be. Mriga let out a pained breath.
Ahead of them Tyr was running excitedly past the town animal pens, toward a
bridge. It looked exactly like the bridge over the White Foal, where corpses had
so often been nailed and gangs had scuffled over their boundaries. Past the
bridge crouched the Downwind’s ramshackle houses, Ischade’s neighborhood. But
the river running under the old bridge was that cold, black river that smoked
its mists into the thunder-gray day. The ferryman was nowhere to be seen. On the
far shore, in the streets among the shanties and rotting houses, milled dark
crowds of the dead, but none of them used the bridge.
Tyr galloped up the curved upstroke of the bridge and skidded and galumphed and
almost fell down the down-stroke of it, yapping crazily. The chariot followed.
Hooves that should have boomed on the planks did not. Tyr was already down off
the bridge, arrowing through the crowds like a hound on a line, giving tongue.
Confused, the dead parted before and behind her, leaving a road the chariot
could follow. And then Tyr went no further, but they saw her jump almost up to
head level once or twice, licking in overjoyed frenzy at the face of a dark form
burdened with some long awkward object over his shoulders …
“Harran!”
Mriga was out of the chariot and running without knowing quite how she’d managed
it. Beside her Siveni was keeping pace, tucking her tunic up out of the way, the
spear bobbing on one shoulder and spitting lightning like fireworks. The dead
got hurriedly out of their way. Mriga shot Siveni a second glance: that tunic