The grove was sacred.
Or at least, it had been once; before the cold followed them here, before the rivers ran red, and the songs of the old women were drowned beneath the sound of drums.
Now it was a place of war.
Smoke rose in thin, straight lines from fires choked low with pine needles. Warriors moved in silence between birch trunks, their bodies lean with hunger, their eyes like obsidian; too tired to fear, too bitter to forget.
Qaavik knelt beside a circle of stones, sharpening his knife with slow, steady strokes.
The edges were nearly worn to nothing. He could feel the steel beneath the bone handle tremble, as if it too had seen the longships in the bay.
"They come," said a voice.
Qaavik looked up.
From the western trail, a hunting band emerged: Saqqaq and Dorset alike, faces smeared in ash, cloaks ragged from travel.
Among them was Tuluq, an elder-speaker of the old tongue. His legs were bound in seal-hide, his shoulders draped in a bear's spine.
