained, the pigeons liked to sit. In the absence of any net or snare, Shuli had decided that the best way to catch a sitting pigeon was from below. So she was waiting for a pigeon and was peering through a gap between the stones when she saw the movement on the north road.

Only four of them. Red tunics. But this time they were riding horses. There was no small concentrated thing of darkness. She climbed down swiftly from the chimney and stood on a wall behind it to give the signal. Week, week, four times, as loudly as she could. An answering week, week came from the east side; that was a small reassurance that she had been heard. She just hoped the stonemen hadn’t been paying attention.

But the stonemen were making plenty of noises of their own as they rode up to the Northgate. They weren’t trying to be stealthy; so they must be confident that nobody was here.

If they were sure that nobody was here, then what had they come back for? A day out, Shuli thought. A holiday from killing.

She crept round the back of the bakery and padded as silently as a cat – she was good at being a cat – through the blackened rubble to the market hall. Its small bell-tower made an excellent lookout in three directions. The bell had fallen but she scrambled over it and climbed up the inside of the tower to where it had once hung. There she was hidden as long as nobody looked too hard. She trusted that the horsemen would not be interested in the bell-tower.

By now they had split up. Two were riding south through the middle of the town, still making plenty of noise, and looking up and down the silent ruins of the streets they passed.

The other pair rode into the market place below her and dismounted. They went up to one of the Guardians and kicked at her and laughed. Shuli was coldly angry. She always thought of that Guardian as female and did not like to see her kicked. They kicked a couple of others too, before stooping to examine them. They seemed to be looking for something that they did not find, until they came to the corner where the dead stoneman lay.

One of the horsemen exclaimed on seeing the body; and the other one came over pulling what appeared to be some pliers from his pocket. Shuli couldn’t see what he did as he bent over the corpse, but after a couple of minutes they both moved off, talking to each other.

They seemed to talk a form of Standard but with a strange abruptness. She thought one of them said,

“There were only two left here, weren’t there?” Two what, she wondered? They mounted their horses and rode off casually down the west street. In her opinion they were not very good riders: they kicked and slapped their horses more than should be necessary. The horses were not as large or grand as Poda but looked agile and tough.

Shuli stayed where she was while the stonemen moved around the town. She trusted that the others all had the sense to stay where they were too. She hoped the last person out of the cellar had swept the entrance to the inn. Yaret had been strict about that. It was one of the few things she was strict about.

The other things were performing Haedath every morning, and holding evening council.

They had not missed a single council in the last two weeks, since Yaret had arrived. Shuli put up with evening council, although she didn’t care for it because everyone just stated the obvious. Or what was obvious to her, at any rate.

The stories and songs that followed in the evenings were better. They sang Madeo’s songs: Yaret was teaching them unfamiliar ones and encouraging them to write their own. That was fun although Shuli couldn’t sing. She was better at dancing and practised the Rannikan diligently in private. That was something Yaret couldn’t do, with her wooden leg.

However, she had found that she respected Yaret, and day by day had seen no reason for her respect to be withdrawn. She was glad that Yaret had ridden out to the town of Byant three days ago and not today, or she might have met the stonemen on the road. Yaret had come back looking grave and said that Byant was the same as here, only worse because there appeared to be nobody left at all. There might have been some survivors in the outlying hamlets – just a feeling she had, she said, although they were burnt out too and the streets appeared empty. But she had run out of time to look more thoroughly.

“I expect there are people who got away, and then came back like us, but they were hiding,” Dil had said, and everyone agreed – even Shuli – because keeping Dil happy seemed to be important for all of them. That was because he was the youngest. Although Shuli was the second youngest she sometimes felt like the oldest. She knew she was cleverer and less afraid than either Elket or Charo. She had done more exploring than either of them and had learnt the Ulthared Oveyn on the second time of its saying. She would have memorised it on the first if she hadn’t been so surprised.

By now she could not see any of the stonemen although she could still hear faint voices and hoof-treads in the deep silence of the town. They sounded unexcited: so the Guardians were doing their work. Thank you, Guardians. That was something Yaret said.

Yaret had brought bad news from Byant, but also good. On her way back she had found a survivor – a shepherd on the hills – although he had refused to leave his lonely hut five miles away, or his flock, saying he had to stay to look after them. The stonemen had taken many of the sheep but he had been gathering up any strays. A strange gaunt man, said Yaret, whose words were halting as if he seldom spoke to anyone. But as Yaret pointed out, he now knew where to find other people; and they in turn knew where the sheep were to be found.

Better even than that, Yaret had brought home more chickens. Live ones, from a Byant garden. The hen coop was burnt out but the chickens had been clucking nearby.

“It was Shuli that made me think of it,” she said, as she carefully unwrapped one from the sack she’d carried it home in. It was quiet while held fast in the sacking but began to fluff and squawk indignantly as soon as it was released. They had to catch it again and take the sacks over to the east side where Shuli’s chickens often roosted.

Shuli knew there were no foxes to harass them. She presumed the foxes had all left the area when the fires took hold. She had lied about the dead chicken she had found: it had not been taken by a fox at all, but had been running round in frantic circles with its eyes pecked out. So that would have been crows. She’d wrung its neck.

When they had released the chickens from the sacks, to her delight she saw one was a cockerel. Yaret unwrapped it very carefully.

“It took some catching, believe me,” she said, and showed the peck marks on her arms.

“And we might be fed up with it soon if starts doodle-doing all the time.”

However, the cockerel had kept its crowing for the dawn. It was at present lurking with the chickens somewhere on the east side. The stonemen had not gone that way, so they were safe, and Shuli hoped that everyone would keep still and hidden just a little longer because now she could see the stonemen emerging on the west-road, riding slowly.

They were leaving town. After a moment one of them kicked his horse quite viciously into a gallop and instantly the others did the same. They were racing each other. Another five minutes and they were out of sight.

All the same she waited; and when she did descend from her look-out post, it was very cautiously. She went straight to the inn.

Everyone else was there already. They looked relieved to see her although they should have known that she would be all right. Only Yaret and Elket had noticed her owl signal; but Charo and Dil had heard the noise of the approaching stonemen with just enough time to hide in the cellar. Dil looked quite shaken.

“I thought they’d given up searching for people here,” said Elket with an unnecessarily long face.

“They weren’t looking for us,” Shuli told her confidently.

“What makes you say so?” Yaret asked.

So Shuli explained what she had seen in the market place and what she deduced from the stonemen’s careless behaviour.

“Let’s go and hunt for what they found so interesting,” Yaret said. All five of them walked up to the market place and stepped courteously over the Guardians to look at the dead stoneman’s body.

There was a line of holes where the stones had been around the blackened head. It was satisfyingly gruesome. Shuli hoped the stones they drilled into their skulls hurt them. She did not care in the slightest what happened to any of the stonemen after what they’d done. She wished she had a bow or sword to fight them with, although she knew that jumping down from her tower today to attack them would have ended in her death. But all the same.

When she had gone to the forge last week to look for the old swords that used to hang on the walls she found that Charo had got there first. She wished she had remembered the swords earlier, because she knew Charo had taken them although he wouldn’t say. He didn’t trust her to be sensible with a sword. She wondered if Yaret knew about swordplay as well as archery.

“You’d think they would have taken the dead stoneman away,” said Charo now in some disgust, “to bury him.”

“That doesn’t seem important to them. But the stones in their heads evidently are,” Yaret replied. “Yet they’re not gemstones. The ones I’ve seen were more like flint.”

“Perhaps they’re rare,” said Charo. “Rare round here, I mean. So if the stonemen need more stones maybe they have to re-use the old ones.”

“Why would they need more? Why do they need them at all?” asked Yaret.

“The stones must have some special meaning,” suggested Elket. “They might give them…”

“Status,” said Charo.

“Yes.”

“Power,” said Shuli.

Yaret looked at her thoughtfully in that way she had. “What sort of power?”

“Power over the other stonemen.”

“Mmm. What puzzles me,” said Yaret, “is why they’ve waited so long to come back for the stones, if they’re that important. These bodies have been lying here for a month now.”

“Perhaps they didn’t have the right tools before,” said Shuli. “It looked quite difficult to get them out even with pliers.”

“Perhaps they were busy,” put in Dil, “and couldn’t come back until they had horses. You can do a lot more with horses.”

“And you can travel further,” Yaret said with a sudden smile. “You may be right about that, Dil. They may be travelling a long distance to reach us. Which makes it all the stranger about the stones. If we could find one of the stones we could check if there’s anything unusual about them.”

“What about the other dead stoneman, the one outside the forge?” asked Charo.

“They went there too,” said Shuli dampeningly.

“Let’s go and check.”

But sure enough, when they trooped over to the forge to look, the burnt corpse lay discarded without its coronet of stones. They had all been removed.

“That’s a shame,” said Charo.

“And there were only the two dead ones,” Elket added.

“That’s what the stonemen thought as well. I heard them say so. But they were wrong.

There is a third dead stoneman,” Shuli said. “It’s underneath the Dondel bridge.” They all turned to stare at her. She shrugged. “It wasn’t important before.”

“It might be now,” said Yaret.

And off they trooped again, back across the ashen town to the north-west edge where the stoneman lay sprawled beneath the bridge, hidden in the reeds. He was not burnt like the others had been and had evidently drowned in the shallows of the Dondel brook. There was not much of him left and what remained was not very much like a human any more.

Yaret told them all to wait on the bank while she waded to the body and turned it over.

Shuli saw Yaret take a knife from the man’s belt and was annoyed with herself for not searching him when she first saw him.

Then Yaret used the stoneman’s knife to poke and prise at his head. It took quite a while.

Eventually something fell with a small splash into the water. Yaret retrieved it and washed it before bringing it back to shore. When she held it out for them to inspect, it looked a little like a thin arrowhead, sharp at one end, but shaped into a rough dome at the other.

“It doesn’t look anything special,” said Charo.

“I think it’s horrible,” said Elket vehemently. “It’s been inside a man’s head. And it’s so sharp! How could they?”

“They take painkilling drugs for it, apparently,” said Yaret absently, to Shuli’s chagrin.

She thought about the stonemen in Yaret’s long ongoing tale, which was continuing nightly.

Currently several stonemen had just been killed at the entrance to a cave by the man Rothir, of whom Shuli approved. She approved of Tiburé as well. She had decided that she might quite like to be a Rider of the Vonn if such an option became open to her.

Meanwhile there was plenty to do here. It was decided to leave the stoneman hidden underneath the bridge in case they wanted any more of his stones. He didn’t smell much: the water seemed to have washed the smell away.

Then the others went back towards the inn to make the evening fire before it got dark.

Shuli told them she would be working on a cellar she was hopeful of, on the north-side. In fact she had already dug out most of the entrance. It looked as if this cellar was going to be a good one. She could see at least one barrel inside.

But she did not return there now. Instead, once the others had departed, she hung around the Dondel bridge, poking about in the water for anything else that might have fallen in. It had occurred to her that the other two dead stonemen had had no weapons by their bodies, yet in the first attack when she looked back from her hiding-place across the fields she had seen all the stonemen carrying slightly curved swords.

