She sits up, heart thumping, when she sees it’s Tuck’s curved cutlass. They’ve been here long enough to see the thin crescent moon grow fat, yet there’s something about Tuck that she still doesn’t trust. But he’s only cutting down the few strands that remain of the tough sea grass that overhangs the side of the cave, to stoke up the fire Ibrox struggles, night and day, to keep alive. The fog is like a live creature. It creeps around the bends of their doorless cave to the inner caverns they have made their home and curls icy fingers around them as they sleep. Each morning they wake up fog-blind and coughing. The siege in the bay ended when winter arrived in a shock of cold so deep even the sun seemed to lose the courage to face the day. The pirate fleet panicked as night swallowed day and the sea began to creak. Ice threatened to trap the invaders in the fjord where they would become the prey of the mountain people. They made a clumsy retreat through the hardening waves, grabbing a loot of boats and booty, along with a harvest of bridge-building metal from the wrecked ships at the neck of the fjord.
