Chapter 145

The bears stopped on the far side of the Sallow ford and did not cross it.

By the second morning the watch knew why. They were not coming to the gate. They were making a camp: hide tents in rows, horse lines, a long smoke going up from a cook-trench, and a stockade of cut pine going in along the north bank where the ground rose. Eight miles from the walls. Close enough to be seen from the high towers on a clear day. Far enough that nobody could call it an attack while a herald sat under a white flag in the gate-house, eating the eldest’s bread.

“He wants us to look at them,” said Rhys at breakfast, in the kitchen, standing. “Every morning. Until the full moon.”

“Then I’ll look,” I said.

***

I told Caspian in the yard, an hour later, in daylight, in words.

He was at the farrier’s with his arm in its sling and the slate from the kitchen under his good arm, because the cow had not stopped being lame because there was a war. He put the slate down on t