The winged mare tagged after like a love-struck youth. When the path was reasonably smooth, she practiced riding. Except for that morning of its arrival, she did not see it fly.

Not until the day the bandits attacked her.

She heard them long before she saw them.

“We’ve been tramping up here for months and found nothing. I say we go back to Walshow. I’m wanting hot spiced soup from Shardit’s kettle.”

“That’s not all you’re wanting from Shardit’s kettle. Not that she don’t dole it out to anyone with enough coin to pay the tithing.” Cruel laughter floated over the trees.

Marit paused on a mostly washed-out track where she was picking her way among stones and steep water-cut trenches. Reluctantly, she had taken the knife and the bow from the shelter, not liking to steal but knowing she couldn’t survive without them. She shut her eyes, listening. The wind chased up the ridge through pine and tollyrake. She smelled a sweet-sour scent, like a festering corruption in flesh.

“Shut your ugly muzzle, arsehole. She’s my wife.”

“We all know what she was before, heh heh. Didn’t she get thrown out of the temple for asking for coin—?”

A scuffle broke out: the distinctive smack of fist against flesh; men egging the combatants on; feet scraping and sliding on earth; breath coming in bursts and gasps.

“Stop that!” A stouter weapon thumped heads. “Cursed fools. Keep your minds on our task.”

“Yes, Captain. Yes, yes,” they said, but she heard resentment and fear in their voices.

“Move on out, then. Move out.”

“Captain! See there! Is that the one we’re looking out for?”

Their tiny figures were perfectly visible where the path bent through a clearing a very long distance below, beyond earshot. Hearing them had distracted her from looking so far. But she could see them.

And they had seen her.

She swore under her breath, losing track of their voices as they burst into activity, some racing up the path while others spread out to make a net of men along the hillside to capture her in case she tried to sneak past them. She had only seven arrows, and the knife was just a knife, the blade not longer than her hand.

“The hells!”

She began climbing back the way she had come. The horse blocked the track, lowered its head, and shoved her.

“Great Lady! You useless beast! Get out of my way.”

It raised its head and stared at her, affronted.

“I beg you, please,” she added impatiently. “I can’t fight them. I have to run.”

It unfolded its wings. They were astonishing, as pale as its silvery-gray coat and too fragile to lift such weight.

“Curse it.” She tugged her stolen pack more tightly on her shoulders and ducked under one wing to come up at the saddle from behind. The wings rose over the mare’s shoulders, sprouting out of a deep barrel chest thick with muscle. She made awkward work of mounting but fixed her legs into the straps—