“Which tells you something about how tough she is,” Laith snapped. “Most birds would have fallen out of the air. The damage is bad, and the long flight made it worse. The joint is swelling. By noon she probably won’t be able to get in the air at all.”

Valyn glanced up at the kettral’s head. She was watching Laith, her huge, dark eye swiveling in its socket to follow him as he ran his hands beneath her feathers. He’d often wondered about the kettral, about what they thought and understood. Did ’Ra know she was injured? Was she frightened? It was impossible to read anything in those dark eyes.

“How long for it to heal?” Valyn asked.

Laith shook his head. “Weeks. Months. Maybe never.”

“We don’t have weeks, let alone months,” Valyn said. “How many miles can she make each day like this?”

“You’re not listening to me, Valyn,” Laith said. “She can’t fly at all, certainly not with us hanging off of her.”

Valyn stared, the implications sinking in. Kettral training was all well and good, but it was the birds that made the warriors legendary. Without ’Ra they lost their mobility, the element of surprise, and a vicious fighter in the bargain. Without ’Ra, they were stranded on the ass end of the steppe with no good way to get back to Annur, or anywhere else, for that matter.

“We have to stay,” Laith was saying, “set up a camp here while we tend her, pray she gets better.”

“Bad idea,” Annick said. The sniper hadn’t taken her eyes off the Urghul prisoners, but she’d clearly been listening to the conversation. “Suant’ra is too easy to spot from the land or air. The Flea will come, or more Urghul.”

Valyn nodded slowly. “We can’t hide her, and we can’t fight them all.”

Laith stared, aghast. “So . . . what? You just want to leave her?”

Valyn glanced east. The sun was just topping the peaks, etching the snow and ice with fire.

“No,” he said finally. “I want her to leave us.”

Laith started to object, but he held up a hand. “You said she could still fly before the swelling gets too bad, at least a little bit. Send her south, back toward the Islands. All the birds know how to get home, right?”

“She won’t make it to the Islands,” Laith replied, fury and fear roughening his voice.

“She doesn’t have to,” Valyn said. “She just needs to get away from us. Fifty miles. Even twenty. Far enough that anyone who finds her doesn’t find us, too.”

“And what happens,” Laith demanded, “when someone finds her? When she can’t fly?”