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buried in his leg. Maquin heaved and wrenched the fang out. Tahir gasped with pain, blood running down his leg.
    Orgull ripped Tahir’s breeches up to the knee, poured water over the wound and tied a strip of the torn breeches above it.
    ‘How is it?’ Tahir asked, a touch of panic in his voice.
    ‘As good as it can be down here,’ Orgull muttered, ‘though I’d like something stronger than water to flush it with. Can you stand?’
    ‘I’ll stand to walk out of this place,’ Tahir breathed, steadying himself with his spear.
    Orgull gripped his axe haft and with a wrench pulled the blade free of the creature. He threw one of their torches back down the tunnel, where it wavered but stayed alight. ‘Maquin, best
get that stone shifted. Who knows what else we’re sharing these tunnels with.’
    Maquin ran up the steps and put his shoulder to the stone. Nothing happened. He tried again, grunting and straining.
    ‘What’s keeping you?’ Orgull called.
    ‘It’s heavy,’ Maquin muttered. ‘Could do with you here, chief.’
    ‘Can’t be in two places at once,’ Orgull said. ‘And you’d best get a move on. Light’s fading.’
    Even as he spoke, the torch he had thrown back down the tunnel guttered and then winked out. The darkness surged forwards, held in check by Tahir tightly clutching the last torch.
    Maquin renewed his efforts, fear of being trapped in the dark giving him an extra strength; the stone shifted, grinding against rock and earth. Maquin dug his spear butt into the gap, levered
and shoved as he strained, veins bulging with the effort, and finally the stone lifted clear. Pale moonlight greeted him.
    He reached up through the hole, savouring the sensation of air on his face and grass under his fingertips; he grabbed a tree root and pulled himself up. He could hear the sighing of a breeze
amongst branches, the distant murmur of voices, faint song, could see the pinpricks of many campfires.
    Back in Forn, then. Must be the survivors of the battle
. For a moment the thought of Jael filled his mind, sitting beside a campfire, eating, drinking, celebrating. Without realizing, he
stood and took a step forwards, hand reaching for his sword hilt.
    ‘Could do with some help down here,’ a voice whispered to him. He froze, remembering Orgull’s words to him, their pact in the burial chamber.
Soon, Jael.
    The moon slipped behind ragged clouds and all was in darkness.
    Maquin set to pulling the others out of the tunnel and, as quietly as hunting wolves, the three warriors slipped into the forest, the last surviving remnant of the Gadrai. Maquin looked back
once and then followed his sword-brothers into the trees.

CHAPTER FIVE
CORBAN
    Corban gripped the boat’s rail as he stared back into the distance. Dun Carreg had long since disappeared and in all directions a grey, foam-flecked sea stretched as far
as he could see.
    It was late in the day now, well past highsun, and Corban’s stomach was rumbling. He had not eaten since the evening before – nor had anyone else on this boat. No one had given food
much thought in their desperate bid to escape.
    Dun Carreg
, he thought, wishing that he could still see the fortress, still see Ardan, still see his home.
Home no more
. Everything had changed so quickly. And Thannon and Cywen
were both still in Dun Carreg. His da and sister, both dead, both needing a cairn to be raised over them. It wasn’t right. Tears filled his eyes.
    His mam lay sleeping upon a heaped pile of nets. She looked older, the lines in her face deeper, dark hollows about her eyes. Gar sat beside her, chin resting on his chest, sleeping too. Most of
this band of runaways were in the same state. It had been a long, hard night, in more ways than one.
    Footsteps drew Corban’s eyes up to Halion, his weapons-master from the Rowan Field, making his way along the fisher-boat towards him. The warrior nodded grimly as he walked to where
Mordwyr, Dath’s da, stood guiding the boat’s