Chapter 6: A Ranger Walks Out of the North

The southern checkpoint was a wagon and two men.

That was the truth of it, whatever Aldric's ledgers called it. A salvaged merchant's cart positioned sideways across the King's Road where it narrowed between a collapsed chandler's shop and the outer face of what had been a wool-dyer's yard, and behind it two men with cudgels and the particular expression of people who had been given authority without instruction in what to do with it. Brenys Cole had given them a list. The list said: no weapons through without inspection, no animals through without tally, ask names and origins of any single traveler moving north-to-south, note anything unusual.

The list did not say what to do when unusual walked up to the wagon at the third hour past midday wearing the collapsed face of a man who had been cold for too long.