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tomorrow, he decided, if the Screambreaker was up to the journey, but for now it was useful to have the place to himself. He wondered what had scared them away.
    With the swords and mail and the animals cared for, Gallow walked to the well and drew a bucket of water. He threw a few handfuls of it over himself and carried the rest back to the workshop. Nadric always kept a few rags about the place – he was forever on the lookout for shirts that were so worn and torn that they couldn’t be patched and repaired. Gallow took one and went back to Corvin. One way or another that wound was getting cleaned, even if he had to punch the old man out to do it.
    The thought made him laugh. Punching out the Screambreaker. How many people had tried that all those years ago? A lot, and he couldn’t remember any that had succeeded. ‘I need to—’
    He stopped. The curtains were drawn back. The Screambreaker was sitting up, propped against the wall. He had his sword in his lap and the blankets around his feet and he was staring across the house. He didn’t move or even look at him as Gallow came in. Gallow followed the Screambreaker’s eyes. The village wasn’t as empty as he’d thought. The Screambreaker screwed up his nose. ‘I don’t think this Marroc likes me,’ he said, and Gallow couldn’t have stopped himself from smiling even if he’d wanted to.
    ‘Well I did tell you she wouldn’t.’

 
     
     
     
6
     
ARDA
     
     
     
     
    V ennic had been keeping watch up in the Shepherd’s Tree. As much as anything it was something for him to do, but then he’d come running back late in the morning and said there were riders coming. The villagers had sighed and rolled their eyes. They knew what to do: take everything that mattered and hide, let the soldiers come through and be on their way, and then start again once they were gone. The forkbeards had taught them that. Burned-down houses could be built again. People and animals, they were what mattered, and so the men and women of Middislet had run out into the fields and called everyone back and gathered the animals that could be gathered and scattered the rest. The Vathen would come and go, and for most of them life would go on.
    But not for all. The forge and Nadric’s workshop weren’t things you could simply pack up into sacks and throw over your shoulder and carry or herd up to the Crackmarsh. Without them Nadric had no living, and Arda had four children to care for and her man was off to war. Again. It made her furious because it was always
her
. Why did
she
have to suffer the most?
    ‘I’m not having it,’ she told Nadric. ‘They come here, they’ll burn us down over my dead body.’
    Which, Nadric pleaded, was almost surely what would happen, but Arda was done with wars and fighting and running away. She took a knife and shut herself in the cellar, and nothing Nadric could say would make her come out. If Vennic was right and a band of soldiers came by then she’d plead with them. The forkbeards admired courage like that, didn’t they? Maybe the Vathen would too. So in the end Nadric gave up and took the children away to hide in the Crackmarsh caves with everyone else and left her.
    For a long time she sat in the quiet and in the dark and all alone. Trouble with that was it gave her time to wonder. What if the Vathen were different? What if they didn’t care? Twice she got up, ready to climb out of the cellar and head after the rest of the village, and twice she stopped herself. Maybe the Vathen, the forkbeards or whoever it was that Vennic had seen had passed on by. Or maybe the riders were actually a herd of deer or simply figments of his imagination. There was no real telling with Vennic. That was what she was thinking – that Vennic was an idiot and there was nothing at all coming their way from the hills – when she heard the first noises above.
    Footsteps. No voices. She froze, crouched in a corner, a lot less sure of herself than when she’d argued