With Bradan leading the way with his deceptively slow stride, they followed the sun on its passage west. Less than two years previously, Melcorka had travelled in the opposite direction with her mother and the people she had known all her life. She had been a naïve island girl then, unsure and untried, with no idea of the powers that her sword, Defender, could give her. Now, everybody who had travelled with her was dead, and she was a warrior with a reputation.
Melcorka looked sideways at Bradan. Somewhere along the journey she had picked him up, or he had picked her up, she was not sure which.
"And what are you thinking?" Bradan asked.
"Nothing for your ears." Melcorka examined her surroundings. All around her were great, gaunt mountains and long expanses of bogland, with open stretche
