Location:The Millford road — south of Seven Peaks
Date/Time:TC1858.03.07 – TC1858.03.10
Reins froze to a glove by the second hour out, and after that Edric Fairley couldn't have said which hand was holding them.
He rode fourth in the line, behind Hob Lomax's pot. The pot was strapped to the back of Hob's saddle with two lengths of cord and a third for luck, and it knocked against the cantle at every step, a dull iron note that carried a long way in the cold. Nobody had told Hob to bring it. Nobody had told him not to, either, and by the first hour it had become a thing you stopped hearing, like your own breath.
Ahead of Hob rode Tamsin Kemp with her shield slung on her back, the old crest a shadow under the paint. Ahead of her, Sera Vahn, alone at the front, her right arm bound to her chest and the reins gathered in her left. Behind Edric came Maude Quarry, and behind Maude, last, Ambrose Wick, riding half turned in the saddle so that he could see the road they'd come down.
