Chapter 19: Siovhan's Arrow and the Question of Memory

The wraith-scouts came at the third hour of evening, when the light had gone the colour of old pewter and the volcanic rock was exhaling the last of the day's warmth into an air that wanted nothing to do with it.

I was consulting my notes on the western approach when Siovhan's head came up in the way it does — not sharply, not with any of the dramatic suddenness one finds in more theatrical accounts of danger sensed, but with the quiet, settling attentiveness of a compass needle finding north. She did not reach for her bow immediately. She simply became, in the space of a breath, a person who had already decided what was going to happen next.

'Three,' she said, to no one in particular. Then, after a half-second's consideration: 'Four.'