Chapter 13: The Shepherd

Alaric's hand closed on my arm.

"I know him," he said in Eastmarch.

His voice had gone very quiet.

"He kept the last fold below the ridge. I ate at his table two autumns ago, the week they came with the torches."

"From the eleven houses?"

"From the eleven houses."

Below us, a man with a lantern walked a slow circle around the burning cart.

He was checking it the way you check a stage before the curtain goes up.

"More grain on the near side," he called. "And break that wheel. It has to look like they fought."

Two of the men kicked at the wheel until a spoke cracked.

The old shepherd flinched at every blow.

"Leave him tied to the axle," the lantern man said. "The patrol finds him at first light."

"And if he talks?"

The lantern man laughed.

"In what? Goat? Nobody in Kingsmere ever listened to a shepherd."

I felt Alaric go still beside me.

Those were nearly his own words, from the night in the tower.

The men mounted up.

They rode off down the valley road in a long line of torches, singing.

Two stayed behind by the cart, stamping their feet against the cold, rifles slung on their backs.

"Two," Alaric said. "I can take two."

"With rifles?"

"I've been shot before. It's boring."

"No," I said. "Listen to me."

He turned his head.

"They're watching the road and the fire. They're not watching the ridge."

"I'm fast. You said so yourself. I passed you."

"Once."

"Once is all I need."

I pulled his shirt off over my head before I could think about the cold.

He made a sound low in his throat and turned his face away, fast.

"Wynne."

"Bite through the rope. I'll bring them up the streambed. Don't argue, it's freezing."

Then I let her out.

The shift went through me hot and fast, and I came down on four feet in the snow.

I ran along the lip of the fold, well above the firelight.

At the far end of the ridge, I stopped, threw my head back and howled.

It was the loudest sound I had ever made in my life.

Both men spun around.

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