A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone #2) - John Gwynne Page 0,75

that superior expression, as always. Riv ignored her.

“Bleda, there are Sirak riding onto the plain. I think your mother has come to Drassil.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

FRITHA

Fritha stepped into a clearing and stopped for a long moment, unsure of what she was looking at. It was a large space, thirty or forty paces wide, edged in boulders, shrubs and trees. Churned snow on the ground was melting to slush, and there had been no fresh snowfalls since Fritha had reached Drem’s abandoned camp by the river. The weather was shifting as winter retreated before spring’s tentative advance. Much of the ground was stained pink, with scattered pools of almost black blood. But that was not what Fritha’s eyes were drawn to.

Two of her Ferals were standing at her shoulder, sniffing and snapping and snarling, scared and vicious at the same time as they all stared at heaped mounds of dead flesh.

Some of us are at our most dangerous when we are scared. They do not recognize what scent they are smelling, but they don’t like it.

Fritha had been sceptical about Morn’s tale of giant wyrms and two bears, one of them white, fighting alongside Drem and his companions. But these piles of coiled scales suggested that Morn was right.

Fritha hefted her spear and pointed it at the closest heap, took a few steps into the clearing.

A shadow skimmed across her, Morn descending in a whirl of wings.

“Are you sure they are dead?” Fritha muttered.

“I saw them slain by the Order and two bears,” Morn answered.

Fritha noticed that Morn was still levelling her spear at the nearest coiled body, though.

They smell dead to me.

Ferals and her warriors emerged from the bushes and trees around the clearing to join Fritha, all of them edging closer with sharp steel glinting, a noosed circle growing tighter.

As Fritha drew closer, details became clearer amidst the coiled heap: a red wound, tattered skin, darkening flesh and the glint of vertebrae where its head should be.

Wyrms, Morn was right, Fritha realized, a tremor of awe passing through her. She had heard tales of these fabled beasts, but never dreamed of seeing one. Each coil of the creature’s torso was thicker than her waist.

The wyrm’s head was on the ground nearby, as big as a hound. Its skin hung torn and ragged, eye sockets pecked empty. Fritha prodded the severed head with her spear and it rolled over, maggots squirming out of the empty sockets and spilling from its nostrils and mouth. Fritha crouched for a closer look and saw that its two fangs had been hacked from its gums. She wrinkled her nose at the smell.

One of her Ferals leaned close and took a sniff of the heaped coils that had been the wyrm’s body.

“Eat it, if you wish,” Fritha said, looking at lengths of gnawed flesh hanging in strips. “You’re not the first to try.”

There were two more dead wyrms in the clearing. One lay amidst a pile of its own entrails, whilst the other had been literally torn in two.

The ground was a trampled mess, sections of it showing the prints of a massive snake’s rippling movement. There were half-visible boot-prints in the melting snow, wolven-hound paw-prints and bear-prints, many of them, and of different sizes.

Morn was right about two bears, as well.

“There were two bears,” Morn said beside her, as if reading her mind.

Morn had returned to them close to three days ago, bursting with excitement as she’d told Fritha of her sighting, and of the wyrms and white bear. Fritha had been excited at the ground they had gained, but sceptical about wyrms and white bears. She resolved not to doubt Morn’s eyesight again.

“Where did they go?” Fritha asked.

“That way,” Morn said, pointing with her spear. The two of them padded to the clearing’s edge, following the prints that led away from the battle. Boot-prints, bear-prints, wolven-prints. They followed them a way into a stand of pine trees, stooping.

“Have they met someone from the Order of the Bright Star?” Fritha wondered. “Another giant and their bear?” She felt a stab of anger and frustration at that thought, to be so close and for Drem to escape her. Another bear and giant would probably be too much for her depleted numbers.

“I saw no one else,” Morn said. “But I was high, did not get too close, as you asked.” The half-breed’s lips curled; Fritha realized it was her attempt at a smile.

Since Morn’s return, when Fritha nursed her back from the edge of death and spoke words