Chapter 22: Fire

Torin's POV

Smoke was rolling off the stable before I understood that the fire was meant for me.

Half the camp ran at it with buckets, shouting for water.

The Sterne guards stood in the open and shouted something else.

They said I had cut a woman loose and left them with nothing.

I let them.

I was looking at Ingrid's hand.

It hung open at her side, and Orin's small weight was gone from it.

"Orin," she said, and then louder, "Orin."

She turned a full circle on the grass with her glasses full of firelight.

"Hazel."

The blanket where Hazel had been dozing was empty.

The guard who had sat at the end of it was gone.

I did what I had learned at my father's table, where noise was always cover for a hand moving.

I stopped and counted.

The Beta had given us six men, all his own, and they had ringed the children since sundown.

Four of them were running for the stable with buckets.

The other two were nowhere.

"Two of yours," I said.

The Beta had come up beside me, grey around the mouth.

"I trained both of them," he said.

"Which way?"

"The east gate. It opens on the pass road."

A month ago my nose would have given me both men before the smoke reached me.

Now my wolf lay curled under my ribs, small and shaking, and all I could smell was burning hay.

So I used my eyes.

The ground at the east gate was soft from a week of rain.

Two sets of boot prints went through it, one pair pressed deep at the right heel, a man carrying weight on one shoulder.

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