text: Aedwen could not be certain, but she thought she recognised the voice of one of the horsemen as that of Raegnold, the tall man who had taken her to Gytha's house. The man who had stabbed Odin and then attacked them as they were escaping from Briuuetone.
  
  His voice was muffled and muted, the injury he'd suffered at Dunston's hands evidently making speech difficult. But the sound of his voice had filled her with dread, bringing back the terrible sadness she had felt at seeing Dunston's dog hurt, the bleak terror of witnessing Dunston, the man who had led her safely from the forest, locked up. And, even though she had not heard Raegnold's voice before that evening in Briuuetone, somehow, the sound of it sent her mind reeling back to that morning in the forest when she had lost her father. When she had sprinted blindly into the woods, fleeing from his attackers and his screams.
  
  Perhaps, she wondered, as Dunston led her back to the path, she had heard his voice amongst her father's screams for mercy. Maybe there was something in his tone that her memory was able to latch on to. Whether she had heard him or not all those days ago, there was no doubt now in her mind that he had been there when her father was killed. Her rage at the thought threatened to consume her. Her fear of the man and the rest of Hunfrith's men turned her stomach. Oh, that she were a man! That she could take up a weapon and strike down these monsters who had caused so much misery.
  
  Looking down at the earth, she could easily make out the five sets of horse's hooves and the heavy, booted feet of the five riders who had been walking beside their steeds. Dunston touched her arm and she flinched.
  
  "They are gone," he said. "They are not aware we are on their trail. They are solely focused on Ithamar."
  
  "What will…" she had been about to ask what they would do to him when they caught up with the monk, but bit back the question. It was foolish. She knew all too well what lay in store for him if the horsemen ran him to ground. "What are we to do?" she asked instead.
  
  "They are ahead of us now, so we must be wary. But they are travelling quickly, and I doubt they will suspect anyone is following them. Perhaps in their haste they will miss Ithamar. Or maybe he has already reached the priest and delivered his message. If he has, they will be able to do nothing to prevent it. I say we press on." He lifted his axe so that the sunlight caught its sharp edge. "With caution."
  
  Aedwen took a slow calming breath and nodded. Her hands were shaking, but she grasped the staff Dunston had given her and set off in the wake of the riders.
  
  They walked on in silence with none of the relaxed companionship they had enjoyed earlier that day. They were wary now, uninterested in the tracks of animals. All they cared about was that they were on the correct path and that they did not stumble upon Hunfrith's men.
  
  The sun was low, glaring in sudden flashes from between the trees, when Aedwen saw the track. She might not have noticed it, if not for the angle of the sunlight. All that afternoon they had followed the fresh, deep prints of the horses, and there had been no other sign to follow. Any impression Ithamar's light tread might have made in the earth was trampled and obliterated by the passing of the five horsemen.
  
  But just as they reached the top of a steep incline, where a lightning-shattered elm stood, she saw a strange shadow in the corner of her vision.
  
  "Dunston," she whispered, still afraid to speak out loud, lest the horsemen might hear. She knew it was foolish, as they were surely far away by now, but fear had gripped her since the men had passed them. The old man halted and returned to her. "Is that Ithamar's print?" she asked, pointing at the slightest of marks in the mud.
  
  Dunston squinted at the ground and then whistled quietly.
  
  "You will be a better tracker than I soon enough," he said with a twisted smile. "The lowness of the sun has cast a shadow in it. I doubt either one of us would have noticed this at any other time." She wondered at that, and thought fleetingly again about the Blessed Virgin and her prayers.
  
  "Look there," Dunston said, pointing at something on the elm. He plucked at the splintered trunk and showed her a thin thread. She took it and held it up to the light. Wool. And it was dark, like a monk's habit.
  
  "It looks as though our friend left the path here," Dunston said, the thrill of the chase colouring his tone with excitement. "Let us see what he was about."
  
  They followed the monk's tracks to a clearing some way from the path, but still within sight of the lightning-felled tree. Away from the churned mud of the track it was much easier to see where Ithamar had been. The snakeweed that grew thick on the floor of the glade had been crushed by his feet. Most of the leaves had sprung back, but his path was still clear to Aedwen, now that she had trained her eyes to look for any sign of disturbance on the ground.
  
  Dunston cast about the clearing.
  
  "Look, here," he said. "Ithamar did not leave this glade and go further into the forest. He retraced his steps back to the path."
  
  Aedwen saw the tracks that Dunston was pointing out. She nodded, as she gazed about the clearing absently, unsure what it was she was looking for.
  
  "Could he have come here to… you know?" she asked.
  
  "To take a piss?" asked Dunston. "Or a shit?"
  
  "Yes," she said, feeling her cheeks grow hot.
  
  Dunston circled the clearing, sniffing and scrutinising the ground all around.
  
  "There is no evidence he did anything here apart from walk about. And then go back to the track." He frowned, again moving about the clearing until he stood before a tree. There was nothing remarkable about it, as far as Aedwen could tell, and yet Dunston was staring at it.
  
  "What is it?" she asked.
  
  "An oak," Dunston replied, with a smirk, and despite herself, Aedwen laughed. Some of the tension ebbed from her. "He stopped here for a time," Dunston said.
  
  She looked down at the ground, but she could not decipher the slight markings there that told Dunston that Ithamar had paused by this tree. And yet something did call out to her, snagging on her sight the way the unusual shadow had back at the path. Stooping down, she stared at the ground where the oak's roots rose from the earth. There was a large stone there, lichen-covered and almost buried in the loam. But some of the lichen had been scratched from its surface. The bright scrape of bare stone is what had caught her attention.
  
  Bending down, she placed her fingers under the edges of the stone and tugged. It was heavy, but it came away from the ground easily. Much more easily than it should have, if it had not been prised from the earth recently.
  
  Aedwen set aside the stone and Dunston dipped his hand into the insect-crawling space where the rock had been. He stood, holding something in his hands and turned to Aedwen.
  
  "What is it?" she asked.
  
  He showed her. It was a rolled up piece of thin calf's leather. The material had been scraped and stretched until it was smooth and thin enough to be written upon. It was tied up with a cord. Dunston untied it, letting the vellum fall open, exposing line after line of densely crabbed writing, scratched into the skin with the nib of a quill.
  
  "What does it say?" asked Aedwen. The priest back in Langtun had taught her the letters that spelt out her name, but that was the sum of her knowledge of writing and reading.
  
  Dunston looked back at her, bemused.
  
  "I know not, child," he said. "I cannot read. I was a warrior in my youth, not a clergyman."
  
  For a moment, they were both silent, gazing at one another. And then, despite the gravity of their situation and the blood-soaked journey they had travelled, they began to laugh. Deep belly-shaking guffaws racked Dunston and he bent over, resting his palms on his knees as he struggled for breath. Aedwen's eyes streamed with tears of mirth and she too found herself gasping for air, such was her merriment.
  
  When at last, their laughter subsided, Dunston wiped his face with his hands.
  
  "Well," he said, "whatever is written here, I suppose this must be the message that has got so many people killed."
  
  His words were sobering and Aedwen stared at the sheet of vellum and wondered what on earth the words etched there might say.
  
  But before she could reply to Dunston, a new sound came to them on the late afternoon breeze. All of their good humour was leached from them by the noise. It was a chilling sound that she had heard before. She had hoped never to hear its like again.
  
  From the west, through the snarled undergrowth and moss-clad trunks of linden and oak, came the anguished, agonised wails of a man being tortured.