Chapter 196: Zuri

The column saw the riders an hour after dawn.

They came from the east, over a line of low hills, the morning sun behind them. At first they were only a dark line against the bright sky. Then the line grew larger, and the light caught on armor, and the knights at the front of the column began to shout.

Encrid rode up the length of the column to see.

By the time he reached the front, the riders were close enough to make out their banners.

A white griffin on a field of blue.

The same as Gareth’s. And yet not the same. The Third Legion’s griffin was rampant, claws raised. This griffin was in flight, its wings spread wide across the banner.

The Fifth Order of the White Griffin.

Encrid’s hands tightened on the reins.

The riders came down off the hills at a canter. There were several hundred of them. Four hundred, perhaps five. Knights in blue-enameled armor, riding hard, their horses lathered.

At their head rode a woman.

She was tall in the saddle, with dark hair tied back in a long braid. She wore the same blue armor as her knights, but her helmet hung from her saddle, and her face was bare to the wind.

Beside her rode a broad, heavy knight with a grey beard and a great shield on his back.

The woman saw the column. She saw the soldiers of the Wall, the wagons, the children. She saw the knights of the Third Legion riding along its flanks.

And then she saw Encrid.

She did not slow down.

She rode straight at him, past Gareth, past Harun’s knights, and pulled her horse up so hard that it reared. She swung down from the saddle before it had finished landing.

She crossed the three paces between them in two strides.

And she hit him.

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It was not a hard blow. It was an open hand against his shoulder, the kind of blow a sister gives a brother.

Then she grabbed the front of his coat with both hands and pulled him down off his horse.

Encrid half fell, half slid out of the saddle. Before his feet had properly touched the ground, her arms were around him.

She held him so tightly he could not breathe.

"You idiot," she said into his shoulder. "You stupid, stupid idiot."

Encrid did not know what to do.

He had never met her.

That was the truth.

He had never read about her either. In the novel, Zuri Gannon was not mentioned at all.

For Encrid, till this point - she was just letters.

Letters that always worried about him and ended the same way.

Write back, you lazy fool.

And he had written back.

But he had never seen her face.

He did not have any of the old Encrid’s memories. He did not remember her as a child. He did not remember what her voice sounded like, or how she laughed, or whether she had ever held him like this before.

He only knew that she was holding him now.

And that she was shaking.

Slowly, awkwardly, Encrid raised his arms and put them around her.

"I’m sorry," he said. He did not know what else to say.

"You should be." Zuri pulled back and looked at him. Her eyes were wet. "You look terrible. You’re so thin. What have they been feeding you?"

"Not much, lately."

"And you smell like smoke."

"Pitch," Encrid said. "We burned a road."

Zuri stared at him.

Then she laughed. It was a startled, broken laugh, and she wiped her eyes with the back of her gauntleted hand.

"Father said you’d changed," she said. "He didn’t say how much."

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They talked while the column walked.

Zuri rode beside him, and Sir Agnus rode on his other side, and Encrid told her everything he could.

She listened the way Gareth had listened. Without interrupting. Her face grew harder with every part of it. The horde. The trenches. The Elder. Ulrich Vance. Wilm Trask.

When he told her about the Wall, she closed her eyes for a moment.

"We heard it too," she said. "We were twenty miles east of the road. The whole camp woke up." She opened her eyes. "Sir Agnus said it was an earthquake."

"It wasn’t," Sir Agnus said heavily. He had not spoken until now. "I knew it wasn’t. I didn’t want to say what I thought it was."

Zuri looked at the column. At the long line of wagons and people stretching back along the road.

"How many are alive?"

"Just over eight thousand left the Wall," Encrid said. "We lost some on the road. Corr will have a number at the Span."

"And the horde?"

"Behind us." Encrid looked north. "The Wall held it for the night. The Lampwrights held it. But it’s through now. And the Roamers are faster than we are."

"How far to the Span?"

"Six miles."

Zuri was silent for a moment. Then she turned in her saddle and looked back at her knights.

"The Fifth Order will take the flanks," she said. "Sir Agnus, split them. Half on each side of the column. Nothing touches these people between here and the Span."

"Yes, my Lady."

Sir Agnus turned his horse and rode back toward the knights.

Zuri turned back to Encrid. Her face had changed. The tears were gone. She looked like what she was. A commander of the White Griffin, a Master of the water, who had marched her whole Order across the North without her father’s permission because she was worried about his brother.

"Father’s going to be furious with me," she said.

"He sent Sir Gareth."

"I know he sent Sir Gareth." Zuri almost smiled. "I’m still going to be in trouble."

Encrid looked at her.

"Thank you," he said. "For coming."

Zuri looked back at him for a long moment.

"In a year and a half of letters," she said quietly, "you never once asked me for anything."

She shook her head.

"Did you really think I wouldn’t come when you are in danger?"

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