“Let me guess, you can’t bring yourself to kill them.”

“We’re tying them up,” Valyn said tersely. “Heading north.”

The Skullsworn smiled, then patted him on the wounded shoulder. “How did I know?”

“I will find you,” Huutsuu said, as Valyn knelt to check the knots binding her wrists and ankles. “You are a fool not to listen to your people.”

“If I listened to them,” Valyn said, cinching the knot, “you’d be dead.”

“You are soft.”

“You’re the one tied up.”

For the better part of two weeks, the Wing made good time, driving westward each day, camping in the low folds between the hills at night. The Urghul horses, though small, were sure-footed and utterly indefatigable. Valyn had wondered how often he would need to rest the creatures, but discovered, to his dismay, that by the time he called a halt each night it was his own aching legs and back that needed respite. Judging from the groaning and stretching of the rest of his Wing, he wasn’t the only one.

He’d charted a course just north of the White River, close enough that they could often see the frothing surface; distant enough that they wouldn’t run smack into any Urghul watering their horses. There had been some discussion of going south. The fastest route back to Annur would be to ride hard for the Bend, then take a ship for the capital. It was also the most obvious way. If the Eyrie had any hint that Valyn was still alive, they’d have someone watching the docks, watching the walls, watching the whole ’Kent-kissing city. Riding overland to the west was less risky. Less risky, but much, much longer.

The steppe stretched all the way to the horizon, a great green sea with hills like swells. Aside from the occasional limestone outcrop or stand of stunted trees, there were no landmarks, no mountains or forests, just massive emptiness spread beneath the bowl of the sky. Even the streams looked the same—narrow, low-banked, stony brooks draining south into the White River.

Valyn found the open space unnerving. It offered nowhere to hide, nowhere to make a stand. The low hills rose and fell just enough to obscure the surrounding territory without providing any shelter. They could be riding parallel to an Urghul taamu for all Valyn could tell, the horsemen just out of sight over the next fold, and his neck grew sore from constantly pivoting, endlessly scanning the green horizon.