Chapter 99

Malachi

The camp below the ridge was half empty when Teague and I got there.

Cressida’s hired wolves had dug in at the bottom of a ravine where the snow didn’t reach, and the place stank of woodsmoke, wet dog and cheap liquor. There should have been twenty-two of them. I counted eleven around the fires as the sun came up. The rest of the tents stood open and empty, their bedding still rumpled, as if the men had gotten up in the dark and simply walked away.

The one they called Brask came out to meet us. He was older than most of them, gray in the beard, with the patient eyes of a wolf who had sold his teeth to a dozen different masters and outlived every one.

“Early,” he said.

“Not this moon,” I told him. “There’s nothing to fight for this moon. You’ll be paid for your time either way