Chapter 12: Torin's POV

Torin's POV

I took twelve riders to the cairn fold, and I told them nothing except where to stand.

My wife had given me a place and an hour.

I did not ask how she knew.

I had decided the night before that I would believe her first and ask later, because when she said it, her hands had been cold and her eyes had not.

We lay in the heather behind the old shepherds' hut with the wind coming off the moor.

Hester lay beside me with her bag.

I had told her to stay home.

"You'll have a man with a slit throat and no one to sew it," she had said, and that was the end of that.

The moon went down at a quarter past two.

"They're late," Hester whispered.

"They're not."

I heard the sheep first.

Then the low scrape of boots on stone, from the north, where the cairn marks the ford path.

Eight men came over the rise in a loose line.

They wore grey cloaks hemmed in white wolf tracks.

New wool.

I felt my teeth go sharp in my mouth.

"Wait," I breathed.

They fanned out toward the pens, and one of them struck a flint.

I stood up.

"Coldwater," I said, and my voice rolled over the moor. "Whose colors are you wearing?"

Nobody answered.

They ran.

It was over quickly, and I am not proud of how quickly.

I took two myself, before I remembered I wanted one alive.

Four of my riders brought down a third.

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