A Time of Dread (Of Blood and Bone #1) - John Gwynne Page 0,40

Riv had been practising with, significantly shorter even than the hunting bows used by Drassil’s scouts and trackers. There was an elegance and beauty of design in the pronounced curves of its limbs. Riv ran her fingers along them, the layers of wood, horn and sinew smooth and cold to her touch.

I should return it to him. Perhaps he could teach me …

The slap of boots on stone drifted through an open shutter to Riv, in the street outside, then echoing as they entered the hundred’s barrack. A few heartbeats and she heard the door open and feet pounding on the stairwell. Hastily, Riv wrapped the bow in its sealskin cloak and buried it back in her chest, closing the lid and snapping the lock shut even as the dormitory room opened and her sister ran into the room.

‘What are you doing here?’ Aphra asked, though she seemed distracted, not even looking at Riv, instead her eyes scanning the dormitory.

‘Nothing,’ Riv said with a shrug as she sat on her cot, a cold breeze from the open shutters ruffling her short hair. Aphra marched up and down the central aisle, looking between beds.

‘What are you doing here?’ Riv asked her.

Aphra stopped her searching and looked at Riv.

‘Have you seen Fia?’

‘Aye. She was leaving as I arrived. She didn’t look very happy.’

‘Where did she go? Did she speak to you?’

‘No, she passed me on the stairwell. Didn’t say a word to me.’

Aphra studied her a moment. ‘If you see her, tell her I was looking for her, and that I need to speak to her.’

‘What about?’

‘None of your business.’

Riv’s scowl followed Aphra through the door as her sister turned on her heel and left.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

DREM

Drem sat in the seat of their wain, the reins held loosely in one hand, his da beside him. The sky was a pale winter’s blue, making Drem think of ice, and a cold wind swept down from the Bonefells, Drem’s nose and ears feeling like ice.

‘Get on,’ Drem said, a flick of his whip adding some motivation to the two ponies pulling the wain as they reached the slope that led up to Kergard’s walls, their snorted breaths great clouds of vapour in the cold air. The wain was loaded full with the pelts they had hunted, six moons’ worth of their life being sold to Ulf the tanner, for which Drem was thankful.

Da negotiated enough coin to see us through winter and longer, and I don’t have to spend half a moon with my nose plugged, a cloth wrapped around my face and my hands stained orange.

New holds had been built beyond the timber walls of Kergard, sprawling on both sides of the track with no apparent plan or design, a snarl of timber, wattle and daub and thatch, fences, pigs, goats, chickens, dogs, a cacophony of noise as Drem and Olin rode by.

‘Looks different,’ Drem remarked.

‘Aye, and smells different,’ Olin said, frowning at the advancement of civilization all around him.

The smell didn’t improve much once they’d rumbled through the open gates, Olin nodding to the man on guard duty. Kergard wasn’t ruled by a lord or king, the Desolation was free of such rulers and authority, free even of the Ben-Elim for the time being, as it was newly settled land. A group of Kergard’s founders had worked together in the building of the village and had decided on a democratic council with no one man to lead or rule them. They’d called themselves the Assembly, and over the years some had died or left Kergard, while some of the new settlers had been invited to join the Assembly, but the core of the Assembly was still the same as it had been some twenty years ago. Ulf the tanner was one of them. Between them they organized a tithe from those who lived within the village’s walls, and that tithe paid for roads, building repairs, labour and, amongst other things, for a small unit of guards. It was the Wild, after all, and crops, herds and homes often needed defending from the predators that lurked and roamed within the dark and storm-racked north. Most of the guardsmen were older men, retired trappers and huntsmen, whose days of roaming the Bonefell’s were behind them.

Drem guided the ponies through busy streets of hard-packed earth, more people about than he had ever seen in Kergard before. They made their way through the village and towards the eastern fringes, where Ulf’s tanning yard was situated. Drem could