A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone #2) - John Gwynne Page 0,19

and in pain, but Fritha knew it would not hinder them. Behind Gunil another thirty fur-wrapped figures stood, acolytes that had followed Fritha from the south. They were hard men and women, all of them in some way scarred by the hand of the Ben-Elim, their own grudges and grievances setting them on the same path as Fritha. They had followed her into the heart of Drassil, where she had cut Asroth’s frozen hand from his entombed body, and stood alongside her and fought Ben-Elim and giants. She did not doubt their courage or loyalty.

Together we are Asroth’s Red Right Hand.

Her eyes met Arn’s, a dark-haired, hook-nosed man with streaks of grey in his beard. He’d been with Fritha the longest, he and Elise, his daughter who stood beside him. Almost since the beginning, close to six long years since the death of Fritha’s bairn. They had found Fritha upon her knees, weeping in a pool of her own child’s blood. Fritha pushed down the memories, refused to entertain them, just acknowledged the years of hardship, the myriad moments where she had stood with Arn and Elise against the Ben-Elim, fought together, protected each other’s backs.

“Come,” Morn said, “I can hear my brother’s voice in the wind, his blood calls to me. He must have his vengeance.”

Fritha looked at Morn.

She has always been mercurial, but has her brother’s death unhinged her?

“Aye,” Fritha said and turned away from Kergard, walking around the bulk of Gunil and Claw and through the parting ranks of her followers. She looked west, where the forests that spilt down from the slopes of the Bonefells met the scarred plains of the Desolation. Her gaze shifted to marks in the snow at her feet and she dropped to one knee. Snow had been falling all night and most of the day, but not heavy nor deep enough to mask the tracks of a full-grown war bear of Dun Seren. Fritha dug a gloved hand into the snow, scraping the fresh layer away to reveal red stains in the ice beneath. She smiled and scooped up blood and ice.

Drem and the others, they have fled west, sticking to the woodland to give themselves cover. Wise, when a Kadoshim half-breed will be searching for them from the skies. But it will not help them.

Even if they were able to hide their tracks perfectly, Fritha knew she would find them. She rose and strode into the wooded shadows, where a score of shapes padded in the darkness, snuffling and growling. Her Ferals, the most manageable of her experiments, men, women and bairns taken from Kergard spliced together using blood magic with a wolven pack that had come south, fleeing the harsh winter of the Bonefells.

She crooned a command and one of the Ferals approached her with its crouched, loping gait. It was all muscle and patches of fur, yellowed teeth and claw. Fritha lifted her cupped hand with the blood from the bear to its muzzle and let it take a few deep, snorting breaths. Then it lifted it head to the wind, snuffling deeply, and howled. The other Ferals raised their heads and howled, too, a sound that echoed through the eerily muted forest, rising in volume and pitch until it enveloped Fritha’s senses. It filled her with a deep, heartfelt joy.

“Ah, listen to them,” Fritha said, smiling at Morn and Gunil, who did not seem to share her pleasure at the sound.

The howling died out and the first Feral set off at a loping run, the others close behind, quickly becoming ethereal shapes in the snowbound twilight of the forest.

“Come, Morn, you will have your revenge soon enough,” Fritha said and set off after her pack, her acolytes falling into step behind her.

Morn leaped into the air, wings powering her up into the snow-heavy sky, and Claw rumbled a growl, moving into a lumbering, limping stride.

Drem, I will find you soon, you and your new friends, and then you will regret spurning the offer I made to you.

CHAPTER SIX

RIV

Riv sat at a table in the woodsman’s hut, staring at nothing as Fia stitched a deep gash in her shoulder. Fia’s baby, Avi, lay in a cot close by, snoring gently, oblivious to the momentous events that had happened around him.

Will Kol kill him, now, bury him beneath a cairn alongside his kin? My kin.

Will he execute me? Kill my friends?

Voices outside. Riv glowered at the door.

The battle was all something of a blur to her, a scarlet haze