That reminded her. She reached into a bag on her back. “Eat,” she said. “We must both eat, or we’ll be good for nothing.”

IT WAS MIDMORNING, and the snow still drifted down, when they neared the place where the forest stopped abruptly and the fields began. Po turned to her suddenly, alarm screaming in every feature of his face. He began to run headlong down the path through the trees, toward the edge of the forest. And then Katsa heard it—men’s voices raised, yelling, and the thunder of hooves, coming closer. She ran after Po and broke through the trees several paces behind him. A woman staggered across the fields toward them, a small woman with arms raised, her face a mask of terror. Dark hair and gold hoops in her ears. A black dress, and gold on the fingers she stretched out to Po. And behind her an army of men on galloping horses, led by one man with streaming robes and an eyepatch, and a raised bow, and a notched arrow that flew from the bow and struck the woman square in the back. The woman jerked and stumbled. She fell on her face in the snow.

Po stopped cold. He ran back to Katsa, yelling, “Shoot him! Shoot him!” but she had already swung the bow from her back and reached for an arrow. She pulled the string and took aim. And then the horses stopped. The man with the eyepatch screamed out, and Katsa froze.

“Oh, what an accident!” he cried.

His voice was a choke, a sob. So full of desperate pain that Katsa gasped, and tears rose to her eyes.

“What a terrible, terrible accident!” the man screamed. “My wife! My beloved wife!”

Katsa stared at the crumpled body of the woman, black dress and flung arms, white snow stained red. The man’s sobs carried to her across the fields. It was an accident. A terrible, tragic accident. Katsa lowered her bow.

“No! Shoot him!”

Katsa gaped at Po, shocked at his words, at the wildness in his eyes. “But, it was an accident,” she said.

“You promised to do what I said.”

“Yes, but I’m not going to shoot a grieving man whose wife has had such an accident—”

His voice was angry now, as she’d never heard it. “Give me the bow,” he hissed, so strange and rough, so unlike himself.

“No.”

“Give it to me.”

“No! You’re not yourself!”

He clutched his hair then and looked behind him desperately, at the man who watched them, his one eye cocked toward them, his gaze cool, measuring. Po and the man stared at each other for just a moment. Some flicker of recognition stirred inside Katsa, but then it was gone. Po turned back to her, calm now. Desperately, urgently calm.

“Will you do something else, then?” he said. “Something much smaller, that will hurt no one?”

“Yes, if it will hurt no one.”

“Will you run with me now, back into the forest? And if he starts to speak, will you cover your ears?”