They’re going to catch up, she thought grimly. They know this area, and I don’t; that’s what let them get so close in the first place. I’m in trouble. And I don’t know if I’m going to get out of it this time.

She wanted to “look” back at her pursuers, tempted to use her Gift for the first time in a long time—

And stopped herself just in time.

That isn’t me, she realized, urging Hellsbane into greater speed as they scrambled down a gravel-covered slope. Something out there wants me to use my Gift, probably so they can find me. Or catch and hold me until they come.

She fought down panic; Hellsbane was a good creature, and bright beyond any ordinary horse, but if she panicked, so would Hellsbane, and the warsteed might bolt. If Hellsbane took it into her head to flee, Kero wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop her until she’d run her panic out.

And that could end in her broken neck, or the mare‘s, or both.

Kero kept Hellsbane in the cover of the trees, even though this meant more effort than riding in the open. She looked automatically behind her as they topped the next hill, and saw not one, but two parties of pursuers; both coming down off the slope she’d just left, and both parties so confident of catching her now that they weren’t even trying to hide. They couldn’t see her, but they could see her trail; she wasn’t wasting any time trying to hide it.

They were perhaps a candlemark’s ride from her, if she stopped right now. The temptation to leave cover and make a run for it was very great. If she let Hellsbane run, she might be able to lose them as darkness fell.

Assuming that their horses weren’t fresh.

Hellsbane had been going since last night, and she couldn’t do much of a run at this point.

They could. And would.

Kero sent the mare across a section of open trail when they dropped out of sight, hoping to get across it before they got back into viewing range. This was one of the worst pieces of trail she’d hit yet; barely wide enough for a horse, bisecting a steep slope, with a precipitous drop down onto rocks on one side and an equally precipitous shale cliff on the other.

No place to go if you slipped, and nowhere to hide if you were being followed.

She breathed a sigh of relief as they got into heavier cover before the hunters came into view. She hadn’t wanted to rush the mare, but her back had felt awfully naked out there.

Thunder growled overhead; Kero looked up, pulling Hellsbane up for a moment under the cover of a grove of scrub trees just tall enough to hide them. She hadn’t been paying any attention to the weather, but obviously a storm had been gathering while she fled westward, because the sky was black in the west, and the darkness was moving in very fast-How fast, she didn’t quite realize, until lightning hit the top of a pine just ahead of her, startling Hellsbane into shying and bucking, and half-blinding her rider. The thunder that came with it did deafen her rider.