She kept gulping, trying to stop crying, but the sobs kept bursting out, shaking her whole body. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. Why did any of it have to happen?

The eagle chirped, a delicate call at odds with its size.

Jolted out of her misery, Avisha turned to look. The eagle flapped, rose awkwardly, then dove along the path, talons raised and ready to hook them.

Avisha shrieked. She grabbed Jerad and threw herself flat, Jerad squirming beneath her. The heat and roil of the eagle passed over her body.

Below, men yelled out in a panic. Then they screamed.

She lifted her head to see men scattering away from the eagle’s attack. The eagle had plunged into a group coming up the path. With talon and beak it slashed and cut and tore.

Avisha pushed Jerad’s head down. “Don’t look!”

Nallo cried out. “Vish! Those are soldiers like the ones who burned the village. Run!”

Like the ones who burned the village.

Like the ones who could rape and murder a girl in the woods.

She bolted, slipping, cursing, weeping with terror, sprinting into the woods where she might hope to hide. Glancing back, she saw the batting wings, the slash of talons, the flash of gold that ringed its beak. The men’s screams drove her on. She ran with trees clawing at her, until her sides heaved and she fell to her knees spitting and retching. Her chest was aflame.

Nallo leaned on a tree, gulping air, holding Zianna. “Where’s Jerad?”

Avisha lifted her head. Jerad was not with them.

The ground dropped out from under her. She fell, dizzy, tumbling, helpless. But she was kneeling in the dirt with rain drizzling over her. She hadn’t fallen at all.

Nallo said, “Did you leave him behind?”

Between one ragged breath and the next, the rain ceased falling.

Jerad wasn’t with them. She had left him behind.

11

Someone had to go back and find Jerad. So Nallo didn’t wait. She pried Zianna off her body as the girl whimpered and clung, shoved her into Avisha’s arms, and stumbled back the way they had come.

She’d recognized what those men were the instant she had seen them. What a fool she’d been! Avisha had stood there blubbering on the path, when they should have kept going despite the eagle. That was how those outlaws had walked up from behind without her hearing.

Eiya! She must watch, observe, keep her eye on the trail they’d tramped through the woodland so she could find her way back. She must listen, to make sure she didn’t stagger out like a flailing drunk onto the road, an easy target. The rain gave her cover; the vegetation was damp enough that instead of snapping it merely bent, squooshed, sucked. She marked how the canopy altered where the path cut along the slope as it moved sidelong around the hill. She slowed down, grasped the slender trunk of a pine tree, trying to quiet the surging pound of her heart in her throat and ears.