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name. ‘Murdering
bastard. I hope the Vathen slaughtered him.’
    Gallow glanced at the wounded man. He was asleep now. ‘Where are the children?’
    ‘Where do you think? Nadric took them into the hills.’ Her grip on the knife eased. A part of her would always hate Gallow simply for being from across the sea, but she’d dealt
with that part and told it to shut up often enough to know how. It was better to have him than not, that was the long and the short of it. Better that he was back than dead. ‘You’re
such a thistlefinger! The Vathen are coming? What if they come here? What if they find
that
?’ She pointed at the forkbeard again. ‘Do you
want
to see your children
killed in front of you?’
    His eyes flashed. The children were the chink in his armour, but they were the chink in hers too. Made him hard to hate even on her bad days. ‘The Vathen won’t come this way,’
he said.
    She stuck her chin out at him. ‘Did you stop to ask while you were busy running away from them, then?’
    ‘They’ve gone to Fedderhun.’
    ‘Really? Vennic was in the Shepherd’s Tree.
He
said there were riders coming. That’s why we left. You forkbeards taught us that.’
    Gallow cocked his head at her. ‘But
you
didn’t leave.’ She caught a smile flicker across his face and frowned even more deeply. Later, when they were making up again,
he’d tell her how he liked her spirit. How it reminded him of home. Every time he said that she punched him. Hard, but he kept on saying it anyway. She pointed her knife at the sleeping
forkbeard. ‘I don’t want him here.’
    ‘He’ll go when he can ride again.’
    She threw back her head in disbelief. ‘You’re going to let him keep his horse?’
    ‘It’s
his
horse.’
    Arda threw the knife she was holding hard into the floor in disgust. It struck the wood and stuck, quivering. Right there was the thing between them that would never go away. Family first.
‘You cloth-mouthed scarecrow! There’s four children to be fed here. Hungry ones, and it won’t be the Vathen that feed them. Soldiers only take, whoever they follow.’
She’d lived it once. Never again. ‘You’d get silver for a horse in Andhun, even an old nag. In Tarkhun too.’ She shook her head. ‘You’re still one of them. You
just pretend you’re not because they wouldn’t have you any more.’ Now she was being nasty. His fault. He drove her to it.
    Gallow looked away. They both knew she was right, though: the other forkbeards wouldn’t even look at him, not with his bare face. He’d done that for her, years ago when she’d
thought it would change him, but of course it hadn’t changed anything at all. ‘I ran away,’ he said, ‘with a band of Marroc who were as brave as anyone else. We found horses
in the woods with dead men sitting on their backs. This one was alive. We shared the horses between us. I have another.’
    ‘You got two?’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Where are they?’
    ‘Out in the fields.’ Gallow shook his head. ‘There are no riders in the hills, Arda. I came that way myself. Vennic probably saw the two of us in the distance and panicked. You
know what he’s like.’ He must have seen the uncertainty in her face. Yes, she did know what Vennic was like, the whole village knew. He looked away. ‘Someone should go to the
Crackmarsh and bring the others back.’
    ‘Someone should get those horses brought into the yard before they’re eaten by wolves!’
    Gallow cocked his head at the man asleep on their furs. ‘His wound should be cleaned and stitched closed in the way of the Aulians.’
    ‘And are
you
going to tend to him?’ Arda let out a scornful laugh. ‘Yes, and I should let you! A fine way that would be to help him on to the Marches. Might as well
just use that knife on him.’ She sighed. She didn’t want this other man here but she didn’t want him dying under her roof either. A lot of bad luck that was, and she certainly
wasn’t going to open his