She paused with that picture static in her mind for a few seconds: the upraised sword, the running woman silhouetted by the flames. It had happened. She would not forget. Meanwhile she did not let the image run on in her head but concentrated instead on the contents of the stream. Not to think about it unless you wanted to: that was the trick. She found it easy. She didn’t even think much about her aunt and uncle. They were gone. She thought about the present and the future and looked at the past only when it was necessary, for information.

The stonemen must have taken their dead companions’ swords. But they might well have missed this one. Downstream was the place to look. The banks were obscured by overhanging weeds, so she took off her shoes to wade in. The slow waters of the Dondel were not much more than knee deep. When she turned round to check how far she was from the bridge, she saw the lin.

As soon as she looked, it disappeared, of course, and became a stray bedraggled branch poking through the water. She bowed and said the rhyme:

“Woodwone, woodwone, hob or lin,

Grace to thee and all thy kin.”

She wondered if this was the same lin as she had seen last time. Or was it a lin at all? The Dondel lin was usually to be found on or underneath the bridge, not all this way downstream.

It might even be a hob whose home had burnt and had to seek refuge here. There had been a hob in the school; all the children knew that, although they never mentioned it to Anneke the teacher. It had often lurked around the stove, and turned itself into a lump of wood whenever it was looked at. Perhaps this was the school hob. Shuli knew that some people were sceptical about the existence of hobs and lins, but she knew what she had seen and she trusted her own judgement.

When she looked back at the water she saw the sword. Her heart seemed to skip out of time for a second. Were the two connected? The sword and the lin? It was obviously the stoneman’s sword caught in the weeds against the bank, for it was long and slightly curved and starting to grow rust. It would need cleaning and oiling but then it could be very useful.

She pulled it out and tried to wield it. Too heavy. But she herself would grow – was growing fast at present. She wondered if Yaret could wield this sword, and if so, whether she would give Shuli lessons.

But no, she wouldn’t tell Yaret about the sword just yet.

“Thank you, lin,” she said, in case the sword was somehow the lin’s doing – although she didn’t see how it could be. This was probably not the school hob after all, but just the lin that had always lingered around the Dondel bridge.

It was strange that she had seen it so often recently, however. Even before the stonemen first arrived. It might have been several weeks before. She had been seeing the lin – or different lins or hobs – all over the place. After the fire happened, she had vaguely assumed it must be something to do with that; but now that she considered, she realised that such vague assumptions were a mistake. She needed to be precise. As sharp as this sword.

Climbing back onto the bridge with the sword, she felt quite proud but also unusually anxious. There were a number of things going on now that she didn’t understand, and she liked to understand things. The stones; the lins; and as she stared out down the east road, a new thing. Three of them.

“Week, week! ”

She did the owl screech for the second time that day, knowing it might well terrify the others. But it might just be necessary.

As she watched, though, she soon realised it was not. The three people approaching were not stonemen after all. They were on foot and the middle one was supported by the other two.

The tall one on the left carried a long, hooked stick: a shepherd’s crook. The two others wore long dresses, like Elket’s before she had cut it and stitched it into breeches, although on Elket it did not seem like proper male mode. She was the wrong shape. Male mode was sensible, in Shuli’s opinion. At least her aunt had never objected to that.

Two females in dresses, she thought in some disgust. We don’t need more girls unless they’re me, and they never are. We need more male mode, or more men.

Nevertheless she stowed the sword carefully beneath the bridge, intending to hide it later on in her new cellar; and then she ran across the fields to meet them.

Chapter 5

“Haven’t you done here yet? The twins have just arrived.”

Rothir looked up from the anvil. He knew how he must appear to his sister: over-busy, over-heated, aloof and stupidly obstinate in his desire to keep working till the last possible minute and beyond.

“I’m just finishing these arrowheads while the fire is still hot,” he told her.

Olbeth stepped inside the forge, shielding her face. “You said you were only going to do the sickles and shears. So why all the arrowheads?”

“We’re going to need them.”

“Not yet, Rothir. You’re acting like a man obsessed. Leave it all here and come into the house.”

Rothir sighed and counted arrow-heads. Twenty five. That would last a single archer about four minutes.

He was out of practice at blacksmithing. But he was getting back into practice now, and getting fit into the bargain; and staying warm. That last was an increasing bonus as the winter winds swirled in. Olbeth’s farm tucked in amongst the hills had drier pastures than those lower down, but also harsher weather.

Most importantly of all, here in the farmhouse forge he was staying solitary. He wasn’t normally unsociable, and winterfest at Wiln and Olbeth’s had always been enjoyable in the past. He just wasn’t enjoying it now. Too many things weighed on him. Empty farms, burnt-out buildings. Rows of captives, trapped and shackled, at the mercy of the stonemen while he galloped away free with Arguril – abandoning at least some of them to death by darkburn.

That and other things beat at his mind. The steady thump of hammer on anvil and the fierce heat of the fire seemed to match his mood. They were a reminder of all that he had failed to do; and all that was yet to come. Hence the arrowheads.

“Come on,” said Olbeth. She wasn’t going away. So he sighed again, put down the tongs and hammer and shovelled out some of the spent charcoal from the hearth before he took off the heavy leather apron.

“Wash,” commanded Olbeth, so he washed his hands and face in the basin by the door.

“Now meet and talk.”

“You’re very severe for a younger sister, do you know that?”

“I know that. It’s the only way to be, with you. You’ve got soot in your hair. Goodness knows what your wife will do with you when you get one.”

“Don’t,” said Rothir, running his hands through his hair.

“Why not? You will get one. Forget poor Gwenna. You never really knew her anyway.”

“Evidently not,” said Rothir. He had told Olbeth about the change in Gwenna. Not all the details, obviously, although he probably could have told her even those and she would still have listened patiently with only the smallest grimace. She was an attentive listener.

“You look better since you had that haircut,” she said as she led the way back across the twilit farmyard through flickers of blue snow. “Try and persuade Parthenal to let me cut his too.”

“I won’t be able to.”

“Tell him he’d look just as beautiful with short hair.”

“Oddly enough, I don’t think he cares what he looks like,” Rothir said.

“No, he takes his looks for granted. But he’d care soon enough if he lost them. Boots off.”

He obeyed, again, stopping in the porch to prise off his boots and caress the two great dogs that raised their heads to him as they lay there. They preferred the porch to the noisy warmth inside the house, a preference that Rothir sympathised with. He envied them their quiet

undemanding companionship; even with the wind blowing they were reluctant to come inside. Stubborn as donkeys sometimes. No, not donkeys. Stroking their shaggy ears he tried to make himself as placid as the dogs, content simply to be here. Yet he felt strangely hollow.

Through the door he pulled on the fur slippers that were waiting and stepped into the fire-hall which seemed already far too full of people. Half a dozen of them were sitting at the table while four men were gathered round the fire which crackled loudly in the old stone fireplace.

Despite the lamps in every corner, the hall was a constant shift of shadows, as restless as the wind. In the darkest corner was the cradle where baby Doval slept. The greater the noise the better he seemed to sleep. Olbeth hurried over to peep at him and give the cradle a gentle rock.

Rothir went up to the fire and nodded to Parthenal and Wiln, Olbeth’s husband. Then he greeted the newcomers.

“Sashel. Gordal. Good to see you both. How goes it?” He liked the twins, who were big, young, tough, uncomplicated men. If they had any complications they kept them to themselves – or kept them between themselves, for they shared a half-hidden communication system of looks and grimaces. They were keen on horsemanship, weaponry, hawking and eating, and excelled at all of them.

“So Olbeth managed to drag you away from the forge,” said Sashel with a grin. “Where’s the fine sword that you’ve been making?”

“I’m starting small,” said Rothir. “Arrowheads. I’ll work up to pocket-knives soon.” He found he was able to talk to them readily about bladesmithing, about the right edge for a sword and the best quenching methods to achieve it. Such a conversation suited him. It was interesting and useful, yet it touched on no emotions.

When they moved on to falconry and Parthenal joined in, with his decided views on the trainability of merlins, Rothir felt himself ease inwardly a little. Maybe he could get through this winterfest, if only all the talk would stay so practical. But despite the recent heat of the forge and the current heat of the fire he was still aware of a chilly emptiness inside him.

He looked over at the women seated round the table with Olbeth. They were shaping salops – the small fruit-dotted doughy cakes that would be griddled on the fire after dinner. A stodgy winter speciality. Olbeth and her youthful friend Durba were dextrous from long practice; Maeneb and Alburé, not so much. Maeneb looked faintly horrified as she tried to pull away the sticky dough that clung to her fingers. Alburé made ambiguous animal shapes and talked loudly and laughed a lot, with an occasional glance towards the fireplace. She seemed to have her eye on one of the twins, or possibly both.

But it was good to see Maeneb there and joining in. Olbeth had been her friend from childhood; she had adopted Maeneb, Rothir sometimes thought, when Maeneb had no other companion. And Durba seemed a little like Maeneb in character, although almost ten years younger; she was equally reserved. Olbeth was currently doing her best to make them smile.

Looking down on their doughy efforts were the two farmhands, Naileb and Calenir. They were also Riders of the Vonn, although when Naileb said gaily that she preferred a milkmaid’s life, he suspected that she wasn’t joking. Calenir was an awkward youth but good-natured enough.

It was Olbeth, he thought, who held everyone together. Her compact, capable figure was at the centre of the gathering, as briskly warming as the fire. Now she stood up and announced,

“All hands to the table! Parthenal, bring those large plates from the dresser, please. Sashel, could you carry the pot over from the stove? Wiln, you’re carving, I’m afraid.” She grinned at her husband, the lanky and taciturn farmer who was only person in the room not of the Vonn. Every time Rothir met him he felt for him an increased liking and respect, as a man who knew his business but never forced it upon others.

“I hope everybody likes their venison chunky,” Wiln said to the room at large, “as that’s the only way I carve.”

“He practises on tree trunks,” explained Olbeth, “with a hatchet.”

“Get Rothir on to it with one of his new swords,” suggested Parthenal.

“He’s not even on to knives yet,” Gordal pointed out.

“I can bring a nice sharp ploughshare over from the forge, though, if you like,” said Rothir. “Or a horseshoe.”

“Oh, that’ll do the job.”

“You should have seen the meals in Inner Kelvha,” declared Alburé. “A lark inside a partridge inside a hen inside a goose inside a swan! All decorated with feathers and carried to the table by two men in gilded gauntlets.”

“How did they carve that one?” asked Sashel.

“The servants carved it – very carefully. I got the impression that if they broke a slice they might just have been dragged out of the dining hall and whipped.”

“Now, how would you stuff venison?” mused Naileb. “Shrew, mouse, rabbit, badger, sheep, then deer?”

Rothir joined in the laughter. But he was reminded painfully of some moment – where was it? Eled back in Farwithiel, smiling as he tried unsuccessfully to repeat a sequence of animals he’d been told. Poor Eled. The hollowness inside him seemed to grow.

It appeared that Parthenal and Maeneb did not remember, or did not make that connection.

For Parthenal sat sleek and smiling, while even Maeneb, a little separate from the others at one end of the table, did not look as uncomfortable as Rothir might have expected amidst the joviality. It made him feel increasingly alone.

