A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone #2) - John Gwynne Page 0,26

making Fritha and her crew pause in their tracks.

That was a bear.

“Best mount up,” Fritha said to Gunil, then without checking to see if he obeyed or not, she broke into a loping stride, her acolytes increasing their speed with her, the remaining Ferals bursting with the urge to run and kill, looking from her to the sounds filtering down to them, like hounds pulling on a leash.

A bright light was glaring through the treeline. She drew a short-sword at her hip, felt more comfortable with it than the Starstone Sword, which she left in its scabbard, and barked a command. Her Ferals leaped into a sprint while she and her acolytes spread into a wider line after them, Arn and Elise either side of her. She heard the crash of Gunil and Claw somewhere behind.

Then she was bursting from the treeline into a small clearing, snow swirling, obscuring her vision.

The snow was churned, a mess of hoof- and paw-prints, boots here and there.

They stopped here, to rest, water their mounts?

Fritha turned a circle, saw flickering pinpoints of firelight far below.

Gulla’s work.

Gunil and his bear lumbered into the clearing, the giant holding his war-hammer across his lap.

“They’re gone,” he said.

He has a talent for stating the obvious.

Fritha gestured, and Arn and Elise spread wider, searching for tracks. Elise raised a hand. “There.” She pointed. She was fair-haired, like Fritha, and of a similar age, twenty-five summers. Arn said they looked like sisters, which may have been why they had become so close, so quickly. That and the grief they shared. Elise was small-framed, fragile-looking to someone who did not know her, but Fritha knew better, knew the strength in her sinewed frame, but more than that, her strength of mind, more determined than a huntsman’s hound.

Seeing your mother hung from a tree will focus the mind, or break it, Fritha thought.

Elise was pointing to bear- and hoof-prints that led into a stream, then continued on the far side back into the cover of trees, though the woodland grew thinner here.

There’s still not much chance of tracking them from the skies in this snowstorm.

“With me,” Fritha called, her Red Right Hand gathering around her. “Gunil, Morn,” she shouted. Thumping steps, a draught of wind, and Gunil and Morn joined her.

“The chase is on,” Fritha said. “They are running now, no thought for stealth. We are the wolven, they the elk, we shall run them to bay.” She paused, looked again at the tracks of the bear. “They’re fleeing up, into the Bonefells, maybe hoping to lose us in the snarl of the wild. They are wrong.” She gave a cold smile.

“Anseo,” Fritha called, and the Ferals stopped in their sniffing and snuffling around the glade and loped over to her. One of them whined.

“Ah, my children,” Fritha said, stroking one’s gore-crusted jaw. “You’ll feast soon, on bear and horse and man-flesh. Now, though, we hunt.”

The Feral threw its head back and howled, the others joining in. Then they were crashing across the stream, bounding after the tracks. Fritha lifted a hand and her acolytes followed.

“Gunil, Morn, wait,” she said. “Gunil, can you kill their bear? It bested you at the mine.”

“Sig is dead.” Gunil shrugged. “We will kill it.”

“You are both injured.”

“We will kill it,” he assured her.

“Good. Morn, stay close.”

“I’ll fly as I please, you wingless worm,” Morn snarled.

“You’ll fly close, or Gulla will hear of your recklessness and disobedience,” Fritha said.

Morn’s face twisted, a curt nod. Her knees bent, and she launched into the air, though Fritha saw she stayed circling overhead.

Good.

“Now, let’s finish this.”

Fritha wiped sweat from her eyes and raised a fist, drawing to a halt, sucked in deep breaths and uncorked a water skin. Half a day they had been chasing Drem and his companions, ever up into the Bonefells, the tree-clad hillslopes shifting into narrow gullies, granite cliffs and shingle ridges. Her chest was heaving, legs burning with the exertion. She was no soft weakling—a lifetime of training on the weapons-field had honed her body to flint, and what had happened afterwards had honed her spirit to that same knife-edge hardness, but life with the Kadoshim was not one of outright military campaigns, and so her body was feeling the pace.

Not every day I try to outrun a Dun Seren war bear.

But they were gaining; drops of blood fresher, Fritha guessed from wounds sustained during the battle at the mine.

The ground was changing, rockier, less sure underfoot, so the fact that Drem and the other