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knows what she will see and so do I. We walk on.
    It’s not long before we see the ruins of a hill fort rising before us, the ramparts blackened and broken like old men’s teeth. A pall of smoke still hangs overhead like a funeral cloak, like vulture’s wings. I don’t want to go any closer.
    She hesitates and I can smell her fear. The smoke tells its own tale. I move to stand beside her.
    ‘No one could survive this,’ she says bleakly, but I know she is wrong. I can smell fresh blood – someone is still breathing, still bleeding. I don’t argue with her. I stride ahead, following the scent trail. She doesn’t question me and I hear her behind me. I admire her courage.
    I climb the steep slope of the hill. The stench of death is stronger here, mixed with the smoke that catches in my throat, in my eyes, my nose. It is on my tongue so that it is all I can taste. The white snow is black with ash. The wooden palisade still smoulders, burned to charcoal – it crumbles under my hands. This place is eerily silent. All the birds have flown away and no dogs bark a warning at our presence. They died here too. I can smell them.
    I can see the ruin of the hall. They burn well, these roundhouses; thatch catches so easily. There isn’t much left within the smouldering remains. I guess that those unfortunate enough to be trapped inside huddled together for protection and were slaughtered where they stood. The corpses are all heaped to one side of the building. The ground is littered with shards of pottery and blackened iron. Anything of value has been stripped from the dead and taken. Still the scent of life draws me. I step over blackened timber. My hobnail boots crunch on ash and cinders. The dead are not long cold but already the decay has begun.
    I find her at last, crouched in the shelter of the partially collapsed wall, all but hidden by the carrion. She is so stained with grime and soot that if I’d been depending on my eyes I would have missed her. She looks like a pile of rags. She opens her eyes at my approach and I see the fear in them.
    ‘I’ve not come to harm you,’ I say quickly in my mother’s tongue. I offer her my canteen. I can see burns on her hands and death in her eyes so I hold it to her lips and tilt it gently so that she can drink.
    My female companion is beside me. I glance up. She has removed both her helmet and her shawl to expose her face. Her eyes are moist but whether from the smoke or from grief I can’t say.
    ‘Elen?’
    ‘Come to see your handiwork, bitch?’ The burned woman’s voice is dry and raw, the sound a parched rock might make if it could speak. She tries to spit in our direction but her mouth is too try and her lips scorched.
    ‘This is not of my doing.’ I hear anguish in my companion’s voice
    ‘Tell that to the Chief – he found your witchcraft just before your men came and did this.’ She coughs – a ghastly, racking sound.
    ‘The Chief survived?’ The seeress sounds incredulous. I can’t blame her. My army are good at bringing death and we rarely leave witnesses. ‘He cursed you, Trista, and he’ll get you!’
    Elen tries to point a fire-ravaged, blistered finger at us, but the effort is too much. She grimaces with pain.
    ‘I did no witchcraft!’
    Elen is finding it harder and harder to breathe, let alone speak. I offer her more water. She moves her head away.
    ‘Hair,’ she says. I don’t know what she means. The seeress seems to understand.
    ‘Cerys died – of the fever that night, before I left. That was my offering, my gift to her for the next life. I’d nothing else.’ She sounds desperate to explain; it’s pointless – the woman, Elen, has already gone.
    ‘She’s dead, Trista.’ At least now I know her name.
    ‘I know.’ She walks away from me, examining the ruin of her home.
    I close the dead woman’s eyes. There is nothing else we can do for her. I give Trista a moment to recover herself.
    ‘What do you want to do?’ I try to speak