“It gets cold when the rock sleeps,” she said stiffly.
Cole picked up the blanket, feeling the tight, heavy weave.
“Thank you.”

She did not leave.
She stood with her arms crossed, looking out over the quiet village.

The cooking fires were dying down to orange coals, and the smell of woodsmoke was thick and comforting in the evening air.

“You’re really from Texas?” she asked after a long stretch of silence.
“Born somewhere near the Brazos,” Cole said, leaning his elbows on his knees.
“Don’t remember much of it.

My folks died of the shakes when I was eight.

Worked on horse outfits since I was big enough to reach an ox’s bridle.”

“And you think California will be different?”
“A man has to believe some place is different,” Cole said, his voice quiet.
“Otherwise, you’re just running from one patch of dry dirt to another until your horse breaks a leg and you die in the scrub.”

Ayana looked down at him.
In the fading light, the fierce, sharp angles of her face seemed softer, worn down by an exhaustion she had been hiding behind her anger.

“I have lived under that prophecy my whole life,” she said suddenly, her voice barely louder than the breeze in the piñons.
Cole paused his whittling.
“The river?”

She nodded slowly.
“When I was seven winters old, the shamans declared that the daughter of Nantan carried the mark of the mountain spring.

They said I was not to be given to any of the young braves of the clan.

That my husband would come from the waters when the time of testing arrived.

Do you know what that does to a girl?”

Cole looked at her, saying nothing, letting the silence hold her words.
“The young men of our people,” she continued, a bitter edge returning to her voice, “they looked at me like I was a sacred pot on an altar.
None dared to speak to me.

None dared to bring a painted pony to my father’s lodge.

So, I stopped being a prize.

I learned to track mountain lions through the high shale.

I learned to shoot the short bow better than my cousins.

I broke my own mares.

I learned your language from a Spanish-speaking padre who lived three moons to the south before the fever took him.

I wanted to be so strong, so dangerous, that when the council finally spoke of marriage, they would see a warrior, not an offering to an ancient ghost.”

She turned her dark eyes upon Cole, her lower lip trembling slightly before she caught it.
“And then you,” she whispered.
“A scrawny, sun-blistered wanderer who couldn’t even read a map… you stumble into the pool because you were too stupid to carry an extra canteen.”

A dry, quiet chuckle slipped out of Cole’s chest before he could stop it.
Ayana’s eyes flared.
“You find this funny?”

“Not even a little bit, ma’am,” Cole said, shaking his head.
“I’m laughing because the world has a vicious sense of humor.

You spent twenty years training to fight your fate, and I spent twenty-four years running away from having any roots at all.

And here we are: you’re saddled with a vagabond, and I’m about to be executed by a council of elders because I wanted to clean my ears.”

For a second, Ayana’s stern expression held.
Then, like a crack appearing in a frozen river, the corners of her mouth twitched.

A short, breathless laugh escaped her nose.

“You truly are an idiot, Cole Ransom.”
“That’s been established by better men than me,” Cole admitted, smiling faintly.
“Look… if the council gives me a say in the morning, I’ll tell them the truth.

I’ll tell them I despoiled the water by accident, that you deserve a warrior of your own choosing, and that they ought to just let me ride west.”

Ayana stared at him, her gaze penetrating, searching for deceit in the lines around his eyes.
“They will not let you ride away.

If the oath is broken without blood, they believe the springs will fail.”

“Then we’ll figure something out,” Cole said.
“Nobody ought to be handed over like a sack of green coffee.

Not even to fulfill a sixty-year-old story.”

Before Ayana could answer, a frantic commotion erupted at the northern perimeter of the village.
Part IV: The Iron Wolves
The pounding of unshod hooves against hardpack dirt echoed through the quiet valley.
A lone scout on an exhausted, foam-flecked paint horse broke through the scrub, sliding to a stop near Nantan’s lodge.
The rider tumbled from the saddle, his skin gray with dust, a deep gash weeping dark blood along his left collarbone.

“Nantan!” the scout gasped, clutching his shoulder.
“Vienen!”

The quiet camp exploded into movement.
Warriors emerged from brush shelters, stringing bows and checking the cylinders of ancient percussion carbines.

Nantan strode out of his lodge, his face set in hard stone, followed closely by his veteran fighters.

Ayana was at the scout’s side in an instant, pressing a wad of clean moss against his bleeding shoulder.
“Who is it, Chato?

How many?”

“The white wolves,” the scout groaned, teeth clenched against the pain.
“The men who ran the five horses from the lower pasture three nights ago.

They did not ride south toward the border.

They circled back through the Painted Wash.”

Nantan knelt beside the wounded young man.
“Did they find the cleft?”

“They followed my tracks,” Chato whispered bitterly, shame choking his voice.
“I tried to lose them in the rock labyrinths, but their leader… he has an Apache tracker riding with him.

An outcast from the Chiricahua band.

He smelled the water on my horse’s hooves.

They are at the mouth of the outer gorge.

Fifteen men.

Heavy rifles.”

Cole stepped up behind Ayana, his senses instantly on high alert.
The atmosphere of ancient ceremony had evaporated, replaced by the sharp, metallic tang of impending slaughter.