the knights had managed to get out of the way or if they had been trampled where they lay.
‘How many horses can you scare off?’
‘Perhaps we will find out.’ Zole came to stand at Nona’s shoulder. ‘They are herd animals … but I do not know their minds well.’
The Scithrowl stopped a hundred yards off, among the last scraps of bramble and thorn. Many unslung short bows.
‘They look scared. Perhaps they think this place is haunted,’ Nona said.
‘Do you doubt it?’ Zole began to walk backwards, at a slow and even pace.
The first few arrows winged around them as the archers sought their range. One came close and Zole snatched it from the air. She reversed it, took two paces forward and flung the missile back, her arm cracking through the air. A second later an archer among the riders toppled from his saddle.
‘I didn’t … know we could do that …’ Nona said in a small voice.
A dozen archers loosed at once, more following, and for the next few moments Nona was occupied with the business of knocking their arrows aside. It brought a memory of the ordeal of the Shield all those years ago. Nona had never imagined when Zole arrived that it would be her who she would be shielding – not that Zole needed her help.
They backed away and the business of defence became easier with a slight slowing of the arrows and decreasing accuracy, but harder as their stamina for such speed eroded. Nona slapped away an arrow zipping towards her chest, and moved her foot to avoid another that might have skewered her knee. The shafts were angling out of the sky now as the range lengthened. Nona had to squint to see the black dots against the sun. She hoped the archers’ quivers would empty before her own reserves ran dry. She twisted back from the hips to avoid another shaft and swore as it tore a hot line across her shoulder.
‘Run now.’ Zole turned and started to zigzag through the brittle remains of dead bramble to the road’s side. Nona peeled off in the other direction, a dust cloud rising where she sprinted. Sister Tallow had explained that beyond a certain distance an archer could only aim at where they hoped their target would be by the time their arrow arrived.
They both ran in the stuttering, shifting pattern Mistress Blade drilled into them. More arrows scattered around both novices but their luck held and before long they stood beyond the range of a short bow.
‘It’s good they’re so scared of this place.’ Nona slapped the dust from her coat.
‘Perhaps.’ Zole seemed unconvinced.
‘What are they afraid of? Ghosts? Poison?’ Nona gazed across the barren earth stretching out before them, tumbled-down farmhouses and abandoned villages dotting the area. ‘It’s hardly going to be worse than what we’ll find in there.’ She pointed to the distant ice, sullen grey except for where the ridges gleamed bloody in the sunlight.
‘This bane has been advancing across their lands for centuries. The Scithrowl are not a timid people. They were taught to fear it.’ Zole adjusted her pack, and glanced once more towards the watching soldiers. ‘Let us hope we do not meet that which taught them.’ She set her jaw and led off deeper into the dead zone.
At first it was only a sensation of being watched that pulled Nona’s gaze towards the dark windows of abandoned houses. Here and there the corpses of trees still stood, their limbs all but gone. Even so, Nona glanced at the stark branches that remained, convinced some horror waited there, watching for its chance.
They passed a lonely way-stone, its corners weathered away, bearing only the legend ‘7 miles’. Given the stone’s age the place it spoke of might lie five miles behind the ice, lost to man generations back. The next rise revealed a graveyard and a ruined church of Hope. The markers leaned at drunken angles and every grave mounded like a pregnant belly above its occupant.
The wind picked up closer to the ice, lifting the sour dust and swirling it into momentary shapes somehow more filled with horror than any clear image could ever be. The air had a bitterness to it that made Nona press her lips together in a hard line. Her hands felt parched and the wound the arrow had scored across her shoulder burned more fiercely by the minute.
Ahead the ice walls loomed, the grey taint giving them a strange metallic look. The ice