When they began to eat there was plenty of talk about Kelvha, and gales of laughter from the twins, as Alburé, recently returned from Kelvha City with her mother Tiburé, described the customs there. She made fun of the bleached hair and heavy gowns and ornaments her host had been so proud of. She mocked the etiquette that had to be adhered to, and the stern looks if anyone tried to follow the procession in to dinner in the wrong part of the line.

Rothir joined in when he could. When he couldn’t, he pretended to. He didn’t take in many of the jokes he laughed at. What was wrong with him? Here he was at a well-laid board with family and good friends, a warm fire and the knowledge that no work needed to be done during the coming winterfest. Olbeth would drag him away from his anvil for the full four days of festival. Nothing to do but eat and drink and talk. He shrank from the prospect.

And after the meal, which seemed endless, people forever saying, “Oh, I’ll just have one more shred of meat, I’ll just have another spoon of gravy,” his face aching with the effort of smiling, there was more talking and smiling to be done around the fireplace while the doughy salops cooked. He hoped it would soon be done and they could have music: he could stop talking and smiling then.

Olbeth came over to him and offered him a griddled salop.

“What’s the matter?” she said quietly.

“Nothing’s the matter. It’s all very good, as always.” He made himself smile at her again.

She didn’t look convinced.

But he could have given her no better answer. He’d tried to put the stonemen and the darkburns in a box. Set them aside, don’t think about them for the present. So he wasn’t thinking about them now; yet he still felt hollow and had no idea why. In previous winters he’d been appreciative of his stays here, had enjoyed the sense of shelter from the harrying winds with their load of blistering sleet. He’d thought of the sheep huddled on the hills and had been relieved and grateful.

In those days he’d been happy. But then so much of happiness was relief. He remembered thinking that not so long ago, with Eled…

Safe now, Eled. Warm in Farwithiel. No need to think about him either.

So why couldn’t he be happy now? Gordal was shouting in laughter at some joke, something to do with an animal shape that Alburé had made, impolite no doubt, and she was running to find spare dough to make another. The salops were browning on the griddle and the fire crackled heartily and yet he seemed to feel the chill sleet-laden wind run wild through the hall. The hearty fire held no heat and its noise was muted and winter filled the space around him with its roaring silence. Such an empty space. So cold. Voices were lost within it.

What was wrong with him?

Then of a sudden the door banged open and winter entered in reality. With a snarl and a bad-tempered whine of the wind, a small tempest of snow was thrown across the hall. The cold air charged in and attacked him.

Everybody turned towards the open door. In the sudden silence the baby gave a wail.

But Olbeth did not move towards the cradle. She was staring at the doorway: and she was first to speak.

“Bruilde! Where have you been?”

Chapter 6

He hadn’t recognised Bruilde, wrapped up as she was in a snowy cloak and hood and shawl.

Moving stiffly, she began to shed them, layer after layer. Olbeth plucked the wailing baby from the cradle and handed him to Rothir, who held him against his shoulder, a warm writhing bundle. Then she began to fuss around Bruilde, helping her to pull off her wet boots and standing her before the fire. Bruilde did not say anything at first.

“Give me a few more minutes,” she muttered after a while. “I got quite cold out there.

Wiln: could you see to Hama? She needs food and stabling.”

Wiln nodded and went out. Olbeth tried to get Bruilde to sit down by the fire, but she snorted and declared,

“Coddled in a blanket? I’m not an old lady yet. Well, I am, but not that sort of old lady. Is there any of that food left, or is it just bones on the board?”

“There’s plenty of food,” Olbeth assured her.

So they all ended up sitting at the long table again, but this time there was no joking or laughter. Baby Doval squirmed and whiffled on Rothir’s shoulder. Meanwhile Bruilde did the only talking, while she ate.

On that disastrous day so many weeks ago, at her homestead of Deloran, she said between mouthfuls, she had received half an hour’s warning of the approaching stonemen from the lookout in the cedar tree. After swiftly summoning the household and leading them to what she hoped would be a place of safety, she had gone straight back to see how much of her home remained.

“It was all on fire,” she told them matter-of-factly. “Nothing to be done about it. The stonemen had already moved on, so I rode along their trail to see where they were going next.

They hadn’t got far, even allowing for them being on foot. After three miles or so I saw them hurrying back down the road towards me. There were about ten of them, following two darkburns – one big, one small. I got out of the way and watched them from a distance, in the cover of the trees. I don’t know what had gone wrong; but somehow they’d lost control of the darkburns. They kept trying to get round in front of them and failing. It just seemed to have the effect of pushing the darkburns faster and further the wrong way.”

She paused to tear off a hunk of bread and dip it in the gravy. Parthenal began to say something about the stones, when Rothir stilled him with a hand on his arm. He didn’t want to break Bruilde’s flow.

“Well, they kept this up all day,” she said, “chasing their runaway darkburns, and I kept following at a distance on Hama. They weren’t looking behind them. I could have ridden right up and hit them on their stony heads before they noticed me. By evening they were arguing. Couldn’t seem to agree if the chase was worth the trouble. The two darkburns were about a hundred yards apart by this time, but running in the same direction, parallel to each other. And they didn’t stop for nightfall. It was only the rough terrain that slowed them enough for the stonemen to keep them within sight.

“As the light failed half the stonemen gave up and sat down. The other half kept following the bigger of the darkburns. So I followed the smaller darkburn, alone.”

“You followed a darkburn?” asked Calenir, wide-eyed.

“Why not?” said Bruilde. “It was easy enough to see the trails of sparks that the darkburns left behind them, to say nothing of the flares of burning grass. Lucky it was damp. I could hear the shouts of stonemen chasing the larger darkburn to my right but they never realised I was there. The shouts got further and further away as they lagged behind: before midnight I had ceased to hear them. In the morning I found myself far south of the moorlands, at the Darkburn head.”

“Near the long escarpment?” asked Rothir, now deeply interested. With the steady sound of voices baby Doval had gone back to sleep. His breath was warm and damp on Rothir’s shoulder, his small body curled on a supporting hand.

“Beyond the escarpment, close to the forest. The darkburns ran along its southern edge, heading east. I was worried that they’d plunge right into the trees; I didn’t fancy following them in there.”

“Wouldn’t they set the trees on fire?” asked Durba.

“Only if they stood still. It’s all too wet. Anyway, the darkburns didn’t go into the trees, and neither did they stand still for an instant. They went at a speed between a stroll and a gallop and stopped for nothing. I could walk Hama some of the time and still keep up, but by mid-morning she was struggling, and so was I.” Bruilde paused to drink. No-one spoke.

She set the mug down. “So I stopped and rested for a few hours, and later in the day picked up their trail again. And followed it all through the next night by the glowing embers.

In the morning I galloped for three hours until I saw the darkburns ahead, still only a few hundred yards apart, still going. Then I began to see small groups of stonemen, at a distance, and had to stay amongst the trees and out of sight. Some of the stonemen tried to catch the runaway darkburns but they got away and kept heading east. I knew I couldn’t keep up with them for much longer, but I decided to head east too in any case, since I had come this far.”

“That was dangerous,” said Parthenal severely.

“Thank you, Parthenal. I never would have guessed. I spent the next week lurking, riding, hiding, nearly drowned in a ditch a couple of times. The place was criss-crossed with stoneman roads although the numbers of actual stonemen seemed quite small.

“I soon discovered why. When at last I reached the Fyleway that leads to Caervonn, marching along it was a huge company of stonemen, with tents and carts, some holding caged darkburns. I estimated six thousand men: and as they marched away west, I saw more starting to march in from the east to replace them.”

Again Parthenal began to say something. This time he stopped himself as Bruilde resumed.

“I watched them pass, and I kept heading east, against the flow, just inside the forest edge.

By this time I was out of food and hungry. Tired, too. I saw a farmstead up ahead and watched it for a while. It wasn’t a stoneman place; it belonged to some of the old forest people, the farmers whose ancestors were there before the stonemen came. I saw an old man going in and out, his two sons and their wives.

“I walked up and offered them silver. Told them who I was. I was ready to run if they kicked up a fuss, but they didn’t. No love there for the stonemen, I gather; they take heavy tithes of the farmers and give them nothing in return except the threats of burning. I stayed there for two weeks, regathering my strength, and learnt a lot. Those farming people could be of use to us if their numbers were greater. But there are only a few hundred of them, scattered.”

“There are only about twelve hundred active Riders of the Vonn,” Olbeth pointed out.

“And farmers are generally tough people,” added Wiln. “Don’t discount them.”

“I don’t. But these ones were disheartened and ill-fed,” said Bruilde, “and jealous of Caervonn, which seemed to them a land of plenty. An insular, closed land. They poured out their grievances against Caervonn but I don’t think they would get involved in a fight on either side. They tolerated the stonemen, unwillingly, because they had no choice. Feared the darkburns.

“And then one night the old man spoke up. He usually sat quiet in a corner. The others seemed to think he was – not exactly an old fool – but confused by age. Someone to be humoured, but not believed. Yet I think he could be worth believing.” She stared into space.

“Why? What did he say?” asked Rothir.

“He spoke of darkburns as being something ancient, something that was part and parcel of the land, a phenomenon that had previously been extremely rare and had been contained entirely within the Darkburn forest. He said the darkburns had emerged and multiplied only in the last twenty years.”

“Twenty years? Not twelve?”

“He was vague, I’ll admit,” Bruilde said. “I asked them where in the forest the darkburns had come from. He said, from the elbow of the river: meaning the area enclosed by the bend of the Darkburn north of Caervonn. In the most secret and inaccessible part, he said, were the smoking shafts from which the darkburns crawled.”

“I haven’t heard of those,” said Parthenal.

“I think I have,” said Bruilde. “I’ve heard stories – legends, maybe – about hills of ash that rise amidst the forest, and deep chasms between them, with an intermittent pouring of smoke into the sky. I think those are the smoking shafts he was referring to. He said that when they are most active the forest is obscured in cloud.”

“That’s possible,” put in Sashel. “I’ve heard of something similar far up north, beyond the Outlands, of places where the earth’s heat rushes to the surface in fountains of boiling water.

Never been there, though.”

“There’s been no reason to,” said Rothir. “But on our last journey we did try to explore the area near the elbow of the Darkburn river from the north. It wasn’t a success. Two of our company were ambushed, with results that could have been fatal.”

Bruilde looked at him. “Anyone hurt?”

“Eled.”

She sighed and shook her head.

“Later,” said Olbeth. “What else did you hear, Bruilde?”

“Many scraps of news about Caervonn. All rumour, naturally, but they are for Huldarion to hear first. I saw Caervonn itself, from a distance. It looked the same as ever.” Her face was wistful and Rothir felt an answering pang of longing.

“You went that far?”

“Further. Listen. When I left the farmers I continued east, beyond Caervonn: but I could not linger close to it because of all the enemy encampments. They reached a long way through the hinterfields to where the hunting forests used to be. They are being chopped down now.” At that, Parthenal drew his breath in sharply. “And then quite suddenly the land was clear of stonemen; I could ride far and fast and not see a soul. The only fort that I got close to appeared almost unmanned.

