The rain had been falling on the Lamentine for two days, and the Sallow was in spate, and Korrin could see the whole of its anger from the Lessary Road.
The river came up brown out of the reeds and went down brown toward the Hold, and it was not the river he had ridden beside all the way out to the bridge. It had grown a back. It rose in long humps where the current met a sunken bar, and it poured over them in slabs of foam the colour of weak beer, and it carried things. A bough went past, then a whole cart-wheel with its spokes snapped off, then a drowned sheep turning slowly on its side like a sleeper who had been told the story was over. Korrin watched the sheep go. He watched it reach the lower ford and catch against the first post of the Hunt-Wardens’ line, and hang there with its legs in the air, and then tear loose and go on toward the Hold’s landing as if it had somewhere to be.
They were riding back the way they had come, along the Lessary Road in the grey wet light. Idrin rode at the head, with his shoulders hunched and his hands loose on the reins. Ysra rode at his left with her warning-book in an oilskin pocket, and Korrin rode at his right, and behind them the six men of the Hold’s escort kept their heads down and their cloaks tight…
