This hopeful plan lasted all of ten minutes, when, before anyone else hove into sight, they turned right off the road onto a hidden path. The young man’s clutch had turned into an almost lazy embrace, and his hands wandered up and down her torso. As they started up a slope, he hitched forward as she slid backward, shoved her bedroll out of the way, and held her backside more tightly against his front, letting the horse’s movement rub them together.

As much as this flagrant interest frightened her, she wasn’t sure but what the simpleton’s indifference frightened her more. The young man was being nasty in predictable ways. The other…she had no idea what he was thinking, if anything.

Well, if this is going where it looks, at least they can’t make me pregnant. Thank you, stupid Sunny Sawman. As bright sides went, that one stank like a cesspit, but she had to allow the point. She hated her body’s trembling, signaling her fear to her captor, but she could not stop it. The simpleton led them deeper into the woods.

Dag stood in his stirrups when the distant yelling echoed through the trees from the broad ravine, so high and fierce that he could barely distinguish words: Let! Go!

He kicked his horse into a trot, ignoring the branches that swiped and scratched them both. The strange marks he’d read in the road a couple of miles back suddenly grew a lot more worrisome. He’d been trailing his quarry at the outermost edge of his groundsense for hours, now, while the night’s exhaustion crept up on his body and wits, hoping that they were leading him to the malice’s lair. His suspicion that a new concern had been added to his pack chilled his belly as the outraged cries continued.

He popped over a rise and took a fast shortcut down an erosion gully with his horse nearly sliding on its haunches. His quarry came into sight at last in a small clearing. What…? He snapped his jaw shut and cantered forward, heedless of his own noise now. Pulled up at ten paces, flung himself off, let his hand go through the steps of stringing and mounting and locking his bow without conscious thought.

It was abundantly clear that he wasn’t interrupting someone’s tryst. The kneeling mud-man, blank-faced, was holding down the shoulders of a struggling figure who was obscured by his comrade. The other man was trying, simultaneously, to pull down his trousers and part the legs of the captive, who was kicking valiantly at him. He cursed as a small foot connected.

“Hold her!”

“No time to stop,” grumbled the mud-man. “Need to go on. No time for this.”

“It won’t take long if you just…hold her…still!” He finally managed to shove his hips inside the angle of the kicks.