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So much of what happened seemed… senseless

Even in his final act of extremity, Rhulad answers not the loss of trust under which he laboured No clean gesture, this messy endFear called him a hero, but Trull suspected the ar had failed in his duties on night watch And noas dead, the sacrifice itself marred with incomprehensible intentions

The questions led Trull nowhere, and faded to a neave, one that sickened hiuish There had been bravery in that last act If nothing else Surprising bravery, when Trull had, of his brother Rhulad, begun to suspect… otherwise I doubted him In every way, I doubted hihost and a ghost’s voice, growing , until his soul began to screa cry only Trull could hear, yet a sound that threatened to drive hih it all, a more pervasive sense, a hollowness deep within hiain sain hear There see dire and heavy upon him

He helped Fear wrap Rhulad and the sword in a waxed canvas groundsheet, hearing Midik’s weeping as if fro to Binadas talk as he bound wounds and drew upon E As the stiff folds closed over Rhulad’s face, Trull’s breath caught in a ragged gasp, and he flinched back as Fear tightened the covering with leather straps

‘It is done,’ Fear ainst, brother It ever arrives, defiant of every hiding place, of every frantic attempt to escape Death is every mortal’s shadow, his true shadow, and ti that shadoly round, until what stretched behind one now stretches before him’

‘You called him a hero’

‘I did, and it was not an empty claim He went to the other side of the rise, which is e did not see hie’

Trull looked up

‘I needed answers of my own, brother He killed two on that side of the hill, yet lost his weapon doing so Others were coine, and so Rhulad must have concluded he had no choice The Jheck wanted the sword They would have to kill hiet it Trull, it is done He died, blooded and brave I myself came upon the corpses beyond the rise, before I came back to you and Binadas’

All my doubts… the poisons of suspicion, in all their foul flavours – Daughter Dusk take me – but I have drunk deep

‘Trull, we need you and your skills with that spear in our wake,’ Fear said ‘Both Binadas and Rhulad here will have to be pulled on the sleds and for this Theradas and I will be needed Midik takes point’

Trull blinked confusedly ‘Binadas cannot walk?’

‘His hip is broken, and he has not the strength left to heal it’

Trull straightened ‘Do you think they will pursue?’

‘Yes,’ Fear said

Their flight began Darkness swept down upon therained snow until the sky itself was grey-white and lowering The temperature dropped still further, as if with vicious intent, until even the furs they wore began to fail theed twenty paces behind the sleds – they were barely visible through the hipped snow The blood-frosted spear was in his grip, a detail he confirone nuht well be all around hih the darkness, onlyin

He would have no tied would be torn away by the wind, and his co Nor would they return for his body The gift must be delivered

Trull ran on, constantly scanning to either side, occasionally twisting round to look behind, seeing nothing but faint white The rhyth, deadly lassitude, the seep of exhaustion slowing his shivering beneath the furs, dragging at his limbs

Dawn’s arrival was announced by a dull, reluctant surrender of the pervasive glooht, no rise in teil He simply ran on, one foot in front of the other, his ice-clad rown strangely warauntlets, a re about that vaguely disturbed him