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slowly cut another and put it down, before listening once more.
    In this patient, laborious way, she spent the next several hours watchfully cutting reeds. It grew colder as the sun departed, but it was nothing like the piercing winter cold of the high mountains, at least not under the athask cloak, reversed so the white fur warmed her, and the goatskin lining, deeply oiled, shed the snow and did not give her away.
    The snow eased off around this time, and the clouds began to move away, revealing a crescent moon and a bright swath of stars. Ferin scowled at the brightening sky, for she did not need the light, but those who hunted her might be encouraged to set out at night now, rather than wait for the dawn.
    Ferin had spread the reeds into nine separate bunches. She quickly bound each of these bundles together individually, and then made a raft, using four bundles for the base and one on each side to make low gunwales. The ninth she only bound halfway and splayed the other end, for a makeshift paddle. All of this took every bit of her available cordage: the twine normally employed as the first stage of lofting a rope by arrow or grappling hook; six ells of the beautiful braided silk rope all the Athask people coveted; and three of her four spare bowstrings.
    It did not look like much of a craft to tackle the Greenwash in full flood, but any doubts Ferin had about using it were dispelled when she heard sounds in the distance that were not part of the natural small noises of the night. Horses moving, the creak of saddles, the faint chink of armor, the whisper of commands given in low voices. Whoever it was, they weren’t even being careful, probably because there were lots of them and they felt secure in their numbers. They were not wrong. Ferin might shoot two or three before they got her, but she knew she probably wouldn’t even kill one, not if there were many more archers sending an arrow storm back toward her.
    Quickly, Ferin made sure everything on her person was securely fastened. She put her pack and bow case on the raft and tied them to the loose ends of the reed bindings, drew her cloak tightly around herself, and pushed the raft into the shallows, diving on top of her pack as the river immediately snatched up this new gift and dragged it spinning into the heart of its turbulent waters.

Chapter Four
A MAN AND A CREATURE LIE AS IF DEAD
    Ancelstierre, Near the Wall
    Y ou had better stay here,” said Lirael, “until I see what kind of creature lurks beyond.”
    â€œWe should come with you, milady,” countered Captain Anlow. The thirty guards she led were gathered behind her, in a single line stretching back along the tunnel through the Wall and out the northern side, into the Old Kingdom. They had come with Lirael from Barhedrin, where she had landed her paperwing. “There might be other dangers. The wind is from the south, their weapons are working, those sharp barks we heard earlier are called gunshots, and some guns are very deadly at a far distance. They are always fearful here, and shoot too readily; they often have accidents—”
    â€œI have been in Ancelstierre before, and I know about their guns,” said Lirael firmly. “This is Abhorsen business. You stay here until I have dealt with the creature.”
    They stood by the gate that Anlow had just opened. Behind them, on the northern side of the Wall, a meadow full of wildflowers proclaimed the beginning of spring and the sun was just beginning to set, a red light falling across the land.
    On the southern side, the crisp chill of winter still prevailed, and it was the middle of the night. A waning moon and cloud-obscured stars did little to illuminate the broad no-man’s-land of bare earth ahead, crisscrossed with a veritable bramble forest of rusted, red-brown barbed wire, overlaying the craters and shell-holes, evidence of a continuing belief in the use of high explosive, despite the fact itdid not stop many of