Chapter 60

The wolves on the bank went down before he reached them.

Not lay down. Went down, all along the line, bellies to the mud and ears flat and tails tucked under, the way the whole of Ashgrove had gone down on the night he growled through the house. Behind them a horse screamed and fought its rider. Rhys, at the edge of the water, bent his head as if a hand had been laid on the back of his neck.

Then the alders parted, and Caspian came through them.

He was on foot. He must have left his horse somewhere up the river road, or ridden it into the ground. There was mud to his thighs, and his hair had come out of its tie and hung black and wet about his face. And his face was his face, and was not. The bones of it had moved. His eyes were red—not at the edges, the way they went when he was angry, but all the way through, like two coals—and his nails had gone black and long, and I could see the muscles of his arms working under the skin as if something underneath were looking