Chapter 7: Ferrin Ford

Alric kept his promise to say nothing about himself for one full day, and Naho lost a dumpling to Sella on the bet.

Then the column reached the river called Ferrin, and the promise ended.

The storm from Pellmarsh had been here first.

The bridge was gone, with two stumps left in the brown water to show where it had stood.

The river ran high between banks of churned mud.

A flat ferry sat tied on the near bank, on a rope that crossed to a post on the far side.

A ferryman in a leather cap sat on an upturned bucket beside it, eating an apple.

Nobody had asked him anything.

Brant had a plan, and it was his own.

"We ford," he announced, and chalked a mark on the lead wagon before anything had been forded.

The first wagon went in with four oxen, and before it reached midstream the river turned it sideways.

The driver climbed up the wheel, soldiers ran in to the thighs, and Gerta waded out with a rope.

They hauled the wagon back to the bank with nothing left in it but a barrel of salt, which floated away toward the sea.

The ferryman ate his apple.

"A raft," Brant said, mopping his mustache. "We'll float the wagons on empty barrels."

The soldiers lashed twenty barrels under the second wagon and pushed it out.

It sat on the water for as long as it took Naho to say "this is a bad idea" out loud.

Then the barrels came loose and went down the river one at a time.

The wagon settled to its axles in the shallows and stayed there.

"The barrels were borrowed from the brewer in Pellmarsh," said Sella, whose face was perfectly flat. "That's twenty barrels the Crown owes him."

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