A Time of Dread (Of Blood and Bone #1) - John Gwynne Page 0,139

blurred, body drenched with sweat, yet it was cold enough that he felt ice crackling in his hair.

A day and a half he’d run, expecting at any moment to hear the roar of a giant bear behind him, or the whisper of wings above, or the eerie howling of twisted, mutated things. His blind terror had lasted a good while but, by the coming of the first dawn, exhaustion had finally driven it off, and even as he forced his legs to keep moving, trudging through snow and ice, he had started to think. First and foremost, how to survive, how to get home, and he had used every trick and tactic his da had taught him in their years in the Wild to hide his tracks from an unwanted follower. He’d splashed up streams and down streams, entering at one point and exiting half a league north or south, doing the same at half a dozen streams that fed into Starstone Lake from the Bonefells. He’d climbed trees that grew tight and close, shuffling along branches onto a neighbouring tree, then onto the next, and the next, and the next, eventually climbing down and running on. He’d come across a fox’s den and taken his hatchet to a pile of frozen dung, smearing the softer faeces inside all over himself, to cover his scent from anything that might track him with its nose. He’d sought out higher ground forested by pine, where the snow-cover was thin upon the ground, the forest litter thick with spongy pine needles that sprang back and hid his tracks far better than ankle-deep snow.

And now, against all expectations, he was home.

He didn’t bother entering his cabin, just staggered into his barn, was greeted by goats and chickens that he’d locked up and left with enough food to feed them for a whole moon. He broke the ice in the water barrel and drank deep, found some eggs, cracked them and swallowed them raw, then locked the barn back up and set about saddling a horse in the stables.

‘Get on, girl,’ he said and touched his heels to his mare’s ribs, and then she was cantering from the yard onto the track that led to Kergard.

On the meadow before Kergard a great space had been cleared, tents and a roped ring set up, and beyond them the bars of what appeared to be an iron cage rearing high. Drem barely glanced at any of it, his eyes fixed on his path.

‘Ulf?’ he asked the gate guards.

‘An Assembly meeting, at his yard,’ one said, looking him up and down and wrinkling his nose.

Drem rode on, through Kergard’s streets, people staring strangely at him as he passed, until he was clattering into Ulf’s tanning yard, the caustic smells of lime water and animal fat hardly affecting him at all. A handful of men were there: Hildith’s guards and others. They stared at him as he slid from his mount and staggered through Ulf’s doorway. He stumbled on, almost falling through another set of doors into a large room, half a dozen people sitting round a table. Ulf was there, and Hildith, some others Drem recognized, and some he didn’t.

Ulf was speaking when Drem burst in, but paused when he saw Drem, frowning as if at a stranger. Recognition dawned.

‘Good grief, lad, what’s happened to you? We’re but soon back from a seven-day bear-hunt and by the looks of it we feel a damn sight better than you!’

Drem swayed and Ulf jumped from his chair, catching Drem.

‘Sound the alarm, the call to arms,’ Drem said, his voice cracked and trembling from lack of use.

‘Fetch the lad a drink, and something to eat,’ Ulf yelled out, easing Drem into a seat close to a crackling hearth. He sniffed. ‘By Asroth’s stones, but you don’t smell so good, lad. Now, what are you saying? Call to arms? No need, we’ve caught your white bear. Don’t need to worry, it’s caged up on the meadows.’ He frowned, put a hand to Drem’s forehead. ‘Have you got a fever, lad? Having fever dreams?’

‘No,’ Drem said, leaning away from Ulf. ‘I’m not talking about the white bear. There’s worse things out there than that bear.’

Faces round the table moved in and out of focus, all of them staring at him.

An Assembly meeting. Good, I can tell them all.

‘Drem, you’re not making any sense,’ Hildith said. ‘We came out to your hold when we got back with the bear, wanted to tell you. But