A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone #2) - John Gwynne Page 0,45

marking isolated holds. Her eyes fixed on the closest one, roughly two or three leagues from her position.

That will do.

With a gesture, she started her small column moving, picking a way down the slope, through wind-blasted pines in the failing light as dusk settled around them.

Morn had not come, and so Fritha had made the decision to move out. Waiting was achieving nothing, only allowing Drem to widen the gap between them. She had made her decision, knew that she wanted to catch them; she could not turn her back and walk away from the lure of the huntsman’s knowledge and power and the prize that was the young Cullen. But she could not build rafts and follow them down the river; they could not fashion a raft big enough to safely take Gunil’s bear, so Fritha made the decision to travel by land, which meant back-tracking on their route and attempting to find new paths through the Bonefells that would lead them back to the river.

She was concerned about Morn but knew that if the half-breed was alive and found her way back to the draig lair, she would have no great difficulties in tracking Fritha.

It had taken her most of the day to lead her dwindling, battered survivors to the ravine where Drem and his companions had fooled them and changed their course, but since then they had made better time, the sharp gullies and ravines of the Bonefells shifting to the foothills that bordered the mountains.

Fritha was deeply aware that she was losing time, that each moment was allowing Drem to widen the gap between them, but there was nothing that she could do about that right now, and as annoyed and vexed as she was about it, she was ever the pragmatist.

And besides, there is something else that I must do.

I need to communicate with Gulla, and for that I require certain… ingredients.

Fritha crept through the snow, slow and steady, minimizing the crunch of each frozen step, until she reached the post-and-rail fence of a paddock, marking the boundary of the hold.

Silent as smoke, she slipped between the rails and moved into the paddock, Arn a shadow behind her, a deeper darkness behind him that was Gunil. Fritha knew that her people were doing the same all around the hold, edging closer, like wolven stalking an unsuspecting elk. Fritha had commanded her Ferals to stay further out in a loose circle around the hold.

She needed people taken alive.

A building loomed and Fritha pressed tight against it, took a few moments to listen. From the smell and sounds, it was a stable. She leaned out from the shadows, saw two ponies and a thick-boned plough-horse. Beyond the stable was a courtyard, snow glistening like crystals in the starlight. It was bordered by outbuildings—a barn, a chicken coop, a pig-pen. A few goats roamed free. At the courtyard’s head was a small feast-hall, snow thick on the turf-covered roof. Light glimmered through shuttered windows, and Fritha heard the murmur of conversation.

There was a small gap between the stable and the feast-hall, Fritha slipping across, climbing the few steps that raised the feast-hall from the ground, Arn behind her, Gunil remaining in the darkness of the stable.

A shadow on the porch before the hall’s doors shifted, and then a hound was standing, growling and barking.

Arn stepped around Fritha, took half a dozen steps and put his spear in its chest; growls turned to a high-pitched whine, cut short.

The doors flew open, a dark silhouette with a tangle of beard, standing in a moment’s frozen shock. Arn tugged on his spear, trying to turn, but the blade was snagged in the dog’s corpse.

Shouts and footsteps came from inside the hall.

The silhouette threw himself at Arn, the two of them stumbling over the hound’s body and going down in a snarl of limbs.

Another figure burst from the hall, a woman, lean and wiry. Fritha slammed her spear-butt into the woman’s head. She dropped sprawling to the ground and didn’t move. Arn and his attacker rolled down the steps to the courtyard, but before Fritha could reach them she was attacked by another figure rushing from the hall, a gangly youth swinging a wood-axe at her. She blocked and retreated, blocked and retreated, resisting the opportunities to stab into his throat or belly.

Then Gunil was there, a fist clubbing the lad across his shoulders, and he was on the ground, too.

Arn was stood over his assailant, who was kneeling on slush-churned ground,