“This was three days past Caervonn. There was smoke over the trees, and the quantity of it made me wonder. And then I found a road, where no road used to be, cutting from the plain straight through the Darkburn forest.”

They were all still now, listening, and watching Bruilde’s gnarled finger draw a rough map on the table.

“Caervonn. The river’s crook: its elbow. And about here, I’d guess, the road. Crudely made – trees just hacked down and thrown aside as if some massive animal had plunged into the forest – but wide enough for carts to travel two abreast. I followed the road through the trees but to one side: I kept fifty yards away, even though I saw no travellers on it other than a couple of small groups of stonemen. When the undergrowth grew thick I had to leave Hama and walk on alone. I didn’t reach the river. Too far. But my guess is, that where there is a road that wide leading to a river, there must be a bridge at its far end. Otherwise why build it?

Certainly the road leads to somewhere important – and protected.”

“Protected how?”

Bruilde licked her lips and then took a drink from her mug. For the first time she seemed reluctant to speak.

“By two things,” she said. “Two types of thing, rather. The first I saw after I left Hama. As I drew closer to the road, a darkburn crossed the track from left to right in front of me. It was a darkburn of a kind I have not seen before. Long, lizard-like, with low crawling legs, perhaps some rudimentary wings or stumps of what once had been wings before they became charcoal. It was not entirely black. It had fire within. A glow.”

She paused, thinking, and in the silence the baby hiccupped on Rothir’s shoulder. It was getting ready to cry.

“It’s all right,” he murmured to it, “we’re still here.”

Bruilde took a long breath and went on.

“The darkburn saw me. Detected me, I should say, for of course it had no eyes. But it raised what might have passed for a head and turned round to crawl along the road towards me. It moved so fast that I was startled. I began to back away and was becoming aware that I would have to run, and although I’m a strong walker I’m no longer good at running.

“But before I could turn tail, the darkburn… rebounded. That’s the only way I can describe it. It appeared to hit a barrier which I could not see. It was thrown back. It tried again; the same result. Then it opened its head – I can’t even say its mouth, for there was no mouth until it opened it and fire came out.”

“Fire,” said Parthenal.

“A long flame. Very long. The flame bounced off the unseen barrier too, and rebounded back upon the darkburn. At that it turned and crawled away from me down the road. Once it was out of sight I walked forward along the road’s edge, hand outstretched, until I found the barrier before me. There was nothing there to feel – yet it was a point beyond which I could not go no matter how I tried. It wasn’t age or tiredness that held me back: it was something else. That’s all that I can say.”

“So… wizardry?” asked Rothir. He did not care for wizardry as an explanation for anything, but sometimes it was the only answer that would fit. The baby snuggled into his shoulder, mewing faintly.

Bruilde nodded. “I assume so. Wizardry guarding the road and whatever bridge might lie beyond it and whatever might lie beyond the bridge. As for the darkburn – I can only say that it occurred to me that it might have been a firedrake.”

There was a silence, until Olbeth said quietly, “Another thing of legend.”

“Yes. The firedrakes of legend are lizardlike, or snakelike: creatures of flesh and blood with teeth and scales and spreading wings. The thing I saw had only rudiments of those. But it did have those rudiments. There was the fire glowing at its heart and flaming from its mouth. So, yes, I think it might have been a firedrake. Or was something related to it.”

“So the legends got it wrong,” said Gordal.

“How should I know?” snapped Bruilde. She looked very tired.

“Please go on,” said Olbeth. “And then?”

“And then I admit I’d had enough. Call it cowardice. I turned around and retraced my steps out of the forest and back past Caervonn for many weary days, all the way to my friendly farmhouse. They were pleased enough to see me once I showed them the rest of my silver. I stayed there again for a little while. Well, quite a long while. I admit it, I was weary.

Couldn’t face the long ride back to Deloran to pick over the ruins. So I stayed with the farmers, and gathered as much information as I could about business in Caervonn, and tried to milk the old man for anything he knew; which wasn’t much. They were kind enough. Once I was fully recovered they gave me provisions to get back home. To a home that wasn’t there.”

Her tone was prosaic. Olbeth said gently,

“Your home is always here, Bruilde, and of course at Thield too.”

“Oh, Thield. I had a good farm of my own.” She looked around the warm, firelit hall with its dancing shadows. “I hope those stonemen never come near this place.”

“They’ve all gone north and west,” said Wiln, “by all accounts; those companies you saw, with the caged darkburns.”

“And when spring comes we’ll be going after them,” said Parthenal with relish.

“Meanwhile you can rest here, Bruilde. Regather your strength, and enjoy the winterfest.”

Bruilde nodded. She looked suddenly older now than she had while she was speaking.

When the younger ones began to talk amongst themselves, Olbeth took her arm and led her to the fire.

“No blanket, I promise,” she said. “But you have to eat salops.” Bruilde half-laughed.

Rothir sat down near her with his snuffling burden and thought about firedrakes. When he was a young man on an early tour he had almost convinced himself that he had seen a firedrake. It had been above the Gyr tarn; spiralling high, the wrong shape for an eagle – the wrong shape for any bird. He had watched it until it disappeared into the clouds. But it must have been a firedrake of the imagination only, if the reality was a charcoal monster with burnt stumps for wings.

Olbeth came over to him and held out her hands for Doval. Rothir felt almost reluctant to give him back: he was so easy to protect and soothe. If only all his tasks were that simple and satisfying. As she hefted the baby onto her own shoulder, Olbeth gave him a look that he could not interpret. But she said nothing.

The hush that had fallen during the sobering story had already given way to merry-making. Back at the table, the twins and Calenir were beginning to engage in a noisy pickle-eating competition, egged on by Alburé and Naileb. Beside the fire Bruilde nibbled at a hot salop and closed her eyes.

Parthenal was watching her with a smile curving his lips. Rothir knew his friend was up to mischief even before he spoke.

“We learnt something about you, Bruilde,” said Parthenal, “while you were on your travels.”

“Don’t, Parthenal,” muttered Maeneb. “Not now. That’s not fair.”

Bruilde’s eyes reopened, sharp and interested. “So what did you learn?”

“About you and a weaver from some outlandish town up north. Your long, close friendship – is that the right word for it? – with an old man called Ilo. We met his grand-daughter.”

The elderly woman sat up straight. “Yaret? You saw her? Where did you meet her? What did she tell you?”

“She told us nothing about that particular matter,” Rothir said reluctantly. “It was in a letter that she carried.” He knew he would have to relate the story now, to stop Parthenal making too much of it.

So he outlined, as briefly as he could, the sequence of events from the finding of Eled to the reading of Ilo’s letter in the Gyr cave. He did not quote its reference to that old love affair between Bruilde and the weaver, but it was obvious that Bruilde understood. He was aware that Olbeth as well as Bruilde was watching him intently while he spoke.

“Well,” said Bruilde. “I hesitate to call Ilo a sentimental old man – but really. That was all long in the past, before Yaret was even thought of. You know our family always had the farm. We used to visit every summer from Caervonn… And so did Ilo, peddling his cloth.

Good cloth.” She looked thoughtfully into the distance. “Ilo could be very charming. Still can, I imagine. It’s a few years since I saw him, and I don’t expect to see him any more. But Yaret is thriving, I hope?”

At that, all three Riders who had been there hesitated. It was Maeneb who said,

“Well, she’s alive, although we thought she wasn’t for a while.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

Then Parthenal told the tale of the stonemen’s ambush and Yaret’s fall over the cliffs of the Thore, leaving her foot behind – trapped beneath the prostrate horse until a stoneman hacked it off. Rothir could not bring himself to speak even when Parthenal described their discovery of her down by the roaring river. It had seemed miraculous at the time – a reprieve sent by the stars – and yet it felt extraordinarily painful to recall it now. Olbeth was still watching him although he couldn’t think why. It wasn’t as if it was the first time she had heard this tale.

But it was Olbeth who asked, “Once she’s able, where will she go to from Farwithiel?”

“Home,” said Parthenal. “We promised her a horse; Eled’s Poda. The Wardens will see her out of Farwithiel safely.”

“She’s probably already home in Obandiro by now,” said Maeneb. “With a wooden leg.

She was asking the wardens how soon she could use one.” Rothir felt himself turned to stone.

“Well,” said Bruilde, “I must say I am not surprised. A resourceful person, young Yaret.”

“Her grandfather’s letter said she had led a sheltered life,” remembered Maeneb.

“Sheltered?” Bruilde laughed and then shook her head. “That was Ilo for you. Couldn’t see further than his own nose in some respects. It was clear who was really keeping their business afloat the last few years; and it wasn’t him. But he wouldn’t want to admit that…

Sheltered?” She shook her head again. “The tales she told me of her travels. Even in disguise

– what did she call it? Male mode.”

“What sort of tales?” said Maeneb. “No, it’s all right. I can guess.”

“Wiser than her grandfather,” said Bruilde.

“She called me a polecat,” said Parthenal, to Rothir’s amazement.

Bruilde studied him and nodded. “Apt.”

Feeling he had better speak before his silence became conspicuous, Rothir said, “You didn’t like her, did you, Parthenal?”

“I didn’t trust her at first,” admitted Parthenal. “That assessing way she’d look at you, weighing you up, working you out. She saw too much. But I liked her well enough by the end.”

The end. Yes. But then Bruilde said,

“Well, I shall look forward to welcoming Yaret and her wooden leg next year, and hearing her account of everything.”

“Next year? You think she will still travel?” asked Rothir, amazed again.

“Of course she will. She’s not the woman to let a little thing like a missing foot stop her from doing what she wants.”

“I hope she comes peddling her wares here,” said Olbeth, her smile dancing. “I’d like to meet her.”

“At least she should be snug and safe back in Obandiro for winterfest,” said Bruilde, stretching her arms, “just as snug as we are now. My goodness, how I’m stiffening up. Did you say something about a hot drink, Olbeth?”

“Spiced wine all round,” said Olbeth, and she hurried away to fetch it. Parthenal picked up the lutine and began to strum a well-known melody. Rothir pulled up his stool to listen. In the background was the familiar buzz of his friends chatting, laughing, humming, yawning: the noise that half an hour ago had left him in a pit of loneliness had suddenly become a comfort.

Whatever the reason, winter seemed to have retreated from the place for now.

Something had begun to thaw inside him. He couldn’t define what had just changed.

Perhaps it was the baby’s warmth upon his shoulder. But maybe, he thought, winterfest at Olbeth’s wouldn’t be so chilly after all.

Chapter 7

Elket looked back doubtfully at the line of footprints they had left behind on the forest road.

Although the snow was thin, not even half-covering the ground, she thought the trail might be too conspicuous.

“Don’t worry,” said Yaret, seeing her look. “It’ll snow again before the day’s end and hide all our footsteps. Meanwhile we’d better get a move on if we want to be back before dark.”

Elket tried to nudge the horse into a faster walk. It complied for a few yards before slowing down so that she had to nudge it again. It didn’t recognise her authority; maybe because she didn’t recognise it herself.

This was her second trip to the weaver’s farm, although the fourth for the horse and Yaret.

