“None.” Eolair spread his hands. “We found no fallen but our own. Apparently the five we saw—and the giant, of course—were all.”

“They are terrible, fierce fighters,” said Simon. “Cold and difficult to kill as snakes. I’d truly hoped we would never have to face them again.”

A herald appeared in the doorway of the tent and announced Sir Kenrick, the burly, bearded young captain marshal, who held one hand close to his side. Eolair stirred, wondering if the captain was injured. The way he kept the hand out of sight made Eolair anxious, and he took a few steps closer to Kenrick and let his hand fall discreetly to his sword hilt, wondering if he still had enough of his old speed should something be badly amiss. “Captain, what do you have there for us?” he asked.

“Any sign of the bastards?” the king called from his cot.

“Gone, sire,” said Kenrick. “Melted into the open lands on the other side of the road. You’d think the Hunë would leave an easy track to follow, but there are a lot of rocky stretches in the grassland here—I’d warrant they’re on their way back to Stormspike, heading due north.” He raised his hand to his chest. “But, I beg your pardon, Majesties, as the lord steward noticed, I have something else to show you. I sent men sweeping both ways up and down the road, looking for other enemies. I told them especially to look for any sign of recent activity, something that might suggest another ambush. They saw nothing of that, but they did come across this a short way down the road to the south, sticking right out of the mud—the man who found it said it looked at first like a spring flower.” He carefully offered the thing he had been cradling to the queen.

It was an arrow, but not one of the Norns’ black shafts. It looked like mortal work, and made in haste at that, the rawhide cord irregular where it wrapped the arrowhead, as though a broadhead from one arrow had been used to repair a different one. But what was most unusual about it was the roll of blood-smeared parchment wrapped around the shaft and tied tightly with another rawhide thong.

Miriamele looked it over. “You said this was found close by, in the road? It certainly doesn’t look to be one of ours.”

“No, Majesty,” said Kenrick.

“It looks like the arrow of someone who has been living rough,” said Eolair. “And it isn’t the first. We found several more like this one on the hill this morning—but only sticking in trees. As far as we could discover, not a one of these hit any of our soldiers. All those who had been shot, it was Norn arrows that pierced them.”

“Unpeel that bloody hide,” said Simon. “What is it?”

Eolair took his knife and handed it to the queen. She cut the thread and unwound it, then unfurled the hide so carefully and gently that Simon groaned at how slowly she did it. This was the first thing that had happened since the previous day that even came close to making Eolair smile, but he still did not feel solid enough for that: whatever was holding him together seemed more fragile than even that slender rawhide cord.

“What kind of letters are those?” the queen asked, holding up the latticed hide. Untidy rows of strange characters filled it, drawn in black. “Eolair, can you read this? Tiamak?”

Eolair had seen things like it, but could not remember where. He shook his head.

“I can, Majesty,” Tiamak said. “Or at least I think I can.”

“Is it Wrannaman writing, then?” Simon asked in surprise. “That would be a strange turn!”

“No, sire.” Tiamak took the hide from the queen, then squinted as he tilted it toward the nearest torch. “These are the runes that Rimmersmen once used.”

Simon squinted and frowned. “That doesn’t look like Rimmerspakk.”

“It is, but the runes are different. I said ‘once used’. These are the old signs, the ones they brought from their former land, across the sea of icebergs. Only the Black Rimmersmen still use them in Osten Ard now. The Norns’ slaves.”

“But why would four or five Norns have a slave?” Eolair asked. “So far from their border? It makes little sense, unless one of the White Foxes was some kind of royalty.” He turned to Tiamak. “Can you read what it says?”

“As I said, this language is old Rimmerspakk, the ancient version of what I learned. I will try to make what I can of it.”

It took him a little while. As Tiamak puzzled through possible meanings, Binabik came in from the cold morning to say that the last of their rams had been found, which meant that even the four-legged members of the troll’s own small party had survived. When he saw what the Wrannaman was doing, he leaned close to look over his shoulder.

“It is not being much like the Rimmerspakk I can read,” the troll admitted.

“I think I have the sense of it now,” said Tiamak, looking down to the translation he had written on a parchment: “‘I travel with the Hikeda’ya,’ it says. ‘I am not one of them, but I will stay with them. This is what I must do. They travel on a mission to Urmsheim. I do not know why, but the mission is important to Nakkiga. The queen of the Hikeda’ya has awakened from her long sleep. The North is full of rumor and preparation for war. I heard one of this company say that the queen seeks the witchwood crown. I do not know what that means, but it is important to them. What I do know is that the queen of the north lives again, and while she lives, she plans our deaths.’” Tiamak cleared his throat. “It is signed ‘Jarnulf of the White Hand’.”

Eolair suddenly felt as if something was shifting beneath him, not a fixed, solid thing like rocks and earth, but a tangle of plans and assumptions that had seemed strong enough to bear them up only a few short hours before.

Queen Miriamele looked as troubled as Eolair felt. “Strange . . . and frightening. Do you know who this Jarnulf is, Count Eolair? Kenrick? Have any of you heard of him or this White Hand?”

As heads were shaking, Sir Kenrick held out his hand again. “Also we found this, which was lying near the arrow. It seems to have fallen loose when the arrow struck the ground. My man said he thought by the angle it had stuck in the mud that the arrow must have been fired from high up on the hillside.” The captain opened his hand, exposing a shiny something on a slither of silver chain.

“He Who Always Steps On Sand!” Tiamak cried, an oath Eolair had only heard the little man use when he was badly surprised. Coming forward to look more closely, the count saw it was a circle of silver dangling from a silver chain. A silver feather was laid across the circle, along with another shape Eolair could not quite make out. “This is the sign of the League of the Scroll,” Tiamak said hoarsely. “But ours are gold, not silver—and there has never been any Jarnulf in the League!”

King Simon stared at the silver charm, then swung his feet off the cot and turned to the Hand of the Throne. Eolair sighed, foreseeing what was to come.

“Old friend,” Simon told him, “this attack, all of this—well, it changes things.”

Eolair felt no surprise, only a small sadness. “Yes, sire. Of course it does. I will tell my great-nephew Aelin that I cannot go back with him to Hernysadharc. Give me time only to write a letter to Queen Inahwen.”

“Of course, of course.” But something in the king’s face said that even this morning’s discoveries, strange and ominous as they were, had not disturbed him like the death of the young harper, nor could much distract him from it. “Yes, I’m sorry, but that’s it, old friend. We can’t do without you—not now.”

“Of course, sire. I understand.” And in that moment, Eolair was not really certain that any such ordinary plans or frustrations mattered. It seemed the shift of balance he had sensed earlier had been just a hint of something even larger, a great and heavy pivot that would change the world so much that, no matter what they did, its full force would soon be upon them.