A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone #2) - John Gwynne

CHAPTER ONE

DREM

The Year 138 of the Age of Lore, Wolven’s Moon

Drem looked up from his horse’s steady gait. Through the stark branches above he glimpsed the sun sinking into the mountains ahead, a pale glow behind snow cloud and leafless branches. In a matter of heartbeats twilight was settling upon them like a shroud.

We must stop soon, else the horses risk snaring a leg.

He glanced to his right, saw Cullen riding with his cloak pulled high, face hidden in shadow. Ahead of them, Keld looked as if he had no thought for stopping, the scarred huntsman loping through the trees much like his wolven-hound, Fen.

Grief drives him, and hate.

And fear, if he is human.

Drem blinked, trying to dispel the image of Gulla the Kadoshim, twitching and jerking upon the blood-soaked table in the mine, then rising transformed, teeth long and gleaming, eyes red as coals.

It felt like a dream, no, a nightmare, even though it had been less than a day and night since it happened. Too-vivid memories of the battle at the mine leaped out in Drem’s mind like rabid beasts: images of Gulla sinking his teeth deep into the throat of one of his acolytes, of feral things, part man, part beast, snarling, clawing, of winged half-breeds screaming their malice, of Fritha, beautiful and cold as the ice-laden forest, black sword in her fist. And Sig the giantess, friend to his father.

Friend to me.

And now she is dead. Because of me.

A restless anxiety was growing within him. So much had happened in so short a time, giving him little chance to feel anything; instead he had simply reacted, mostly just trying to stay alive. Now, though, they had been travelling all night and most of the day, and he had had time to think.

So much change. I wish I was with Da, that we were trapping together, out in the Bonefells, just the two of us. And now he’s gone as well.

As dangerous as that lifestyle had been, it was familiar to Drem, an old cloak, and it had fitted him well. All of this was so different, so new. He felt agitated, like when his legs ached and he just needed to get up and walk around, except that he couldn’t do anything here to help himself; there was no way he could return to the familiar that felt so comforting to him.

His hand crept to his neck, looking for the steady reassurance of his pulse.

One, two, three, he began to count.

“Camp,” Keld said as he emerged from the darkness, raising an arm and smashing a hole in a frozen stream with the butt of his spear.

A good spot, Drem thought, noting the spread of trees about them, the stream, huge boulders to the right, sheltering them from the cold wind that hissed out of the Bonefells, as well as providing a measure of protection from predators.

On two legs or four.

In silence they set to making camp. Cullen took the horses, hobbling them, removing saddles and rubbing them down. Drem found a spot for a fire and, drawing his hand-axe from his belt, began chopping through the thick rind of ice, then scooping away the softer snow until he reached the frozen ground beneath. He gathered stones, chopped kindling from a dead lightning-blasted oak and prepared a small fire. Before he set to lighting it, he trimmed thin branches from a willow beside the stream, spent a while weaving them into a latticed fence, then staked it along one side of the fire-pit he’d dug. A screen against any eyes that might be following them from the east.

Some tinder from a pouch at his belt, flint and striking iron for sparks, some cold breath upon it and then fragile flames were clawing in the snow, hissing and hungry.

A shaking of the ground made Drem look up, one hand reaching for the bone-hilted seax at his belt. A shadow the size of a boulder shifted within the trees, but Drem’s grip relaxed as Hammer, the giant bear, lumbered into their small clearing.

Hammer was Sig’s battle-bear and had borne them from last night’s chaos, carrying Drem, Keld and Cullen away, crashing through tree and shrub, no thought or time for careful steps or hiding their passage, just a driving knowledge that they had to escape, to put as much distance as possible between them and Gulla.

Hammer had run to exhaustion, bringing them back to Drem’s hold in less than half the time it would have taken them on horseback. There