“Why have we stopped?” he asked Edel.
“Can you smell anything?” she asked Varg, R?kia and the other scouts who were filtering out of the trees to join them.
R?kia caught the scent first, Varg a few heartbeats behind.
“Smoke,” R?kia said.
“And blood,” Varg muttered.
Behind them the drum of hooves and feet grew louder, closer, and Varg looked back to see Glornir riding out of the woodland, Svik and Sulich riding either side of him, Einar running alongside them, the rest of the Bloodsworn following. Glornir was glowering, danger leaking from him. He reined in and Edel told him of the scents ahead, of smoke and blood.
“Kit check: make yourselves ready,” Glornir called out.
Varg pulled a n?lbinding cap from his belt and pulled it over his head, despite his sweat, then unbuckled his helm from his belt, the helm he had taken from the dragon-born at Rotta’s chamber, and pulled that over his woollen cap and buckled it under his chin. Sound changed, muted and dull, but he could still hear well enough. He checked the curtain of mail was spread across his neck and shoulders, then gripped his spear and waited. He saw J?kul crouch and scoop up a handful of pine needles and dirt, rub it between his palms and let it fall back to the ground. The smith stood and took his hammer from his belt, rolled his shoulders and clicked his neck.
“Onwards,” Glornir said, then kicked his horse on.
Edel moved ahead, Varg, R?kia and the scouts behind her like a flock of geese, spreading wide, Glornir behind them, the Bloodsworn all about him. Varg felt the first rush of danger, a tingling in his blood. They travelled in silence apart from the drum of hooves and feet, the clink and jangle of harness and mail, and the rhythmic breaths of the runners. Two days they had been on Skalk’s trail now, and all sensed that they were closing in.
They were travelling along a wide track through the trees, the mountains of the Bonebacks rearing tall as the sky on the left. Varg heard the sound of water ahead, fast-flowing, and the scent of smoke and blood grew stronger. A scream drifted on the wind, faint but clear, sending chills running across Varg’s neck. It was terror-filled.
The path opened up, a tree-shrouded hill sloping up to the right, and then they were moving into a valley, the cliffs ending on the left, and a timber wall appeared, built tight to the cliff face and running parallel to the path. A black cloud of smoke billowed across them. Varg held his breath, and then he was out the other side. Beyond the timber wall he saw a hall and tower on a slope, pressed to the cliff face. The tower burned like a rushlight, flames crackling and hungry, smoke wafting. The smell of blood and death was thick in the air, now. Behind the crackle and hiss of flames there was no other sound.
“Shields!” Glornir shouted and Varg shrugged his shield from his back, hefted it and ran on, all about him the Bloodsworn doing the same.
Edel held her fist up ahead of him and they slowed, moving from a run to a jog, then a walk as a gateway in the timber wall appeared, a river beyond it. The gates were open. Edel slowed, her hounds loping ahead. The wolfhounds reached the gateway first and stopped, crouched and snarling, hackles raised.
Glornir rode up, reining his horse in, letting her walk through the open gates of the fortress. Edel, R?kia and Varg entered beside him, spreading out into a sloping courtyard, the Bloodsworn following behind.
The ground was littered with the dead, first in their ones and twos, then more of them the further into the yard Varg walked. Ahead of him the slope climbed to a hall and tower. There was a splintering sound as part of the tower gave way and collapsed, smashing through the turf roof of the hall. An explosion of sparks and ash.
There were more dead in the courtyard, piled deeper around the steps to the hall, bodies twisted together, hacked and mutilated. And on the steps in the midst of it all sat a woman. She was gore-drenched, red with blood from her head to her boots, a long-axe lying across her lap. An ugly creature was perched upon her shoulder, with a nasty-looking sting on its tail, and another vaesen sat on the steps before the woman. It was small, with sharp claws and a half-spear in its tiny, slim-fingered hand. A tennúr. It had a mound of what looked like blood-covered nuts piled at its feet and was crunching on one of them as it looked at Varg. A shiver of revulsion passed through Varg as he realised they weren’t nuts: they were human teeth. And he didn’t like the way the tennúr’s gaze fixed for a long moment upon his own mouth. The two vaesen regarded Glornir and the Bloodsworn with suspicious, violent eyes.
Sitting around the woman’s legs were children, maybe twelve or fifteen of them. They were the only things in the area not spattered in blood. They didn’t seem to be scared of the woman, which Varg found strange, as his blood was tingling, and he felt the ripples of fear and danger pulsing off her. If he had hackles like Edel’s wolfhounds, they would have been standing stiff and straight.