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Sam lay in his bunk bed, listening to the morning quiet. In the bunk below his father snored, and so did Nana on the other side of the cabin, each with their own note and rhythm. Lorie’s breathing was soft and slightly wheezy. Outside the cabin, a mammut moaned. Chains grated on wood. The wind sighed.

He had never known Sark was noisy, until now. The wagon train, when moving, was noisy too — yet not in the same way. Here, each sound stood out, distinct and purposeful against a background of vast and empty silence.

Layers of blankets hugged him in warmth. Soon, Nana would wake and rouse the little stove to boil water for tea. Then the drivers would walk the length of the train with much rattling of chains, and the mammut would groan and huff over their hay. A last chance then to stretch legs and lungs in the cold air before the train trundled onward, on the track of the rising sun.

Five days into the journey, the routine was familiar and settled. But this morning, Sam had another plan. He wriggled from his blankets and peered down at his father, sleeping peacefully. The women’s bunks were screened from him by a hanging blanket, behind which Nana’s regular snore continued.

He clambered down past his father and dropped softly to the wooden floor. He’d worn a layer of clothes to bed — they all did, for the nights were freezing — so now he needed only to pull on his outer garments and boots, and he was ready.

Ice had formed on the window shutters. Cold struck through his gloves as he eased the shutter open. He stuck his head into the open air and took a deep breath.

The plains were a white sheet, stretching to soft blue hills crowned with dark clouds. The Drumhead range, Father named them: rounded stubs of mountains raised by colliding continents in ancient times. In all the wide, frozen land, nothing moved.

Sam sniffed. All his life he’d been told the land outside Sark teemed with danger, yet he hadn’t seen a single dire-wolf or bear. Yesterday brown lumps had moved in the distance, perhaps wild mammut, but he wasn’t sure.

Still no one stirred in their bunks. He leaned out of the window and looked up. Yes, as he’d thought, if he sat in the window and stretched, he could grasp the lip of the roof.

The cabin roof was icy, but his gloves had a good grip. He hauled himself out and up, heaved himself onto the slope of the roof on his stomach, and rolled to his back. The sky over him loomed huge, a dome of mottled grey cloud moving steadily with the wind.

Carefully, he stood. The view was the same as from inside, but bigger, somehow, and a lot, lot colder. He turned to face the front of the train, his boots sliding on the slick ice coating the roof.

Two cautious steps took him to the front of their wagon. The humped back of the mammut rose before him, shaggy with brown hair. Icicles hung from its flanks. The great beast dozed, swaying from one foot to the other, trunk lodged on one tusk-stump.

The next wagon was home to the two fur-traders with their dog and woman prisoner. Then at the very front of the train was the driver’s cabin, hauled by the lead mammut — a huge old matriarch with curving tusks.

Sam measured the distance to the roof of the next wagon. Just a hop, skip, and jump away, if the mammut didn’t mind him landing on its back. The beast seemed placid enough; it might hardly notice his small weight scrambling about, no more than it minded the birds that perched to peck at its hairy hide.

He took a breath, and another. If it were done, it were best done quickly. The worst thing would be to hesitate halfway. Without further thought, he picked his spot on the rise of the mammut’s back, and jumped.

He pitched forward on landing. The curve of the mammut’s back threatened to dump him to the ground; he grasped the coarse hair to regain his balance. The beast rumbled a question and raised its trunk, but he was up and running. One step to its shoulder, and he flung himself forward onto the roof of the next wagon. He landed with a thump that knocked the breath out of him.

A soft hand tugged at his foot. The tip of the mammut’s trunk fingered his boot with insistent curiosity. Sam wriggled out of its reach. He lay full-length on his belly, breathing hard, half triumphant, half terrified as it sunk in how easily he could have fallen beneath the mammut’s huge feet.

From the cabin below him came a voice, too muffled to make out words. Someone was awake, and had perhaps noticed him landing on their roof. He crawled to the side. The window was below him, just like the one in his own cabin, and the wooden shutter was closed.

He hung over the edge of the roof, bringing his head level with the window. Holding his breath, he peered between the wooden slats.

The interior of the cabin matched his own: four bunks, two on each side, and a little black stove with a kettle on it. The dog lay on the floor in the middle. It raised its head and stared directly at him.

Sam froze, but the dog remained silent. Slowly he let out the breath he’d been holding.

In the bunks to his right, the men were blanket-shrouded, unmoving. The woman prisoner lay on the bottom bunk on the left side. She was masked, as always, and her hands were tied.

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Sam stared intently, looking for clues. The fur-traders said she was demon-possessed. It would be interesting to see that, but Dad said it wasn’t likely — she was probably just a poor girl who was soft in the head. Still, he wondered if there wasn’t more going on. The two fur-traders were very careful with her. He’d never seen her without the mask.

Maybe she’d been kidnapped for a ransom. Maybe she’d fled an arranged marriage and was being dragged to Athanor against her will. Maybe…

The man on the bottom bunk stirred and threw off his blanket. It was Chase. He rolled out of bed, stretched, and reached for the window shutter.

Sam jerked himself back onto the roof and out of sight. The dog barked, once, followed by a savage curse from Chase (Sam filed the words for future reference), a thump, and a growl.

Sam stayed still, his heart pounding. Chase scared him. Nyl was harmless, a bit soft in the head. His eyes looked in different directions and he rarely spoke except to his brother. Chase though — Chase was different. His teeth were black and he had an odd sour smell, which Nana said was because he chewed garra root, which was a vile habit, she said, and she always sniffed and looked away when he spat black gobs on the ground.

He’d spoken to Sam in passing a couple of times, winked and grinned the way adult men do when they speak to boys. Which from other men could be friendly, or patronising, but Chase had something in his eyes that was neither, something which made Sam uneasy.

