The Hollowed came down out of the Caul road in the late summer heat, and Korrin saw them before anyone else because he had been watching the ford since the Ferryman yielded.
He had not slept properly for a week. He had walked the Sallow’s east bank at dusk and at dawn, and once at midnight, with the Watch’s bell in his pocket and the Forge’s borrowed spade still leaning against the Mound’s shed where he had left it, because Gaunt had said to bring it back clean and he had not yet found the courage to tell the Smith what else had been dug with it. The ferry stood drawn up on the mud at the water’s edge with its rope coiled on the deck and nobody at its tiller. He had sat beside it on the bank a dozen nights, watching the river run past its bow, and he had found that the ferry’s silence was easier to bear than the Mound’s singing, which had followed him down the lanes like a dog that had not been called.
Now the riders came down the Caul road in a file, six of them, out of the dark trees on the far bank, and their horses were lean and grey and moved without a sound.
