Chapter 8: The Ford

Jory laid the last snare in the dark with the cord between his teeth.

The Silverrun ran black and low below him, and the ford was a pale band of shingle in the middle of it.

Beyond the ford lay the old fish weir, a ring of rotting stakes on a sandbar.

Inside the ring were two small lions.

He had seen them at dusk, from the reeds.

Kiri was sitting up straight with her arms around her little brother and her jaw set, and she was not crying.

Three wolves and a scarred woman stood guard over them with spears.

"There are four," Jory said into the dark. "Three wolves and the woman."

"Then I will kill four," said Lucan, behind him.

"You'll kill four after they can't run," Jory said.

"Jory."

"It's the plan, Lucan. Do you want them back, or do you want to be right?"

There was a short silence.

"Back," Lucan said through his teeth.

The herald had come that afternoon with Hadrick's terms.

The exile and the notched cub at the ford by moonrise, for two lion cubs.

Lucan had roared loud enough to flatten the grass.

Jory had waited for it to finish, and then said calmly, "Good. Let them think I'm coming."

It was a stupid plan, and he'd known it the moment he thought of it.

He had also run worse ones in the Ash, with worse odds, and come out the other side.

Now he finished the cord and tied it off to a stake.

He crawled back along the reed line to where the pride lay flat in the shallows, forty of them, absolutely silent.

Sabra was at the front. Her knuckles were white on her spear.

"Wait for the fire," Jory whispered. "Not before."

"When the reeds go up, the wolves will run for the bank and hit the lines," he went on. "Then take the island."

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