Ashford

Ashford is the first village on the Line for anyone coming down from Auren: the forest ends, the stone begins, and there it is. The Order Road, which comes down through the Slope Forests, reaches it on an army’s sixth day of march. It exists because of a ford, where a thin stream called Gray Brook crosses over slabs of slate that break down into an ash-coloured silt: the name is much older than the fire.

It had twenty houses of stone and turf, a well with a bronze pulley that an automaton builder had made run by itself, a herd of goats, and a windmill that had turned backward since the Breaking. The oldest law of the Line says that whoever drinks from your well sleeps under your roof, and the Pilgrims had given water to two families from Nocturna. They handed over no one. On day 19, at sunset, the Order burned Ashford.