“Indeed.” Tendris nodded, accepting the wisdom. “Well, luck go with you.”

Vaelin was so surprised that his plan had worked that he let Tendris guide his horse to the edge of the clearing before he remembered to ask a vital question.

“Brother! What do I do with this dog?”

Tendris looked over his shoulder as he rode away, spurring his mount to a canter. “Kill it if you’re smart. Keep it if you’re brave.” He laughed, raising a hand as his horse accelerated into a gallop, snow rising into a thick cloud that shimmered in the winter sun.

Vaelin looked down at the dog. It gazed up at him with adoring eyes, long pink tongue lolling from a mouth wet with drool. Again he noted the numerous scars on its snout. Although still young, this animal clearly had endured a hard life. “Scratch,” he told it. “I’ll call you Scratch.”

Dog flesh proved a tough, sinewy meat but Vaelin was long past being choosy over his food. Scratch had whined continually as Vaelin butchered one of the carcasses back at the clearing, slicing a rear haunch off the largest dog. He had kept his distance as Vaelin carried the prize back to the camp and cut strips of meat to roast over his fire. Only when the meat had been eaten and Vaelin had hidden the remainder in his tree hole did the dog venture closer, snuffling at Vaelin’s feet in search of reassurance. Whatever the savage traits of Volarian slave-hounds it appeared cannibalism was not among them.

“Don’t know what I’m going to feed you if you won’t eat your own kind,” Vaelin mused, patting Scratch awkwardly on the head. The dog was clearly unused to being petted and shrank warily when Vaelin first tried it.

He had been back at the camp for over an hour, cooking, building the fire, clearing snow from his shelter and resisting the temptation to go and see if Erlin and Sella were still hiding in the hollow. He had felt a sense of wrongness ever since Tendris had ridden away, a suspicion that the man had accepted his word a little too easily. He could be wrong, of course. Tendris had struck him as the kind of brother whose Faith was absolute and unshakeable. If so then the concept of a fellow brother lying, lying to protect a Denier at that, simply wouldn’t occur to him. On the other hand, could a man who spent his life hunting the realm for heretics remain so free of cynicism?

Without answers to these questions Vaelin couldn’t risk checking on the fugitives. There was nothing on the wind to warn him otherwise, no change in the song of the wild threatening ambush but still he stayed in his camp, ate dog flesh and puzzled over what to do with his gift.

Scratch seemed an oddly cheerful animal considering he had been bred to hunt and kill people. He scampered about the camp, playing with sticks or bones he dug out of the snow, bringing them to Vaelin who quickly learned trying to wrestle them away was a pointlessly tiring task. He wasn’t remotely sure he would be allowed to keep the dog when he returned to the Order. Master Chekril, the keeper of the kennels, was unlikely to want such a beast near his beloved hounds. More likely they would pull a dagger across its throat as soon as he appeared at the gates.

They went hunting in the afternoon, Vaelin expecting another fruitless search but it wasn’t long before Scratch picked up a trail. With a brief yelp he was off, bounding through the snow, Vaelin struggling in his wake. It wasn’t long before he found the source of the trail: the frozen carcass of a small deer no doubt caught in the storm the night before. Oddly it was untouched, Scratch sat patiently beside the corpse, eyeing Vaelin warily as he approached. Vaelin gutted the carcass, tossing the entrails to Scratch whose ecstatic reaction took him by surprise. He yelped happily, gulping the meat down in a frenzy of teeth and snapping jaws. Vaelin dragged the deer back to camp pondering the odd change in his circumstances. He had gone from near starvation to an abundance of food in less than a day, more food in fact than he could eat before Master Hutril returned to take him back to the Order house.

Darkness came swiftly, a cloudless, moonlit night turning the snow into folds of blue silver and laying out a vast panorama of stars above him. If Caenis had been here he could have named all the constellations but Vaelin could pick out only a few of the more obvious ones; the Sword, the Stag, the Maiden. Caenis had told him of a legend that claimed the first souls of the Departed had cast the stars into the sky from the Beyond as a gift for the generations to come, making patterns to guide the living through the path of life. Many claimed to be able to read the message written in the sky, most of them seemed to congregate in market places and fairs, offering guidance for a palmful of copper.

He was wondering at the meaning of the Sword pointing towards the south when his sense of wrongness hardened into cold certainty. Scratch tensed, lifting his head slightly. There was no scent, no sound, no warning at all, but something wasn’t right.

