Chapter 4: The Milestone

Alric's answer, when it came, was that the vision had been his.

Sella asked him to name the root, in front of thirty-two soldiers, and he named the wrong one.

Brant told her to sit down, and the Chosen took his ruined boots to his tent without another word.

Naho was still working out whether she had started a fight or ended one when the oxen began to scream.

Something grey cleared the camp ditch in one jump.

It was the size of a calf and shaped like a hound.

It was made of the same ground fog Alric had described at the gate.

It had no color at all, and where its feet landed the grass went the color of paper.

"Gloamhounds," Gerta said, already moving. "They run ahead of the grey. Don't let one bite you."

A soldier did not listen.

The hound caught his forearm, and the arm went from brown wool and pink skin to a flat grey in one breath.

He opened his mouth to shout, and nothing came out at all.

Sella ran toward him with her satchel, and Naho ran after her because there was nothing else to do.

There were five hounds, then six.

They went through Brant's pavilion.

The great red banner on its pole turned the color of dishwater and hung there without a flap of noise.

Brant screamed an order at it.

Brant's scream was the loudest thing in the camp, and for a moment the only thing.

Then the oxen broke their tethers.

They were harnessed to the second wagon, the one with Gerta's load and the forty jars and the Chosen's spare kit.

They dragged it straight out of the ring and down the road, which ran downhill toward a river.

Naho watched it go.

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