A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone #2) - John Gwynne Page 0,35

sky.

So close. I was so close. And I cannot return to Gulla empty-handed. My position is not so secure that failure will not damage it. There are many others willing and waiting to take my place.

“They have escaped us,” Gunil said behind her.

That’s not helpful. She resisted the urge to turn around and stab the giant.

“For now,” she muttered.

“Fritha,” Gunil said to her. She tore her eyes away from the bend in the river where Drem had disappeared.

“What?” she snapped, looking over her shoulder to see the giant looming over her. She had not heard his approach, which was worrying.

Breathe. Focus. This is not over yet; there are many leagues between here and Dun Seren.

“You should see this,” the giant said to her, and without waiting, turned and walked back into the woods. She noticed he favoured one leg, and his right arm was held tucked tight to his ribs. Her leg throbbed, and she paused to cut a strip of cloth from her cloak and tie it high, above the wound. She counted heads as she followed Gunil back to the clearing, was appalled at the result. Thirteen of her Ferals still standing, sixteen of her Red Right Hand, though she would be hard-pressed to find one unharmed from their battles.

Little more than a score left, when fifty of us set out after three men, a bear, a hound and a crow. She ground her teeth in anger.

Arn had carried Elise to the edge of the clearing, laid her down with the other injured where the healers amongst them were doing what they could.

I will join them soon, do what I can.

The draig lay with the dead scattered about it. Fritha walked to it, ran a gloved finger along the line of its jaw, traced a curved fang.

Oh, how I wish we could have captured you, taken you back to Gulla in a cage. The creatures I could have fashioned from your flesh. But I need life to fashion life, not dead, butchered meat and congealed blood.

Some of her men were already seeing to the butchering, skinning and finishing off the gutting of the dead beast, cutting claws from its feet, extracting teeth from its jaws.

We need these trophies, else no one would ever believe us.

Deep wounds raked one side of the draig’s head, puncture wounds a little further along on its neck, inflicted by the wolven-hound. Fritha remembered it standing over the Order’s huntsman, protecting him, hurling itself at the draig.

Such fierce loyalty… She shook her head. I want that, need that.

“This way,” Gunil said, leading Fritha on, past the dunghills, deeper into the trees. They dropped into a small gully, with banks rearing either side of them, thick with knotted tree-roots. Gunil paused at the entrance to a cave, tore a strip of linen from the tunic beneath his leather vest, wrapped it around the butt-end of his war-hammer and struck sparks with striking iron and flint.

Holding the makeshift torch aloft, he strode into the cave, revealing a tunnel that sloped gently downwards. It was tall and wide; Gunil did not need to duck his head. Fritha followed, the smell stale and unpleasant, but better than the dunghills. Torchlight flickered on uneven walls, thick ridges scoured into hard-packed earth, and Fritha realized they were made by draig-claws.

This was its den.

A little further on and the tunnel opened into a wider chamber. Something crunched under Fritha’s feet: bones, a carpet of them as thick as the pine needle litter above ground. Some smaller—badgers, foxes—others much larger, elk, what resembled a bear. She spied other shapes amidst the bones, occasionally a human skull. A ribcage here, spine there, another creature, a large skull with long canines. Fritha recognized the anatomy of a wolven; she’d carved enough of them up, fused them into something else. They strode on, towards a shadowy shape at the centre of the room.

Gunil and Fritha stood before it, Gunil raising his torch high. At first glance Fritha thought it was a head, not yet fully decomposed, but as she stooped to see it better she saw it was too symmetrical, devoid of mouth, eyes, jaws. Roughly oval in shape, there were colours swirling across it, hues rippling, like inks spilt into water.

Fritha felt a smile spreading over her face, the sense of frustration and defeat that had settled upon her like a shroud suddenly lifted, evaporating.

“A draig’s egg,” she said into the darkness.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BLEDA

Bleda sat on his horse, staring ahead at the warriors marching on