A Time of Dread (Of Blood and Bone #1) - John Gwynne Page 0,17

of men in companionable silence. But now the giant Clans were reunited, and peace had been made with mankind.

Although the Banished Lands are not yet at peace.

‘How much longer,’ Sig heard someone whisper, a bodiless voice in the gloom.

‘Whisht,’ Elgin silenced the voice.

Sig sniffed the air and looked up at the sky, though there was naught to see except darkness and the sensation of rainpatter upon her face.

It is always darkest before the dawn.

She shrugged, loosening stiff muscles, a ripple of her broad shoulders that set water cascading as if shaken from a tree, shifting the weight of her shield and the sheathed longsword across her back. The moon slid out from behind rag-torn clouds, silvering the woodland they were standing within, softening the solid dark of the hill before them, a glimpsed snarl of twisted hawthorn and wind-beaten rock. Sig looked to her right, saw Cullen sitting straight-backed in his saddle, ringmail glistening black with rain, a spear in his white-knuckled fist. His red hair was bound tight at the nape, a round shield like hers slung across his back with a white, four-pointed star painted upon it.

The bright star, sigil of our Order.

‘Now?’ Cullen mouthed up to Sig. She gave him a scowl in return.

Anticipation and energy exuded from the young warrior and, not for the first time, Sig wondered at the wisdom of bringing him fresh from his Long Night into such a trial as this.

That decision’s long-made, now. No going back on it. Besides, he was the best of his year, which was no surprise with the blood that runs in his veins.

Sig twisted the other way in her saddle, a creak of leather and ringmail, and glimpsed faces about her, men cold, wet and tired from their night-long journey and vigil, but their faces were stern and set in hard lines. She liked what she saw.

I asked for hard men. They’ll need to be.

Grey trickled into the world, dawn making shadows shift and form where there had been only the crow-black of night. A whisper of wings overhead, the hint of something much bigger than owl or hawk as a darker shadow flitted above the trees, speeding towards the hill. Sig strained eyes and ears, but there was nothing more.

A hundred heartbeats later, a new sound. The pad of footfalls, then a flicker of movement. Shapes appeared: one man, two hounds slipping through the grey. Great beasts, chests broad and solid with muscle, muzzles flat and wide, bristling with the threat of sharp teeth. One was brindle-dark, the other grey as mountain slate. Sig felt men tense at the sight of them, quickly followed by whispers and pats to calm horses, but Sig grinned to see the wolven-hounds, so named because of the mixed blood that flowed through their veins. For a moment Sig was a hundred leagues away, and over a hundred years, seeing in her mind the original parents of this line: the great wolven, Storm, and her mate the brindle hound, Buddai, fighting and rending Kadoshim on that Day of Days. She felt a flush of pride, muted by sadness at glories and friends long past and faded.

The man with them was clothed in leather, fur and soft skins, his eyes dark shadows above a tangle of beard. He too wore a round shield slung across his back, as all in the Order did. A single-bladed axe hung from a loop at his belt, kept company by a brace of knives. He held an unstrung bow in one hand. Keld, her huntsman. Sig only needed one look from him to know it was time. A jolt of excitement rippled through her, which surprised her.

But then, it is not every day that you track a Kadoshim to its lair.

‘Guards?’ Sig said, her voice grating like an old iron hinge.

‘Aye, there were, but the bairns saw to that,’ Keld said, patting the big head of one of the hounds.

‘All right then,’ Sig grunted, feeling the imminence of violence begin to course through her, a tremor in her bones, a wildness fluttering in her blood, and she looked at Elgin.

He pulled himself straighter in his saddle and nodded to her.

‘Aghaidh,’ Sig whispered and Hammer lumbered into motion, out of the trees and across a windswept open space towards the hill in front of them. The rising sun washed the land in pale light, making deep valleys of shadow amongst the boulders. Elgin and his three score swords followed, all proven men, handpicked from Queen Nara’s