He dropped to hands and knees and scrambled among narrow trunks, squiggled into a thicket and lay, panting, on his belly. He eased around, to watch the way he had come. Branches snapped and slithered as four men pressed past not two body’s lengths from him. He could not see their faces, only their legs. White and pale pink flowers danced in the taller scrub trees as the wind rose, melding with the stamp and disturbance made by the searching men. Maybe rain would blow through, discourage the hunters, and leave him free to—

A thorn pricked him. He shifted to get out from under it. The point pinched harder.

“Get up,” said a man.

The point of a spear jabbed hard enough to break the skin.

Cautiously, he eased up to hands and knees.

A kick planted into his rear sent him sprawling into vines and thorns. A second kick caught a hip, and as he struggled to get out of the thorns, the kicks kept pushing him back in until he simply went limp and lay like he was dead. Blood tickled along his spine; his skin stung where the spear had poked him.

The spear jabbed a new spot.

“Get up,” said the same voice, in the same flat tone, no pleasure in it, no giggling sneering gloat.

He had learned a few tricks from the Qin soldiers. With a spinning roll, he knocked the point off his back and got his hands on the shaft with a wide grip. He wrenched the spear out of the man’s grip, twirled it, and smacked him upside the chin with the shaft.

The man dropped right into Shai, his weight smashing him backward into a bush. Shai shoved him off, then levered the spear under him to push himself up.

Too late.

Others pushed into view. Two had swords, three had spears, and one had a bow nocked with a ready arrow.

“Not bad,” said the bowman, standing in back of the rest, partially screened by brush. “Kill him now, Sergeant?”

“Give us the spear, lad.”

They looked like ordinary folk on the surface, bedraggled from tearing through the scrub, but their eyes were hard and their clothes mismatched, and they carried their weapons like they wanted an excuse to use them. Three had lips stained red, the sigil left by sweet-smoke, whose mark he’d seen on Girish. The addicts looked ready to kill if given the order. The fallen man groaned as he staggered to his feet.

“Cursed outlander!” he growled. “Can I rip his balls off?”

“Neh. The master will want to know what he’s doing here pawing through the battlefield right where Lord Twilight was raised. Looks like he was traveling with that ordinand.”

Had they captured Edard, too?

Was it better to fight and die, or give up your freedom now in the hopes of winning it back later?

He released the spear.

A man grabbed it and smacked him alongside the face. He blacked out.