Cormac bent to wipe the blood off his blade on the fur tunic of the dead man, and watched the disappearing figure as the snowstorm intensified still further. He began to consider the options that were available to him. He could begin the long walk back to Perpanis to alert the militia that the garrison had been destroyed and the troops slaughtered. He could remain where he was, disposing of the bodies as well as he could given the ferocity of the storm, though he knew that if he decided to stay, he ran the risk of running out of food, the stocks of which had thankfully been untouched in the outhouse, and of falling foul of any further invasion attempt by the Korissians. If the man whose hand and ear he had lopped off succeeded in making it back to Koriss, or to wherever the invading force were camped, Connacht would next time send more than two men to deal with him. Though he knew the area surrounding Perpanis intimately well, and had visited some of the other regions on the island once or twice, his knowledge of the northern territory was extremely poor. In fact was probably true to say that the Korissians would have an altogether more detailed knowledge of this part of Walfenland, and he was therefore already at an extreme disadvantage. His third option was to attempt to prepare some kind of trap for the invading forces, though he had no idea as yet what he might do, and again was disadvantaged by not knowing from which direction they might come, or in what strength of numbers. Finally, he could desert his post altogether and take the clifftop trail down the eastern spine of the island to one of the coastal villages, and thence to the mainland. This latter option he dismissed out of hand. Though he harboured a certain amount of resentment regarding his treatment by his father, he remained staunchly loyal to Walfenland and to its peoples. He ultimately decided to try to build some sort of defence, incorporating a trap with which to do as much damage to the opposing force as possible, knowing that he could not be in two places at once, and was therefore unable to warn the islanders that the invasion, for so long a threat, was now a reality.

For a while hebusied himself by dragging the bodies of the men who had escaped from the hut but perished in the freezing snow into a pile. This done, he entered the wood to bring back as much dried brushwood as he could find, and finally set fire to it all, aware that any approaching invaders would see the flames and the smoke, but it was something he felt he had to do, mindless of his own safety. For a time he stood watching the flames, but the stench of burning flesh was too much for him, and he retreated to a safe distance, climbing onto the higher ground which led towards the cliffs.

By the late hours of that night the bonfire he had lit and the fire which had consumed the hut had subsided. Over each there hung a pall of grey smoke. Cormac found a place to rest in the comparative warmth and dryness of the forest, and slept until almost dawn. When he next opened his eyes, the sky was bright blue and the sun was shining. The snow had stopped, though it remained bitterly cold and there was no sign of any thaw. Neither was there so far any sign of retaliation from the Korissians.

Cormac made a new fire, caught a small rodent, skinned and cleaned it in the running stream nearby and cooked it as he had been shown during one of the many camping trips he had shared with his father. Away out to sea, he could see the clear white of the permafrost set against a sky graduating from deepest blue almost to yellow where the sun rose, but more immediately nearer than the permafrost he could see a dense cloud of fog building up.

For a while he pottered about near the garrison, looking for spoils, or rather for belongings which he would one day hope to return to the families of the dead men, but apart from the odd bracelet or ring, and weapons, of which there were many, everything had been consumed by fire. The Korissian's corpse, headless, was more or less submerged beneath the snow. A yard away from the head lay the man's fur hat, now totally frozen and stiff. Cormac picked it up and placed it carefully at the end of the spit on which he was cooking his catch. Eventually it would thaw, and might be needed if the weather took another turn for the worse. Wandering back to the body, he noticed that there were no bloodstains on the fur coat. He had deliberately refrained from incinerating the Korissian, saving that honour for his own people. The Korissians held different beliefs regarding the passing from this life, and it was not his place to indulge those beliefs, for he did not share them. Instead he had left the body to rot away in the snow and earth. Now a sudden thought struck him. The fur coat was comparatively clean. There was a hint of a crimson stain along the length of one sleeve, but that was it.

The trouble was, it was frozen onto the torso. Grimly he set about excavating the body with a view to removing the coat. Within an hour of midsun he had succeeded in extricating the grisly remains and stood over it, pondering the best way to proceed. At first he toyed with the idea of cutting it off, but decided that that would be too messy and that he had not the stomach for it. He then hit upon the idea of warming the body so that it thawed, at which point he would be able simply to remove it and then allow the body to refreeze. This he did, though he considered afterwards that it was possibly the worst idea he had ever had in his entire life.

It took four hours for the body to thaw. Each time he tried it, it was still stiff, and an extremely unpleasant smell assailed his nostrils. Then, shortly before dusk, he was able to pull the sleeve from one of the arms, and having done that, turned his attention to the other. This time it came off even easier, until he was horrified to discover that the sleeve still contained the arm. Casting it away from him, he felt the uneasy taste of bile rise in his gorge and turned away to recover by breathing in as much cold night air as he could. Feeling slightly less queasy, he took a deep breath and lifted the sleeve, shaking it hard until the offending limb dropped out. Now he noticed that there was a tear at the pit, where the arm joined the shoulder, and realised that some sort of animal had feasted on the body during the previous night, while it was still stiffening. There was evidence of teeth marks on the decaying flesh, visible now that it was thawed out. He set his teeth and determined that he would not vomit, and carried on with the ghastly business of removing the furs. It was quite dark when he eventually finished. He washed the garment thoroughly in the clean, freezing-cold running water of the stream, then spread it out to dry, knowing that little drying would take place overnight because of the continuing intense cold.