The horses raced swiftly nearer, their hooves drumming fast and loud, and flinging the soft turf high over their broad backs. Murdo, flat beneath the bracken, every sense alert and twitching, listened to the swift-running horses and judged their distance. He also heard the liquid gurgle of a hidden burn a short distance ahead, lower down the slope.

Upon reaching the place where the youth had disappeared, the riders halted and began hacking into the dense brake with the butts of their spears. 'Out! Out!' they shouted. 'We have you! Declare and surrender!'

Murdo, ignoring the calls, lay still as death and tried to calm the rapid beating of his heart so the hunters would not hear him. They were very near. He held his breath and watched the patch of sky for sight or shadow of his pursuers.

The riders wheeled their mounts this way and that, spear shafts slashing at the fronds, their cries growing more irritated with each futile pass. 'Come out!' shouted the largest of the riders, a raw-boned, fair-haired young man named Torf. 'You cannot escape! Come out, damn you!'

'Give up!' shouted one of the others. Murdo recognized the voice; it belonged to a thick-shouldered bull of a youth named Skuli. 'Give up and face your punishment!'

'Surrender, you sneaking little weasel,' cried the last of the three. It was the dark-haired one called Paul. 'Surrender now and save yourself a hiding!'

Murdo knew his pursuers and knew them well. Two of them were his brothers, and the third was a cousin he had met for the first time only ten days ago. Even so, he had no intention of giving up; he knew, despite Paul's vague assurance, they would beat him anyway.

Instead, amidst the shouts and the brushy whack of the spears, Murdo calmly put two fingers beneath his belt and withdrew a tightly-wound skein of wool and deftly tied one end of the thread to the long bracken stem beside his head. Then, with the most subtle of movements, he began to crawl again, paying out the thread as he went.