An hour was all it took, half an hour, for the logs to build up. Valyn and his Wing could only watch, appalled, realizing along with the townsfolk what the Urghul intended. Somewhere, probably miles to the north, they’d found the timber that the townspeople had been logging all winter long. There would have been huge piles of it stacked at the side of the river, just waiting for the full summer floods to carry it down into Scar Lake. It wouldn’t take more than a few dozen riders to loose it all, thousands upon thousands of logs. With so much weight in the river, there was no need for an engineer. The current built the bridge, forcing the logs up against the remnants of the old pilings and holding them in place.

In minutes the horsemen had gone from riding idly up and down the far bank to a full-blown charge across the precarious and shifting raft. The foremost riders foundered on the loosely packed logs, the legs of their panicked, screaming mounts plunging into the gaps. The river had turned into a deadly chaos of shifting trunks and thrashing, dying beasts, but the unseated Urghul pressed forward on foot, voices and spears both raised in defiance.

Valyn’s eyes fixed on one woman with streaming braids and blood smeared over her face like paint. Her horse was gone, but she was darting forward, leaping nimbly from trunk to trunk, watching the logs, judging their movement, choosing her line. In other circumstances he would have admired her poise, her patience—she would have made good Kettral material. Problem was, she’d nearly crossed the channel. A few more well-timed leaps and she’d be into the mud flats on the near side. As though sensing this herself, she paused atop the shifting dam and turned back, waving her fellow warriors on, mouth pried wide with a scream he could see, could almost hear, like a fine file drawn over glass.

Then an arrow took her through the shoulder, spinning her halfway around, sending her tumbling into a gap between the logs. Valyn watched as the trunks, forced on by the current, closed around her chest. She thrashed desperately, heedless of the arrow wound, trying to claw her way free, but there was no freedom to be had. The river flowed on implacably, crushing her, then folding her under into the dark, invisible current.