Chapter 3: The River

Rogues don't rush you. That's the first thing they teach you in pack school, and the last thing you remember when it's actually happening.

They came out of the trees slowly, the way dogs close in on a cat they know can't climb. Four of them in wolf form. A fifth on two legs, a man with a shaved head and a coat stitched from somebody else's pelts, who stopped at the edge of the moonlight and looked me over.

"Well," he said. "Look what Ironmoor's thrown out."

I didn't answer. My mouth had gone completely dry.

"Rejected?" He sniffed the air, then frowned. "No. Something's off with you. You don't smell of wolf at all."

One of the grey ones edged closer on my left. I stepped back and felt bark against my shoulders.

"What are you, then?" he asked, almost friendly. "Human? Half-breed?"

"Leave me alone."

"Can't do that, love. A girl on her own out here, in a nice warm coat." He smiled. "The coat alone's worth something."

I had Wenna's twist of salt in my fist. I hadn't decided to take it out of my pocket. My hand had done it by itself, somewhere between the first pair of eyes and the fourth.

The grey wolf lunged.

I threw the salt straight into its face.

It isn't much, salt. But a wolf's eyes are wet and a wolf's nose is everything, and the grey one yelped like a kicked dog and crashed sideways into the one beside it, and for about two seconds there was a gap in the circle.

I ran.

I've never been fast. Everyone in Ironmoor made sure I knew it. But I'd spent eleven years running errands up and down that valley in the dark, and I knew how to move over roots without looking at them. I went downhill because downhill was the only direction my legs would agree to, and behind me the forest filled up with noise.

Branches whipped my face. Rowan's coat snagged on something and I let it tear. I could hear them spreading out the way hunting wolves do, one on each flank, to turn me back into the middle.

Then the ground ran out.

I stopped so hard I slid. Loose stones went clattering over an edge I couldn't see, and a long time later I heard them hit water. Somewhere below, a river was running fast and loud, swollen with autumn rain.

The rogues slowed behind me. They could hear it too. They knew I was finished.

The man with the shaved head walked up last, breathing hard and rubbing at one eye. Some of the salt had got him as well.

"That," he said, "was a nasty trick."

I looked at the drop. I looked at him.

I'm not brave. I should say that now, because of everything that came after. I wasn't brave that night, and I haven't been most nights since. I was just more frightened of him than I was of the river.

And then, underneath the fear, very quietly, the cold old voice from the clearing said one word.

Jump.

I did.

The fall lasted long enough for me to regret it. The water hit like a slammed door. It was so cold it didn't feel like cold. It felt like being burned, and it dragged me under and rolled me over and filled my nose and mouth before I'd worked out which way was up.

I don't know how long it carried me. Long enough that I stopped fighting. There's a point, when you're drowning, where it stops being frightening and becomes almost restful, and I remember reaching that point and thinking, very calmly, that at least Cassia would never get to watch.

Something hard struck my shoulder. A rock, or a fallen tree. I grabbed at it with hands I couldn't feel and missed, and grabbed again, and held.

The river kept pulling at my legs. I kept holding.

At some point the sky turned from black to grey. Some time after that, I heard boots on stones.

Someone waded out into the current. A hand closed around my wrist, the scarred one, and pulled, and the rock let go of me, or I let go of it.

Then I was on my back on the shingle. A face swam in and out above me, a man's face, bearded, with a pale scar cutting through one eyebrow. He was staring at my wrist, where his thumb still rested on the old burn, and he was frowning as if it had just told him something.

"Hold still," he said. His accent wasn't from anywhere I knew. "You're a long way from Ironmoor, little wolf."

"I'm not a wolf," I said. Or tried to.

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he glanced up the bank, at someone I couldn't see.

"No," he said slowly. "I don't think you are."