A Rider from the Bridge

Orla stood on the north bank of the ford at the second hour after dawn with the circle in its cradle, and the light was good.

She had come down from Cauldkeld in the dark to be there for it. Three miles of valley road with the case on her hip and no lamp, because a lamp was a thing a garrison saw, and she had set the legs where the sketch put the section, on a shelf of turf above the shingle where twelve men could stand in a line and see the whole of the south side of the valley. She had levelled the circle by feel and waited. The sun had come up over the Bridge end of the valley, east, and gone along the water, and reached the ford, and now it stood behind her and lay on the far hill so that every stone on…