Charo had accompanied Yaret on one visit and Dil and Shuli on a third, when they had come back with a whole sackful of cobnuts from the trees behind the farm. But this time it was Yaret and Elket on their own. It would be the last trip before winterfest – possibly the last for a few weeks, said Yaret, if the snow set in as it usually did; so they would be wise to stock up well.

“We need a cart,” she said to Yaret now, as the horse slowed again.

“Perhaps. I don’t know how to make a cart. I expect Shuli could tell me. In fact, she’d probably show me where to find a set of wheels. But I suspect Poda has never pulled a cart in her life and might not be inclined to learn. What we really need is another horse, one that’s used to haulage. A cow would be nice too.” Yaret gazed out thoughtfully at the snowy landscape. “Two or three cows. The stonemen can’t have taken them all. Once the days start to lengthen again, after winterfest, I might go out and look.”

“Do you want another turn on Poda now?” Elket was aware that Yaret was limping. The stiffness in her step was hardly obvious at most times, but by the end of the day she became more halting. Now that Elket knew what had happened to her foot (and that part of Yaret’s story, a few nights ago, really had shocked even Shuli) she was more concerned about it than she had been before. She felt almost protective of the weaver even though it was Yaret who had now become their adviser and protector.

“No, I’m fine. We’re nearly there now.” The weavers’ farm came into sight, its blackened walls blurred and softened by the snow. Yaret walked into the yard past the – no, Elket could not think of them as Guardians. They were bodies. Bodies everywhere.

At least there were only the two here. But as she glanced down at them, Elket gasped.

“Stop!”

Yaret stopped at once. “What is it?” she said quietly.

“Someone’s been here. On horseback.” Elket hardly dared to speak in case she was overheard. She pointed to the double line of hoofprints in the snow.

Yaret looked down; and up again, her mouth open. Elket had never seen her look so at a loss before. Fear thudded in her chest.

But after those few seconds’ hesitation Yaret strode swiftly forward into the yard. She gave a long, rising whistle – and round the corner trotted a donkey, head nodding, long ears flecked with snow.

“Nuolo! Oh, Nuolo!” And then Yaret was down on her knees and hugging the donkey as if she never wanted to let go. A second, slightly bigger and darker donkey followed the first, purposefully nosing at her back. Yaret raised her head.

“Dolm,” she said. There were tears in her eyes. “Dolm. Oh, you wonderful, wonderful donkeys.”

Elket realised that the hoofprints were smaller than the horse’s. Her fear had been so immediate that it had stopped her noticing. She needed to stop worrying about everything, she knew: but what else was there to do but worry?

She got down from Poda and gave the donkeys a tentative pat. Their hair was rough and matted and their legs muddy but they seemed healthy enough. Yaret ran her hand up and down their legs and along their bodies, before looking up with a smile.

“We could try and build a donkey cart some time,” she said.

Elket smiled back, because she could see how pleased Yaret was; and the others would be glad about the donkeys too, especially Dil. But she was anxious. The horse already ate a significant amount of the oats in the cellar; they put it out to graze in the outlying meadows but that didn’t always seem to be enough. It wouldn’t even eat the red roots. How much extra fodder would these donkeys need?

As if guessing her concern, Yaret said, “They’ve survived well in the wild, from the look of it, so they should be happy in the fields around Obandiro. I like to give Poda a little extra food because we work her hard. But if you’re worried about it, we’ll start to dig up some of the beets in that field south of town. We should do that anyway before the ground freezes.”

That made Elket feel a little better – for a moment. But as soon as she descended the ladder into the weavers’ cellar and perceived how fast the stocks of food down there had shrunk, she felt worse again.

“There’s enough to get us through the winter,” Yaret said, although Elket did not see how she could know until winter was over.

“But now that there are three more of us–”

“We’ll have to be careful, it’s true, but think of all that we’ve discovered in the houses just on the Cross-street and the Market-street.”

“But the Market-street cellars had all fallen in.” The houses had been floored with wood, unlike the buildings on the Cross-street, and any cellars were full of a jumble of burnt beams and broken planks.

“It’s true the things in there are harder to retrieve, but it’s still worth trying. There was that pea-flour and old clothing only yesterday, and there’ll be plenty more waiting to be found.

Ondro has been very useful in helping dig the cellars out.”

Ondro was the shepherd whom Yaret had met near his lonely hut, which he had refused to leave until he brought the two girls to the Dondel Bridge. It was true that he had been useful; for although he looked thin and wiry he seemed to be remarkably strong, and would dig all day without complaining. Indeed, he hardly said a word at all, even at council, but just gazed around with a slightly vacant face. Yaret had said that he wasn’t vacant at all, just not used to expressing his thoughts to other people. Elket wasn’t convinced that there were many thoughts in there to be expressed. Certainly nothing like the busy complexity of her own.

Stop thinking and start doing. That had been one of her father’s complaints to her. At least Ondro said nothing like that. By the stars, I wish you’d been a boy. Though Dil had never seemed to content him either. Lazy little lump. Get off your backside. And Dil would get a wallop. Sometimes she would deliberately aggravate her father so that the wallops landed on her instead. Their mother had been too tired and sad to interfere.

It had been a shock to find her father gone. She hadn’t exactly hated him, but she had wished so fiercely and helplessly that he was different that it was alarming to know he had been turned into a pile of ash. She knew it wasn’t her fault. His death was nothing to do with her longing for him to be changed. She hadn’t wished him dead. But she felt he blamed her for what had happened, because blaming her was what he did. He was definitely not a Guardian.

While she packed roots into a sack from the diminishing pile in the cellar she wondered if Lo and Renna’s father had been like that as well. Although Lo hadn’t said anything about

him, she felt it might explain Renna’s continuing silence. Nearly two weeks and Renna still hadn’t spoken. Both girls – women really – were thin, thinner than Ondro, lighter and frailer than Elket, with hollow eyes and sunken cheeks. They were from a neighbouring farm and Lo, the elder by two years, was nineteen but looked much older. Worn-out. Yaret said quietly to her that the farm had obviously not prospered.

It was Ondro who had explained how, soon after the coming of the darkburns, he’d found the two girls cowering in their burnt-out shed. He was hunting for lost sheep at the time, and had led them back to his shepherd’s hut. He seemed to regard them as oversized lambs.

When Yaret had met him on her expedition to Byant he’d thought it wiser not to mention the concealed girls: but two days later, when he saw the returning stonemen in the distance, he decided that he had to get them out. He was just in time. From their hiding place behind a hedge he watched the stonemen ride up to his hut, kick down his door and set fire to the interior. No darkburns required.

So then he’d brought the two girls to Obandiro. Ondro didn’t seem to mind his change of circumstance. He just accepted it and got on with whatever needed doing, although he made it clear that he would still be going back at intervals to check his sheep.

The girls were different. They slept, and lay around, and did almost nothing. It made Elket angry. Their laziness added fuel to the smoulder of resentment that lay deep inside her. She knew the resentment was there and didn’t see why she shouldn’t let it stay. It was a change from worrying, and felt more powerful. She had enough to be angry about, after all. Why not start with the girls?

When she carried the sack full of roots up to the horse, she found Yaret bundling matted lumps of speckled wool into a saddle-bag.

“Raw wool,” she explained, “from the bottom of the washing-tub. I doubt if my grandparents even knew it was there.” Elket nodded. Any extra bedding would be welcome.

They had split into two cellars now that there were eight of them. It wasn’t an even split: Shuli and the new girls shared the cellar they’d cleared two doors down, while Ondro and the others remained underneath the inn. Elket didn’t mind Ondro. He was old, about forty maybe, but she’d rather share with him than with the idle girls.

Yaret went back down the ladder and came up with the remains of the dried fruit and a sack of oats – the last sackful, although there were still some left back home.

Home… That was what the dingy cellar underneath the inn felt like now, as much home as Elket’s drab old house had been. Since the baby, her mother seemed to have been hardly there in spirit. She was somewhere else, somewhere the sick baby was. Elket thought the baby would have died soon anyway and that would have broken her mother’s heart. So. It was to have been called Jeret but they never called it that; it was just a gasping shivering little animal with blue lips and no strength in its hands. Poor thing. She allowed herself to think that now. Poor little thing. Poor Jeret.

She found the tears pricking at her eyes again and turned to the donkeys to disguise it, breathing in their warm wet-grass-and-muck smell. She wasn’t even crying for the baby, poor little Jeret though he was, but for her family, given no chance to be different, no chance for anything to change although her father would never have changed anyway. So stop crying.

No point. It was time to go.

On the long walk home Elket led the laden horse and Yaret led Nuolo by an improvised woollen halter. Nuolo could easily have broken it but she didn’t try, and Dolm followed her doggedly. Every time Elket turned round to look, Yaret was smiling. The donkeys would be the obvious choice for Best Thing at evening council.

But she was soon surprised by something better than the donkeys. As they came out of the woods above Obandiro the thin snow along the ground was shaded blue by the fading light.

The whole landscape was a wondrous wash of patterned indigos and twilight blues and slatey

greys that blurred into the distance until they met the darkening sky. A single streak of pale, cool gold lay on the horizon in defiance of the dusk.

She stopped and looked. Poor baby Jeret and her angry father fell away, lost in the blue waves of the fields and trees, their skeletal starkness transformed by snow. This was winter.

My heart feels hot and heavy, Elket thought, but this is beautiful. So cold and beautiful. I shall have to tell… who do I tell?

They were all gone, all her friends, all her aunts and nan and neighbours, all the people that she might have told. They were not Guardians. Just bodies. Just dead.

Beside her Yaret was gazing out as well, with one hand on Nuolo’s back.

“It’s hard to realise,” she said, and stopped.

“I don’t find it hard,” said Elket. She knew her voice was thin and bitter.

Yaret took a deep breath and began again.

“I have sometimes found myself thinking,” she said, “that anger is like a darkburn blazing in the heart. We want it to run out and leap on other people and burn them as well. In that way one person’s anger could set a whole town burning. It is a destructive thing. We all have good reason to be angry now. But if you keep your anger nurtured, and feed its fire in your heart, it can never be safe there, it will burn through. It will escape and damage others somehow.”

“So what do you do with it?” muttered Elket.

“I think… if you can’t quench it, you have to make of it a furnace where something can be forged. A sword, a spade, a ploughshare; something useful. What I mean is, anger has enormous force. So you have to use that energy in the most productive way you can. Whether that is digging or building or hunting or making war or making something else. But you have to shape it and not let it shape you.”

Elket thought about this as she gazed down at the sweeping wonder of the landscape.

“My father was always angry,” she said. “Usually. Nothing was ever right for him.

Everything was my fault.”

“To say that was unfair of him,” said Yaret quietly, “would be to state the obvious. Do you know why he was that way?”

“What do you mean?”

“What was his own father like?”

“I don’t know. I never met him. If you mean that maybe Da was hit and shoved around and sworn at and had things thrown at him as a child and that’s why he did the same to us, I don’t see that it follows. It just makes it worse, because he knew what it was like.”

“But people get trapped in ways of thinking,” Yaret said.

“Then they should climb out of the trap.”

“If they can see how to. Was he the same with Dil?”

