Chapter 4: The Ridge Road

I ran.

The ridge road climbs from the Greywater gate along a drop of two hundred feet, and I had run it every morning for ten years.

That was the only reason I was still ahead of them after the first mile.

Behind me the wolves came up the hill in a pack, claws striking sparks off the gravel.

I heard the captain's voice through the noise, a man's voice coming out of a wolf's throat.

"The Alpha said an hour, Hartwell!"

I did not slow down.

"He didn't say I had to wait for it!"

Rain started, thin and cold.

My bag slapped my back with every stride, and I tore it off and flung it into the ditch.

The ridge narrowed to a track with rock on one side and nothing on the other.

I came around the last bend and there was no road.

A rockfall had taken it out in the spring, and Greywater had never fixed it, because Greywater did not need a road that went anywhere.

I stopped at the edge with my heels on loose stone.

The wolves came around the bend and spread across the track in a line.

There were six of them, grey and brown, with the captain in front.

He shifted back to a man in four breaths, naked in the rain, with a rope in his fist.

"The Alpha wants you on your knees by sundown," he said. "He didn't say how many bones."

I had been taught to fight by the wolf who now stood in front of me, when I was sixteen and he was still kind to me.

"You taught me to protect my throat," I said.

"I did."

"Good."

He lunged.

I dropped under his arm, and my knee went into his stomach.

He grunted, and the rope whipped around my wrist.

Another wolf hit me from the side and took me down on the rocks.

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