Indeed the river, whose name he didn’t even know, wandered along the flat valley bottom and seemed shallow in the moonlight. But from the height of the high-arched imperial bridge, it looked considerably wider.

Kronmir was looking south, at the plains, which shone in the comet light, because they were covered in golden wheat or the stubble thereof.

He and Wha’hae rode west, looking at the river, and found a broad cattle track that led into the black water.

“How’d you come to being a scout?” Kronmir asked.

“Better than stealing coos,” Wha’hae said. He shrugged. “Looks deep.”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Kronmir said and rode his borrowed horse into the water. It came up chest high to the horse, just to the tops of Kronmir’s boots; the bed was sand and gravel under his horse’s hooves. Downstream, toward Genua, there was more gravel; a long gravel island gleamed in the dying light.

Dying. Because clouds were coming in. First long streamers of cloud, and then suddenly the moon was gone, and most of the stars; the big bear lingered, the eye burning through the thin cloud for a long minute before vanishing. But when his horse was clear of the water, the whole sky was obscured, and it was darker.

Off to the north, a flicker of flame winked on the ridge, surprisingly high up.

“Now put it out, you fools,” grumbled Wha’hae, but the fire lasted only for as long as a pious woman would say an “Ave” and it was gone.

“Rain,” Kronmir said. He pulled out his riding hood again and buttoned it with the hood down. He put his hat back on. “It looks to me as if the whole river is fordable from here west.”

“We can’t guess that,” Wha’hae said.

Kronmir liked the man’s intensity. And his professionalism. “Aye,” he said, unconsciously imitating the Hillman’s delivery.

So they rode west again. Sure enough, the river broadened in sandy soil. Big rocks stuck up out of the black water, but it was shallow; a quarter of a league west of the cattle ford, they crossed to the south bank without the water passing their fetlocks.

“Why is there a cattle ford at all?” Kronmir asked.

Wha’hae grunted and his horse let go a long fart.

“You hungry?” Wha’hae asked. “How’d ye come to be a killer, then?”

Kronmir met his eye. “I did it often enough, and it became a habit,” he said.

Kronmir smelled the garlic sausage before it was in his hands, and he wolfed it down.

They rode back along the north bank, and there they had to pick their way across a rocky streambed. Both men had to dismount.

“That’s why the cattle ford is where it is,” Wha’hae said. “No drover wants the like o’ yon. Bad on the coos.”

“Just so,” Kronmir agreed. He ate the rest of his sausage.