Nana said Chase had the devil in him if anyone did.

Sam re-entered the cabin by the door.

His father glared at him. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Out.’

The kettle steamed on the stove, and the blanket divider had been raised now everyone was awake and dressed. Nana sat on her bunk, knitting.

‘You shouldn’t wander off on your own. It’s not safe out there. And you left the window wide open,’ his father said. ‘It was freezing in here.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’ It was cold in the cabin, even with the stove going and the window shuttered. ‘I didn’t think.’

‘You never do think, that’s the problem.’

Sam sat on his father’s bunk. ‘Is there breakfast?’

‘We’ve had ours.’

Nana sighed and set down her knitting.

‘I can make my own,’ Sam said.

‘Sit still a minute.’ She poured tea from the pot into a tin mug. ‘There’s little enough space without you hoiking round like a lummox.’

Sam was still eating his oatmeal when the wagon lurched into motion.

His father glanced through the shutter. ‘Later today.’

Sam chewed grimly. Apart from a brief stop at midday, the wagon train would roll on until dusk. Another day trapped in this tiny cabin with his family.

His father dug in the bags stored under the bunk and extracted a book. ‘Since you seem bored, Sam, you can study the Prime Grammar today.’ He leafed through and opened it to the start.

Sam squinted at the page of glyphs, his heart sinking. His father had tried to teach him before, at home. ‘Do I have to?’

His father frowned. ‘If you ever want to advance to study the arcane arts, then, yes, you must. The Arcanum isn’t easy. A sound grounding in the basics—’

‘I don’t want to go to the stupid Arcanum,’ Sam said. It came out louder than he meant. Silence pooled around him, everyone staring. ‘You should teach Lorie this stuff. She’s the one who ought to be an Adept. She’s clever. She knows more than I do and you never even showed her anything.’

The silence stiffened.

‘Perhaps so,’ his father said. ‘But girls aren’t permitted to learn magic.’

‘What? Why not?’ Sam looked at Lorie, who was keeping her head down. Lorie was clever, everyone knew, much cleverer at book learning than he was. She only had to see something once and she remembered it. She actually enjoyed reading books. Sam would much rather be outside, climbing, running, doing something with his hands. It seemed monstrous unfairness that he might be compelled to be educated, while she—who wanted it, and would do well—wouldn’t have the chance.

‘Women’s minds aren’t strong enough for the practice of magic,’ his father said. ‘They’re at greater risk.’

‘Well, that’s dumb.’ Sam scuffed his boots on the timber floor. ‘I don’t think that’s true. Not all women, anyway. There’s Ma Hagger, for one.’

Nana clucked. ‘Arms like a side of beef, that woman. She threw her husband through a door once.’

‘Indeed,’ his father said, sounding amused. ‘But not everyone knows Ma Hagger like we do.’ He opened the book again. ‘The first twenty-two glyphs of the Prime Grammar are familiar to you from your alphabet, but you must memorise the glossary. We begin with Aleph, the Ox.’

Dark clouds massed to the west and north and dusk fell early, though not early enough for Sam, who’d been forced through every one of the alphabetic glyphs and felt his brain oozing under the strain.

As usual, after the mammut had been tended to, the drivers lit in a campfire, and everyone gathered to eat the evening meal of reheated stew and bread.

‘Stew again,’ Sam said.

‘Be grateful,’ Nana told him. ‘It’s better than it might be.’

The wind cut through Sam’s new fur-lined coat, and the air smelled sharp and metallic.

The driver, Nadu, eyed the sky. ‘Snow’s coming,’ Patla said.

The two drivers were northers, a married couple who had plied this same route for many years. To Sam’s eyes they looked ancient: a matching pair of little old people encased in greasy hide coats, their round faces seamed and tanned by ceaseless wind and cold. He admired the casual way they handled the huge mammut though, and Patla had shown him how to crack her twenty-foot whip. He thought it might be good to be a mammut-driver when he was grown, though always travelling the same road would be dull.

Lorie huddled over her bowl, her grey eyes reflecting the firelight. She’d been quiet all day, though her cough was no worse.

Chase and Nyl took their food without comment. Their ‘cousin’ was not with them; the two men usually took her portion into the cabin to feed her in private.

Nadu said, ‘Snowstorm’ll be on us tomorrow, I reckon, or the day after.’

‘We’re going to turn off to Grubb,’ Patla said quietly.

‘What?’ Sam’s father said. ‘Where is Grubb?’

‘Many days storm, snow, wind.’ Nadu shook his head. ‘Grubb is small, few houses. It is where we winter the mammut. If we go on, we could get stuck on the road. Buried. All frozen.’

Chase cursed and spat black into the fire. ‘You never saw a real storm, not this far south. I’m for going on.’

Patla shrugged. ‘As you wish. But the wagon train goes to Grubb.’

‘For how long?’

‘Maybe we stop all winter. The ore won’t mind.’

‘I mind.’ Chase stood. ‘Now, you listen to me. I know weather, me. This storm won’t be nothing. Let’s get on to Athanor. We got urgent business there, not demon-cursed Grubb.’

Nadu and Patla exchanged glances. Nadu stood. ‘Friend, we go to Grubb tomorrow, and we sit out the storm, and then we go on, maybe. You don’t tell me what to do or where to go.’

Chase snarled. His hand went to his belt. Nadu grabbed his arm. The two men swayed, turning together like dance partners, then Nadu dropped to his knees.

Sam thought he had lost his footing. The norther just fell and collapsed to his side, his mouth open in surprise. Then Chase stepped away, and Sam saw the knife in his hand.