Sect Year 3 · third month · night of day 17 · the twenty-seventh life: Thrice-Bend Ford, his nineteenth year
The last raft had gone out from the lower bend at first light, and the river had carried it down the crossing without any help from the ferry-men. Now it hung on the middle stake with one lashing still holding, swinging out over the brown water and back again like a gate on a single hinge. Bai Shun saw it from the top of the bank as he came out of the reeds.
The lantern in his hand threw a yellow ring across the shallows, and at the edge of the ring the raft shuddered each time the river leaned on it. He had walked the length of the bank to reach it. The cut on his calf had opened again in the reeds, and he felt the blood warm inside his trouser leg. He didn’t stop to look.
Two men were aboard. One was old, with a salt-carter’s thick forearms and a white scar that ran from his ear to the hinge of his jaw. The other was the boy from the lower bend, thin and fierce, with his sleeves still rolled above the elbow and the rope wound twice around his hands.
