They left the Ashfront on the sixth morning, in a column of forty men and eleven masked riders, under a sky the colour of dirty wool.The Deep Watch lay forty leagues north, beyond the last of the garrison towers, in a country no map had ever properly drawn. There was no road. There was only the glacier, an endless white sheet fractured by blue crevasses and wind-carved ridges. The sun never fully rose. The cold bit through leather and wool and flesh alike.Kael walked near the middle of the column with his spear across his shoulders and his breath streaming in front of him. His ribs were healing faster than they should. Orin walked beside him, bundled in a grey healer’s cloak, a small pack of herbs on his back. The warden had signed the transfer papers with the face of a man signing his own death warrant, but he had signed them. A healer is a healer, Hask had said stiffly. Take him. You will need him more than we do.It was the closest thing to a blessing that any