“Not as bad. But Dil was a boy. There were three other boys but they were all born early and they all died. There might actually have been more than three… I don’t know. They didn’t tell me.”

“Your parents bore a lot of grief,” said Yaret.

“I suppose.”

“You were the eldest?”

“Yes.”

“Were you his?”

This shocked Elket so much that she did not answer. She took a step back and stared at Yaret, who merely shrugged.

“Maybe I am becoming trapped in my own way of thinking,” she said, “because I have my own small darkburn here to deal with,” and she tapped her chest. “But if you weren’t his child it might explain some of his behaviour.”

“I… Whether I was his or not, he was still my father,” Elket burst out. “He took me on. He was supposed to look after me. That was his job.”

“He knows that. The dead stand in the shadows of the room and bow their heads, for on the shining walls are written all their errors and omissions.”

Elket felt a shiver run up her spine. “That’s Ulthared, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Poor old dead.”

“Yes. They are brought to know what they have done. We all are.”

“I hope it’s not all sorrow and repentance for those…” She gestured at the blue, dead town beneath them.

“Without sorrow there’s no joy,” said Yaret. “Or less intense joy.”

“Is that Ulthared?”

“No. That’s me. There is joy too in the Ulthared but I won’t say it now.”

“Why not?”

“Wrong time.”

Elket sighed. “I still feel angry with him.”

“Then make of it a furnace,” Yaret said, “and think of something useful you can forge.”

Elket kicked at the snow under her feet. “Well. We’d best move on or we’ll be late for council.”

She pulled on Poda’s halter until the horse began to walk. Then she stroked Poda’s strong arched neck in case her feelings had transmitted to the horse, which would not be fair. Poda was a magnificent horse, who made her dream about her owner: Eled, the young stricken Rider who in Yaret’s nightly tale was now lying in a hollow tree in Farwithiel. In last night’s account, the other Riders of the Vonn had just departed and Elket sensed something in Yaret’s telling that was more than plain regret. Maybe she was angry at being left alone to look after Eled, and that was her small darkburn. Elket didn’t know.

At any rate, the whole account of Farwithiel was like stepping inside a marvellous land of Ulthared. Yaret had described the Farwth to an awed silence in the cellar, although Elket had the feeling that she did not say all that she knew. Everyone had listened intently, even the two new girls.

“Those girls,” she said to Yaret now. “Lo and Renna. I know they’ve had a hard time, but it’s more than two weeks now since they got here and they’ve still done nothing.”

They walked on a few more paces before Yaret answered.

“It will take a little longer yet. I think they’ve been starving.”

“We’ve all been hungry.”

“No, we haven’t. Not really. If you were hungry you’d eat the red roots. If you were starving you’d eat grass and leaves and leather, and I think that’s what Lo and Renna have been doing for the last few months.”

“But nobody starves!” cried Elket. “In Obandiro? Starving? ”

“They were outside Obandiro and nobody knew. Ondro saw them occasionally, and he says he did worry about them. Half their flock died of bloat and they had to sell the rest. He gave the family a couple of sheep but he had nothing else to give them. He says he told an alderman about them when he was in town for market, a few days before the stonemen came.

Nothing was done. Well, there was no time, I suppose.”

“But they hardly eat anything,” protested Elket.

“They eat more than they did at first. I think they were so unused to eating, or their stomachs had shrunk so much that… Anyway,” said Yaret, “they’re eating better now. I just wish we had some better food to give them.”

“Is that what’s happened to all Shuli’s eggs?”

“Yes. It was her own idea.”

Elket felt ashamed. “We could grind up cobnuts,” she suggested after a moment, “with oats or flour, and make them into little cakes.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. It would be a good thing to try.”

They were almost at the town now and Elket could see the ruins of her old house beyond the truncated market-tower. There was an inconspicuous trickle of smoke coming from the fire-place on the Cross-street: they still used the same cooking fire, although now they had cleaned out the inn’s own hearth and had begun to keep a second, smaller fire in there to gather round in the evenings. The fires would be essential once winter hit the town in earnest.

One of the cleared cellars had produced two metal buckets, so they set one over the new fire for warm water in the morning. It was a wonderful luxury. They had even washed and dried some clothes.

The cellar was increasingly cold at night – it didn’t help that Yaret insisted on leaving the hatch open by day, so that it wouldn’t get damp. They had to leave it propped slightly open at night, too, for ventilation. For warmth they made do with the hot stones. But the earthen floor was always cold.

Her mother had put a hot brick in her bed, wrapped in a cloth. Her father had thrust a bowl of warm milk at her, scowling.

“Well, get on with it! Drink it down! Some children would be grateful.”

She had not been particularly grateful. Yet they had never starved. She had hardly ever been hungry. Her father had worked hard – as a waller, fencer, builder – and he had always let them know exactly how much hard work the food had cost. But the food had been on the table.

And maybe she hadn’t been Da’s child after all. She knew nothing of the history of her parents’ marriage. Her babyhood had never been discussed. So; maybe.

Oddly enough, it made her feel something almost like sympathy. Lumbered with a touchy stranger who snapped back at him. Sometimes he raised his hand but did not strike.

Now he stood in the shadows with head bowed. Well, he should have done far better. But he could have done far worse.

Chapter 8

At evening council, best thing all round was Donkeys. Yaret was quite touched. Dil obviously meant it – he’d already had a go at grooming them, which Dolm had not appreciated – but the others, she suspected, named the donkeys as best thing of the day only because they knew that Dolm and Nuolo meant so much to her. Even Lo said “The donkeys,”

in her thin, hardly-there voice, while Renna gave the merest nod. And the donkeys couldn’t mean anything to Lo.

The two new girls had managed the walk to evening council in the burial ground for four days now. They looked as if they didn’t really understand proceedings, although evening council should have been a mainstay of any family in Obandiro. Even Ondro sat alertly through it with his bland appreciative smile.

Yaret had already had a quick word with Ondro, so when it came to talking about the next day’s activities she was prepared for the plan that he put forward. He got it in first, before Dil could say anything about his own plans for the donkeys, or the others suggest their ideas for the coming winterfest, which they had decided should begin on the next day. It would not be a luxurious winterfest but Yaret hoped it would not be a miserable one either. The return of the donkeys was a cheerful start.

“Tomorrow,” Ondro said to the small semicircle of people in the burial ground, amidst the scattering of snow, “I plan to leave early – before dawn – go back to my hut, and search for my dogs because I still haven’t seen them since they ran off from the darkburns. And I’m hoping to find a sheep or two. Well, I’ll find lots of sheep, but I’ll be looking for a weak one.”

“What for?” said Dil.

“For food,” said Ondro. “There are always one or two weak ones. Kinder to slaughter them before the snow does.”

“Will you need the donkeys?”

“I’ll take the horse,” said Ondro, “and I’ll take someone to ride it as I’m not a great rider.

Myself, I’d sooner walk. I thought of taking Charo but I think we shouldn’t have both men leave town at the same time. One of us should stay here.” This phrasing had been Yaret’s suggestion, so she was pleased to see that Charo sat up a little straighter. “I’ll take Shuli,”

Ondro said.

“But I – oh well, all right,” said Shuli. That also was pleasing. And when Charo announced that he was going to the south beet field to dig up any beets he could find, and the others all said they’d help, her pleasure was complete. It was what she would have suggested herself but it was better for the idea to come from Charo.

They only had the one spade and one fork – now fitted with new handles – but they had the metal spikes to dig with too. Dil said he could fill up sacks and put them on the donkeys.

Lo said that she and Renna could help. Although Yaret could not imagine the new girls picking even one heavy beet, she nodded. At least it would get them out and into the fresh air.

Once the snows arrived fully the sisters would be confined to the cellars until they were stronger. But the northern sky, though bulbous with grey clouds, did not yet have the lowering blankness that presaged heavy snow.

“Well, as for me,” she said, “tomorrow I’ll be hunting. From the woods today I saw deer on the south-side. If the deer are returning at last, I think I should try and get us at least one before they disappear again.”

“Where do you think they all went?” asked Dil.

“Somewhere less smoky. But I think wildlife in general is returning. I’ve noticed the odd rabbit too.”

“Is the deer for winterfest?”

“For afterwards. Venison is best hung. That will take a week, or longer, probably, in this cold weather.”

So the first day of winterfest was planned. Although nobody was sure of the exact date, they had all checked the winterstones beyond the burial ground and had agreed that the shadows showed the sun was practically at its lowest. The second and third days of winterfest, on either side of the longest night of the year, would be the actual feasting days when not much work would get done. There wasn’t a great deal to feast on, so they would have to fill the hours of darkness with songs and games and stories.

Yaret felt a weary relief at the general good mood, and made sure to keep her own face bright. It was not so difficult now; she needed only to remember the donkeys and the smile would come. There was a lot to think about, and much of it was hopeful.

After their dinner of beans and roots there was singing that night in the cellar: she had taught them Madeo’s Snow Song, with Dil and Elket adding their own harmonies. They were a musical pair and the sound was sweet. Yaret played her gourd and Ondro nodded along and tapped on a barrel, while Lo and Renna listened intently but did not sing.

When they had arrived Renna had moved like an old woman. She seemed younger now, younger even than her seventeen years, although still silent. Lo had offered to make spice cakes tomorrow evening, although the only spices they had found in the cellars were of dubious age and smelt of dust. But nobody would complain about that.

Yes, there was much to be cheerful about. Yet that night, when Yaret lay down on her heather-filled sacking, feeling the inadequate warmth radiate from the hot stones, hearing the others breathing themselves into sleep, all that she could see were her omissions and mistakes lined up to reproach her.

I don’t need any shining walls, she thought: I can’t forget them. The things I should have said to Elket today and didn’t. The Ulthared I shouldn’t have said and did. I ought to have been paying more attention to Charo. Thank goodness for Ondro, although I burden him with too much work as well. I should have started digging beets three days ago. And I think I’ve been feeding the new girls the wrong things.

I promised Shuli a bow, yet I still haven’t managed to make a decent one. Ash or hazel?

Neither that I’ve made so far is good enough. I can’t get the tension right, one’s too stiff and the other’s too slack. And they’re both too basic, because there’s nothing to shape them with apart from my knife and Ondro’s little hatchet. Have to adjust one somehow, give her Shuli for winterfest. And then start on a longer one for Charo.

And we need arrows. Have to try and knap some arrowheads, if I can remember how. Still haven’t sorted out the other gifts. Dil’s easy, he’s got the donkeys. Charo and Elket can have the new cloaks from the woollen cloth out of the dye-pit, if I can get them finished. Have to do that the second day. Try and get the spindles for the girls rubbed down tomorrow. Haven’t even thought about Ondro. I’m so tired. Need to sleep.

But all my errors and omissions. No end to them, standing in the corners to accuse me.

Will I have to face them all over again, once I’m dead? I hope not. It’s bad enough now. Not worth dying just yet. Have to make things better first. The Ulthared doesn’t help there: I never learnt it all. No time.

