Chapter 5: The Ford Run

They ran us to the ford the next morning, twelve miles there and twelve back, in full pack and freezing sleet.

Sergeant Tolley led from the front in her coat with her sleeves rolled to the elbow.

She sang as she ran, a rude song about a quartermaster's wife, and by the third verse half the line was too out of breath to curse her.

"Pick up your feet, recruits! The Fenmark won't wait for you to finish your breakfast!"

"I haven't had breakfast," Wick wheezed beside me.

"That's because you ate it yesterday, Alderby!"

The road ran along the river, black mud under a low white sky.

The Ninth's old hands ran in a steady line behind us, wolves in human skin with their packs high on their shoulders.

None of them were breathing hard.

By the fifth mile I had a stitch under my ribs and a pack strap cutting through my coat.

By the eighth, Wick had gone grey.

"Morcant," he said. "I'm going to lie down in this ditch."

"No," I said.

"I'm going to lie in it and let the Fenmark have me."

"They don't want you. You'd talk them to death."

He tried to laugh and his knees folded.

I caught him under the arm before he hit the mud and swung his pack up onto my own shoulder over mine.

It weighed more than a bucket of nails, and I had carried those every day of my life.

"Morcant!" Sergeant Tolley dropped back, scowling. "Is that recruit down?"

"He's resting, Sergeant."

"He's resting on you," she said.

"Yes, Sergeant."

She looked at me, at the two packs, at the boy whose full weight hung off my shoulder.

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