Vaelin turned, glancing over his shoulder at the unmoving foliage behind him. So silent, he wondered, a little awed. No assassin could be that skilful.

“If you’re hungry, brother,” he called. “I have plenty of meat to spare.” He turned back to the fire, adding some logs to keep the flames high. After a short interval there was a crunch of boots on snow as Makril stepped past him to crouch opposite, spreading his hands to the fire. He didn’t look at Vaelin but glowered at Scratch.

“Should’ve killed that bloody thing,” he grumbled.

Vaelin ducked into his shelter to fetch a portion of meat. “Deer.” He tossed it to Makril.

The stocky man speared the meat with his knife and arranged a small mound of rocks to secure it over the fire before spreading his bedroll on the ground to sit down.

“A fine night, brother,” Vaelin said.

Makril grunted, undoing his boots to massage his feet. The smell was enough to make Scratch get up and slink away.

“I am sorry Brother Tendris did not find my word trustworthy,” Vaelin continued.

“He believed you.” Makril picked something from between his toes and tossed it into the fire where it popped and hissed. “He’s a true man of the Faith. Whereas I am a suspicious, gutter born bastard. That’s why he keeps me with him. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a man of many abilities, finest horseman I ever saw and he can extract information from a Denier quicker than you could blow your nose. But in some ways he’s an innocent. He trusts the Faithful. For him all the Faithful have the same belief, his belief.”

“But not yours?”

Makril placed his boots near the fire to dry. “I hunt. Tracks, signs, spoor, a scent on the wind, the rush of blood that comes from a kill. That’s my Faith. What’s yours boy?”

Vaelin shrugged. He suspected a trap in Makril’s openness, luring him into an admission best kept silent. “I follow the Faith,” he replied, forcing certainty into his words. “I am a brother of the Sixth Order.”

“The Order has many brothers, all different, all finding their own path in the Faith. Don’t kid yourself the Order is filled with virtuous men who spend every spare moment grovelling to the Departed. We’re soldiers, boy. Soldier’s life is hard, short on pleasure and long on pain.”

“The Aspect says there’s a difference between a soldier and a warrior. A soldier fights for pay or loyalty. We fight for the Faith, war is our way of honouring the Departed.”

Makril’s face took on a sombre cast, a craggy, hairy mask in the yellow fire light, his eyes distant, focused on unhappy memories. “War? War is blood and shit and men maddened with pain calling for their mother as they bleed to death. There’s no honour in it, boy.” His eyes shifted, meeting Vaelin’s. “You’ll see it, you poor little bastard. You’ll see it all.”

Suddenly uncomfortable, Vaelin added another log to the fire. “Why were you hunting that girl?”

“She’s a Denier. A Denier most foul, for she has power to twist the hearts of virtuous men.” He gave a short, ironic laugh. “So I think I’d be safe if she ever met me.”

“What is it? This power?”

Makril tested the meat with his fingers and began to eat, biting off small mouthfuls, chewing thoroughly then swallowing. It was the practised, unconscious action of a man who did not savour food but merely took it into himself as fuel. “It’s a dark tale, boy,” he said, between mouthfuls. “Might give you nightmares.”

“I’ve got those already.”

Makril raised a bushy eyebrow but didn’t comment. Instead he finished his meat and fished in his pack for a small leather flask. “Brother’s Friend,” he explained, taking a swig. “Cumbraelin brandy mixed with redflower. Keeps the fire in a man’s belly when he’s walking a wall on the northern frontier waiting for Lonak savages to cut his throat.” He offered the flask to Vaelin who shook his head. Liquor wasn’t forbidden in the Order, but it was frowned upon by the more Faithful masters. Some said anything that dulled the senses was a barrier to the Faith, the less a man remembered of his life the less he had to take with him to the Beyond. Clearly Brother Makril didn’t share this view.

“So you want to know about the witch.” He relaxed, resting his back against a rock, intermittently sipping from his flask. “Well, the story goes she was arrested on Council orders following reports of Unfaithful practices. Allegations are usually a load of nonsense; people claiming to have heard voices from the Beyond that don’t come from the Departed, healing the sick, communing with beasts and so on. Mostly it’s just frightened peasants blaming each other for their misfortunes, but every once in a while you get one like her.