All the Ulthared that Gramma Thuli or her friends ought to have told me when I reached thirty, I’ll never know it now. Such a huge gap… such a lonely, empty space. Sometimes they seem to all stand at my shoulder but at other times, too often, there is no-one there, just the vastness of eternal silence. No Ulthared. No words. But I must not forget. My worst omission would be to forget them.

She listened to the dark, the sleepers’ breath against the endless night. At least they were alive, she told herself. They held her to life because otherwise there would be nothing here to live for.

Next day arrived, as it always did; and Yaret was grateful. While the sky was still grey she performed Haedath with the others, and hoped Shuli was performing it in the second cellar with the new girls as she’d been asked to do.

Shuli was already at the trapdoor minutes later, ready to leave and waiting impatiently for Ondro to pull on his boots. Yaret gave them each a slice of porridge and some biscuit and apples for their day. Shuli was about to grab the food and go, when she hesitated.

“I meant to tell you,” she said, “I found another cellar on the north-side.”

“Well done. Any good?”

“Could be,” said Shuli, grinning. “I thought I’d give it everyone for winterfest.” Then Ondro was ready and they left to fetch the horse and set out on their trip.

The others put on all the clothes they had and went out to the south-side field. Although the beet tops were whitened with frost and thin snow, ice had not yet bitten very far into the ground. Below the crust the earth was hard but not frozen solid as it would be deeper into winter. Charo and Elket attacked it with the spade and fork; thankfully the new handles seemed to hold. The others used metal fencing spikes to loosen the ground around the beets.

Even Renna tried to dig although her spike barely made a mark on the unyielding soil.

Yaret left them to it and walked further south, over a small rise. When she paused at the top and looked back at the beet-diggers, they were all bent towards the ground, pointing, wielding their tools, Lo with skirts hitched up. They looked almost picturesque against the snow.

Yaret studied them for a long moment, fixing the image in her mind. She had a sense that everything was just about to change but could not imagine how.

She glanced up at the sky – ice-blue – and then headed on towards the copse where she had seen the deer. It had not been touched by fire, and was still thick with dead leaves and twined with bramble stems, their withered berries small and black. There would probably be cobnuts in there if she could only reach them. She could hear movement; an irregular rustle from within, so she stepped back again to stand behind a lone tree a short distance away. The beet-diggers were just out of sight downwind. She nocked an arrow to her bow and waited.

Time passed. She thought about the coming cold, the need to gather in more wood before it snowed again. Make warmer bedding. Find more heather. Ask Ondro about fleeces.

There was another sudden rustle and a crackle of twigs. Yaret drew her bow. A thrush called in strident, sharp alarm – and out from the copse bounded a deer, a young stag, coming fast towards her. She stepped out from behind her tree, aimed, shot. In the side of the neck.

The stag stumbled for a few paces but stayed on its feet. As it veered away, still running, she nocked another arrow and began to run after it.

And she stopped again, after only half a dozen steps, because something else was happening in the copse. The trees were swaying, and there was a crash. That was no deer, she thought, in alarm and puzzlement, but something much more massive and less shy.

Then, with the sound of rending branches, a huge, bulky figure emerged to shamble towards her on all fours. It was a bear. A big one. Grey.

Her mind began to bounce around, thinking, What’s it doing here and not up north?

Luckily her body had had the instinctive sense to freeze instantly. She stood still with bow half-drawn; the bear paused, standing squarely on all fours, its huge feet turned in, and frowned at her.

Shoot it, she thought. Big target. Can’t miss.

But she knew one arrow would not kill a bear unless she could get it in the eye. Probably not even then. It would just become enraged and charge.

And if she simply ran away it would charge after her. She knew she ought to shout and make a noise – bang something – but she had nothing to bang and she was not big enough to impress a bear.

There was one noise she had to make. Without moving, she gave the Week, week signal twice, and hoped the beet-pickers would hear it over the rise.

She needed to stop the bear from going that way. It was still studying her, deciding if she was a threat. If she kept still it might turn round and leave. If it decided to attack her she would have to shoot at it, then run.

The bear shook its head as if annoyed by invisible flies. Then it began to walk unevenly towards her. Its body rolled in a huge swagger.

Don’t run yet, she told herself. When there’s no choice, run to the right – away from the beet-pickers. But the foot will slow me down. Can’t outrun an angry bear in any case. Likely to get mauled. Better me than them.

Was it, though? They needed her. How could they do without her?

Then don’t get mauled.

But such a reprieve did not seem likely. There could be no good outcome: for the bear was still advancing, its nose pointing at her, its gait heavy and intent. It began to pick up speed.

She could smell it now, a rank, meaty, pungent smell.

So this is it, she thought, the change that had to come. She raised her bow.

The bear lifted its head. But now it was looking not at her, but at something to the side, behind her. It shook itself: slowed its pace; and then stopped altogether.

A second later there was a clamour from the rise behind her – raucous shouts, thumps, clangs and bangs. When she risked a glance over her shoulder she saw all five of them in a row, at arm’s length from each other, yelling and clattering together spikes and tools and stones. Their arms were high in the air as they advanced, stamping the ground.

The bear looked at them and considered. They kept coming. The bear kept considering. Its head flicked aside once; twice.

Then it slowly turned round with a lot of grunting and – in no hurry – ambled with its heavy rolling tread back to the copse. There was more tearing and crunching of wood as it gradually disappeared into the thicket.

Meanwhile the beet-diggers kept noisily moving forwards. They held their line until they were level with her. Dil was in the middle, wide-eyed but shouting bravely. One of the new girls was on either side of him. She had never seen them look so animated. Charo was nearest her, and Elket at the far end, looking furious.

Charo lowered a hand and they all stopped.

“Now we all walk backwards,” he said, “slowly. If it comes out again we shout and bang until it goes away.”

They all obeyed him. Yaret joined the end of the line, her bow fully drawn and aimed towards the copse. They walked steadily backwards up to the top of the rise without needing to shout again – and then, as they descended on the other side, the line broke up. They retreated to the safety of the beet-field in more haste.

“Why didn’t you just shoot it?” Charo asked Yaret. His face was flushed and angry, although not, she thought, with her. Angry at his own fear, maybe.

“One arrow won’t kill a bear,” she answered. “And it won’t give you time for two.”

“We saw the deer run past, and then I heard your alarm call, so I ran up the hill to see what it was for.” The wounded deer was lying on the ground beyond the beet-field, vainly floundering in its endeavours to get up.

Yaret hesitated. She ought to tell Charo sternly that he shouldn’t have come to look. They should have all found somewhere safe to hide.

Instead she said, “Thank you. You probably just saved my life.”

“It was Lo who told us what to do.”

“We had a bear once that got in with our sheep,” said Lo. She looked almost feverishly excited.

Yaret nodded. “Thank you, Lo. Thank you all.” She bowed to each of them.

Then she walked over to the struggling deer and put an end to its struggles. Her heart was thumping as she said Oveyn. The others could so easily have been saying it now for her. Yet everything was the same. Nothing after all had changed, except for a bear still lurking in the thicket.

But although her heart would not stop pounding, her hands were steady as she gutted the deer on the spot. She kept the liver and heart to eat that evening. The rest of the offal she buried deep in the holes dug free of beets, fearing that it might attract the bear again – or even wolves. If a grey bear had travelled all this way south, who was to say that others wouldn’t follow? Or that wolves wouldn’t come prowling from the wastes?

She did not tell this thought to the others, however, merely advising that they should all dig and gather as many of the beets and greentops today as they possibly could.

“Why? Will the bear come back?” asked Elket.

“It’ll probably roam around for a while. We’ll have to be careful, and on no account should we leave any food out in the open – either here or back in town. We don’t want to encourage it.”

So they set Dil on the rise as look-out while they dug and packed the sacks with beets, and urgently ferried them on the donkeys back and forth to town.

By the time the light was beginning to fall, the bear had not been seen again, and the smaller cellar was stacked high with beets all along one wall. It made the place smell strongly of earth, and Yaret feared that Lo and Renna would complain. But Lo said she did not mind, and Renna of course said nothing.

It was Shuli who grumbled when she and Ondro returned shortly afterwards.

“It’ll be like sleeping underground! I’ll go and spend the night in my new cellar.”

“Not on your own,” said Yaret. “If it’s on the north-side it’s too far away.”

“All right – I’ll stay here tonight. But tomorrow I want to show my new cellar to everyone.

You can see what you think then,” said Shuli.

“Very well. You seem to have had a successful day.”

For Shuli and Ondro had returned with two sheep – one dead, for eating (“It was nearly dead anyway,” said Ondro philosophically) and one that was heavy with a lamb that would be born too early and would die if it were left up on the hill.

So they cooked and ate that evening with a heavily pregnant sheep for company. It huddled in the corner of the fireplace house, while they roasted the deer’s heart and liver and broiled a pan of wintergreens.

Ondro chopped up some roots for the sheep and gave it an armful of grass, having brought a sackful home on the horse. He had failed to find his dogs, but otherwise seemed happy. It was useful to have somebody always so good-humoured. Even at the news of the bear Ondro merely raised his eyebrows and nodded. So perhaps it was not the momentous event that she had thought it was.

Since the night was fine but cold they held the evening council where they were, by the glowing fire with the sheep mooching disconsolately in the background. The others seemed to expect Yaret to lead the council. Although her mind was busy reliving the bear over and over again, she kept her words brief and simple.

She suggested a shorter version of the council for tonight: no news was necessary, just best thing and giving thanks, which was traditional before winterfest. There were no plans for tomorrow, again because it was winterfest; and they all knew what winterfest should be.

And so much of it, thought Yaret, would be missing.

Chapter 9

There was only porridge for breakfast, but nobody minded because there was the promise of roasted sheep to come. All eight of them crowded into the cellar under the inn to do the last Haedath and exchange the final greetings of the old year. Then they held the silence in contemplation of the twelve months just gone. Tomorrow’s silence would be in contemplation of the year to come.

Yaret was not sure which of the two was worse. She had considered suggesting that they skip the contemplation of the last year; but no-one else had brought the matter up and in any case the past would not just go away. So now she stared dutifully at the floor until she realised that Dil, also staring at the floor, was weeping.

“What is it?” said Elket, her arm around him.

“You need to ask?” said Shuli, though not loudly.

“Armendo,” said Dil through his tears. “I miss Armendo.”

“Armendo’s friendship was a great gift,” Yaret told him. “So try to remember the happy times you had with him.” She knew that this advice was trite and next to useless.

“I am,” Dil answered mournfully. “That’s the trouble.”

“Then think about something else,” said Shuli, not unkindly. Dil took a great gulp and then was silent.

No, she should definitely have suggested that they skip this bit, thought Yaret. She herself had no wish to reflect on the last few weeks; so instead she began to make a mental list of things to do today. Finish the cloaks and spindles, check the donkeys, look for any further signs of bear; prepare the food and supervise the roasting of the sheep.

Her mind strayed further forward, worrying about keeping everybody warm and fed all through the winter, until she checked it. Future plans were tomorrow’s task. And everyone else was looking solemnly thoughtful. So stick to the rules.

With a reluctant sigh she let her mind stray back through random images of the year just gone: the long spring days spent weaving, tending crops and chickens, spinning and talking through the evenings, waiting for the summer dawn when she would set out on her journey.

