Something prickled the back of Ash’s neck, like an insect’s touch or a fingernail scored down her spine. Fear came alive in her chest. Everything was quiet. When did I last hear the sept’s horses? She found she could not remember. She didn’t want to turn and look behind her. Didn’t want to see what was there.

        “Stop where you are, Asarhia March,” came a voice from close behind. “Or we’ll shoot the horse.”

        Ash looked back. Four men rode on the ice thirty paces behind her. Marafice Eye, Sarga Veys, a watch brother with a thin face and a nose made ugly by scar tissue, and a fourth man farther behind. Thin Face had a cranked and loaded crossbow resting in the crook of his arm. Marafice Eye was hunched low on his horse, his arms drawn close to his body, his gloved hands knotted at the reins. Beneath the wire of his birdhelm, his eyes glinted like lenses of ice. Sarga Veys rode in the middle; his pale and unprotected head rising from the leather plumage of the Rive Watch cloak like something already dead. He was breathing hard, and a film of gray sweat shone on his nose and brow.

        Then it struck her. There was no mist between them. She shouldn't be able to see them at all; the mist was too thick for that. Ahead she could barely see five paces, yet behind her a tunnel of clear air had been created.

        She swallowed hard. It was an aberration, wrong in every way like water running upstream or the sun coming out at midnight. The mist had been held back, molded, forced to do the bidding of one man. It made Ash’s flesh crawl. So this is what sorcery is? Not gaudy tricks and flashing lights, control over nature.

        Tht. An arrow shot over the heads of the three men. Even as Ash recognized the crude shape of the shaft and the horsehair fletchings at its tail, she kicked the bay into a gallop. Angus must have fired high because he couldn’t be sure of where she was and didn’t want to risk hurting her. It wasn’t much, but it was a distraction. As she lowered her body over the bay’s neck, she heard the crisp thuc of the crossbow discharging. The bay was in the process of switching its path and the crossbolt scraped along his rump, taking hair and skin with it.

        Ash pressed her lips together to stop herself from crying out. Horse blood spilled over her boots. Beneath the gelding’s hooves, the ice began to creak. Horses charged after them, tracing the bay’s path. Marafice Eye shouted an obscenity at Sarga Veys. Ash heard metal rattle as Thin Face cranked the bow for a second shot.

        The bay galloped faster and faster. Looking down, Ash saw where the ice had grown darker as the deep lightless water began to shine through. Her foster father had once told her that a man could stand on freshwater ice as thin as a hen’s egg. But what about a girl on a horse? She could recall no wisdom to cover that.

        Ash felt the ice move beneath her. The bay veered keenly to the left. One of its hooves broke the surface with a sharp, wet snap. Crack lines began to appear in the ice, running through the bay’s legs like fast little ants. Lather foamed along the gelding’s neck as it danced across the fracturing plates. Ash felt freezing water spit against her face. Behind her, ice snapped with the force of a felled tree. Someone screamed. A horse squealed, high and terrible like something being slaughtered. Ice pitched and rolled, causing the lake water to swell. The shelf of ice the bay ran across bobbed like a raft in a storm.

        Ash risked a glance over her shoulder. Frost smoke spewed from the surface in a shower of blue sparks. Horses and men plunged through the erupting ice field, arms flung outwards, eyes wide with terror, fingers clutching air. Marafice Eye’s horse plummeted into the lake, its forelegs kicking wildly, its rider clawing at its neck. The last thing she saw before turning her back was a pair of gloved hands struggling for a handhold in the cold black water.

        Ash rode across the ice, dancing with the bay.