“I still think this is stupid,” comes Runar’s solemn voice from behind her.

Ylva is too focused on her own apprehensions to pay her yearling son any mind, however. Her dark eyes are busy sweeping the rocky hillside before them for the clearest path down, her muscles working diligently to keep her footing on the uneven ground. Thankfully it is somewhat easier going than when she had briefly passed through here in winter, when the slopes had been frosted with snow and ice.

“And you definitely saw them down there?” she asks, her gaze swinging from the forested valley below them to the looming presence of the craggy mountain overhead. She imagines herself braving its sheer slopes and feels her stomach drop into her hooves.

“Yes,” Runar says with a note of annoyance in his voice as he comes up alongside where she has frozen in place. “There were some up there, but only a few that I could see. Most of them were down there in the trees.”

“Both mares and stallions?”

Runar grunts in confirmation.

Ylva has no reason to doubt her son’s account. While he had wandered into these foothills in winter without her permission, earning a sharp scolding once she had caught up to him, there is no reason for him to lie about what he had seen. Even still, it makes no sense to her. Solomon had said this was a herd for mares. Then again, he had also told her other, more troubling things about the Peak women.

There is only one way to find the truth.

After leaving her son to wait for her, Ylva traverses her way down the rest of the hillside, stopping periodically to scratch at her shedding spring coat. The lower she descends, the taller the trees seem to grow until they all but threaten to swallow her. Ylva hesitates as she reaches the edge of the forest, then decides to skirt them toward a small clearing near the base of the mountain where she can more easily see any approachers.

There, in silence, she waits to be discovered.