Gramma giving her the last of the old wrinkled apples, her grandfather handing her the letter.

Well. That was all done with now.

But the joy of travelling alone! The donkeys were sufficient company. The hills rose and fell along her path and the sun pulled her west and south. She wouldn’t be doing that any more. No more journeying. No need.

But a quiet voice inside her head spoke. Maybe there will be a need. She stopped and listened to it.

There’s no more cloth to sell. But there are other needs more urgent now. Those Riders of the Vonn: their garb so drab, their lives so vivid, their quest so clear although they never told her what it was.

She knew it all the same, from Eled’s murmured words and from the scroll. In the long term, they hoped to end their exile from their homeland; but their immediate task was to fight the stonemen and the darkburns.

That was enough, for it was surely her desire too. Although she had never seen a battle she felt at that moment that it was both her wish and duty to avenge her dead. They stood now at her shoulders in the shadows of the room – perhaps in her imagination only; but that was irrelevant. They had no words yet they did not condemn her.

All the same she could not see how that duty might be fulfilled. It shouldn’t be left to the Vonn alone: but what could she do from here, so far away? And she was needed here by the children. She could not abandon them.

She thought back through the events of the last autumn. Her evening story was all told, yet there was so much that she hadn’t touched on. So many things that the Vonn had said and done, leading her to see the world with altered eyes. Wherever she had travelled to before, her thoughts had always centred on Obandiro. But now Obandiro was gone; and her thoughts were drawn towards Farwithiel and the bleak Gyr hills and past the strangely watchful Darkburn Loft to the boundaries of Kelvha. And somewhere indistinct, called Thield; and somewhere yet more hazy called Caervonn.

The world was huge and beautiful and dangerous and beckoning. But she could not go anywhere. Her place was here.

She raised her head and looked around at all the faces in the thin, wan morning light from the open hatchway. The faces looked equally thin and wan. Some had eyes closed; only Shuli met her glance. Shuli’s former scowl had gone. She looked full of glee and Yaret smiled.

After another minute she said,

“Time for gifts now.”

At that, everyone woke up with a buzz of anticipation which she hoped would not be disappointed. But it seemed they were determined to be happy.

Charo and Elket already knew they were getting the woollen cloaks as their gifts for winterfest, and had assured her that they did not mind waiting another day for her to finish hemming them. There was only one precious needle – Yaret was trying to make more from bone, but without much success – so she set to the task of sewing straight away, while the other gifts were distributed.

Dil was appointed official donkey-keeper, and was presented with a halter, along with a warning of his heavy responsibilities. He couldn’t stop grinning. Charo had cut the halter from an old belt found in a cellar. He had greased it with lamp oil and sliced and knotted it together cleverly.

Shuli was given the hazelwood bow which Yaret had made, but with a warning.

“The string is cordweed so it may not last. And I think the bow still has too much draw-weight. I need to adjust it, or it might just take your ear off,” Yaret told her. “So be careful.

Maybe we can use some of the sheepskin for a cheek-guard.”

Despite the warning Shuli was grinning as widely as Dil. That was important. Keep the two youngest happy, and it was easier for the rest.

It was with some doubt that she handed the carding comb and the bundle of raw wool from the bottom of her grandmother’s washing tub to Lo and Renna. This might not be seen as a gift at all, but just as work.

“I’ve nearly finished these,” she said, and produced two wooden spindles, still a little rough around the weights. “Can you spin? If not, I can teach you.”

“We can spin,” said Lo eagerly. “And card as well. What do you want us to make?”

“Just make the yarn for now,” said Yaret, “and meanwhile you can decide what you want it knitted into.” Although her looms were useless, knitting could be done with a pair of sticks.

“I can knit,” said Lo. She sounded glad, and Yaret realised that she had been needing a way to be productive. She should have guessed that. Renna said nothing but picked up one of the unfinished spindles and caressed it.

“We’ll rub them down to make them smooth,” said Yaret, and she nodded.

Then there was Ondro. For him she had only a shoulder-bag with a drawstring and strap, sewn out of a torn sack. It wasn’t pretty but she hoped it would be useful. He seemed happy to receive any gift at all.

“My gift to everybody is the sheep,” he said. “And the lamb that will be born soon – if it survives. You can share looking after that.”

Then, unexpectedly, every head turned round to look at Charo. He cleared his throat and stood up, his head almost touching the cellar ceiling. She realised that he had grown in the weeks since she had met him.

“We’ve got a present for you,” he said, addressing Yaret. “I found it in the forge.”

Reaching underneath his bedding, he produced a long thin object wrapped in a sack.

Yaret knew before she unwrapped it what it would be: one of the swords that had hung on the forge’s wall. She had noted some time ago that the swords had disappeared and had suspected Shuli. But then they had been pushed out of her head by more immediate concerns.

What was totally unexpected was the scabbard that the sword was in. It was made of old, discoloured leather, but perfectly sound.

“Where on earth did you find the sheath?” she asked.

Charo looked a bit embarrassed. It was Shuli who replied.

“I found it, in Holvet’s pig-sty. I think he used it to wedge open the door. But don’t worry, we’ve cleaned it.”

Yaret sniffed at the leather. “Ah, yes,” she said with amusement. Then she drew the sword. It emerged with a faint hissing whisper. It had been scrubbed and oiled; the children stared at it with a kind of fascination which Yaret had to admit she shared.

“I wonder whose sword it was,” she mused. Swords had been so rare in Obandiro that this was probably antique; or perhaps was one that Shay the blacksmith had made himself, to test his skills. Thank you, Shay.

“You’d better go outside to try it,” advised Charo. So they all climbed up the ladder into the cold air which had the metallic tang of ice. In the frosty yard Yaret practised sweeping the sword through the air, using the moves Eled had shown her and which she had practised in Farwithiel with a stick.

Then she tried some of the more complex lunges and blocks she had watched Parthenal perform on that morning outside the hollow tree. They made more sense with the sword than with a stick, even though she could not wield it with anything like the right speed and accuracy, and her muscles were soon aching. It had been very evident that Parthenal knew how to handle a sword. And Rothir, too, fighting those stonemen at the Gyr… She had tried not to think about that much. But now she needed to remember.

“That’s good,” said Shuli, evidently impressed. Yaret realised that they were all staring at her new sword slightly open-mouthed. “Will you teach me those moves?”

“When you’re old enough.”

“Twelve is old enough.”

Yaret didn’t refute this, because that argument could wait. She held the sword upright. It was a good size for her, unlike Eled’s, which she remembered thinking a monstrous, dangerous object the first time she had picked it up. This sword was also hugely dangerous, yet it did not fill her with the same revulsion. Instead she was aware of a certain apprehensive pleasure.

“That is a… that is a wonderful gift,” she said, for the sword was certainly a thing of craft and beauty. Whether she would ever be able to wield it properly was another matter altogether. But she would practise, just in case.

“There were two others in the forge as well,” said Charo. “Not as good; they looked like old ones that had been repaired. I thought that they could be for me and Elket, because, you know, if we’ve got them we ought to learn to use them safely.” Shuli, to Yaret’s surprise, made no protest. “Or Ondro could have one if he wants.” He glanced at Ondro, who shook his head.

“Not for me,” he said. “I’d only cut my own leg off.”

Yaret laughed, and bowed to everyone in general.

“Thank you all,” she said, her surprise and wary pleasure at the gift still growing like a fast-blooming flower. So they didn’t see her just as a big sister, but as a warrior of some sort.

She was aware of something shifting: perhaps it was her own view of herself.

“And now you all have to come and look at my new cellar!” burst out Shuli.

“We will,” promised Yaret, “as soon as we’ve set the food to cook.”

So once the mutton had been prepared and spitted over the fire, and the roots within it, they all tramped, chattering, up to the north-side of the town. Shuli insisted on stopping at the nearest junction to dance the Rannikan. Everyone joined in – even Renna, for a few seconds; and Ondro, who was slow and kept forgetting the sequence. But he performed it with a wide, earnest smile on his face, sending Dil into fits of helpless giggles.

Yaret’s attempt was almost as brief as Renna’s. She stumbled on her false leg, which refused to move as fast as she would like. So she bowed out and watched the others, laughing and clapping along, and trying not to think about the last time she had danced it. And the fact that she would never dance it properly again. The contest was declared a draw between Shuli and Charo.

“But I’ll win next year,” said Dil.

Breathless now, they continued north along the Dondel brook. Its banks were decorated with small icicles, although the ice had not yet laid its sheen across the water. As they passed the bridge, Yaret noticed that Shuli kept glancing at it.

“What are you looking for?”

Shuli hesitated. Then she muttered, “What happened to the stoneman? It wasn’t there when I last looked.”

“I moved the body,” Yaret murmured back. “Not much of it left. I got the other stones out of the head first, just in case.”

“Where are they?”

“Safe,” said Yaret.

Dil piped up, “There was a lin on the bridge just now, wasn’t there?”

“Better say the rhyme, then,” said Elket indulgently, although she had been looking the other way and could not have seen the lin herself. As Dil stopped to recite the lin’s grace, she said to Yaret, “He’s always seeing lins these days. He used to see a hob quite regularly at school.”

“The hob? Is that still there?” But even as Yaret spoke she realised that of course it would not be, not any more.

Elket looked surprised and then amused. “I never saw it,” she said.

Meanwhile Shuli had dived along a narrow bridleway near the bridge, towards a row of stone-built cottages. She marched down to the furthest house in the row and stopped in the ruined doorway, arms akimbo.

“Come on!” she urged.

Inside the roofless cottage was a snow-spattered sludge of ash and charcoal, the same as now lay in all the houses. Rain and snow had cleaned the streets to some extent but was taking longer to deal with more sheltered spots. The walls and flag-stoned floor remained intact, though black with greasy soot. Shuli led them to where the staircase to the upper floor must once have been; underneath it, a flight of stone steps descended through the flag-stones to the darkness of a cellar.

“It took me ages to dig the steps out,” Shuli told them as she climbed down. “But it was worth it.” Carefully she lit a flint-lamp sitting on a small barrel at the bottom. Once its wick was glowing, she set it down and spread her arms. “My kingdom!”

“My word. It’s extraordinary,” breathed Yaret.

This cellar was big. Bigger than the cottage above it, surely: it must have reached right under next door too. The beams above her head were so massive that it made her think the cellar must be older than the houses.

And it held much more than one small barrel. It had furniture. At least, it had two chairs, a broken table, a cupboard with its door hanging off, and an old bedstead propped up on its end against one wall. The wall opposite the bed was lined with shelves: and they were laden.

There were dusty jars and pots and boxes, piles of cloth and paper, strange useless ornaments; all sorts of unidentifiable objects sat in the shadows under a cloudy layer of fine ash.

“I’ve cleaned it all once already but the ash gets in again,” said Shuli. “Everybody can choose one thing each for their winterfest gift. Anything you like. Only I’ve already chosen that. ” She pointed to the wall, where a curved sword was propped up on two nails.

“You didn’t find that in here, surely?” Yaret asked.

“No. I found it in the Dondel – it was the stoneman’s. It’s a bit big for me now but I’ll grow into it.”