The pain was constant, staggering, but the pain was the least of it. Over and over again as the horses cantered north through the night and storm, Valyn ran through his decisions: leaving the bird, letting the prisoners live, riding west rather than south. He’d made a mistake, that much was clear as a knife to the eye, but it was hard to know what, exactly, he could have done differently. Even lashed to the horse’s back, he couldn’t imagine killing the children in Huutsuu’s camp. And the bird . . . if they’d tried to fly south, the Flea would have found them, killed them.

It’s done, he growled at himself after a while. You fucked up somewhere. The question is what you do now.

It was difficult enough just not to pass out, but, with much straining, Valyn managed to twist his head and half raise his torso, the joints of his arms screaming as he stretched up and back, searching for his companions in the driving rain. There were scores of Urghul, a mass of shifting horseflesh and riders, and though the storm had started to abate, he caught only a glimpse of Laith and Gwenna, trussed like sacks of grain over the backs of their own horses.

The Urghul finally called a halt in the chill gray hour just before dawn. When the horse went still, Valyn thought he was dreaming at first, that his mind had lifted clear of the constant stabbing misery of his body. Then someone sliced the cord holding him up, and he tumbled to the ground, unable to bring his dead arms up to block the fall. The Kettral, of course, had trained him for captivity. Though he was still bound at the wrists and ankles, he began flexing his legs, drawing them up to his chest, then lowering them, over and over. Then his arms. He knew how to fight with tied hands, and if the opening presented itself, he intended to be ready. His frozen muscles groaned in protest. The Urghul were laughing, he realized, watching him writhe on the ground like a worm. He ignored the sound, kept moving, though the action ground his face against the stones and wet earth.

Just when he’d gone from shaking to simply trembling, just as he’d managed to stop biting his tongue with chattering teeth, someone seized him by the neck, then wrestled him roughly to his feet. When he managed to straighten up, he found himself staring at Huutsuu. Or, to be more precise, at Huutsuu’s horse. The ksaabe who had dragged him up stepped back, as though to offer Valyn and his captor a measure of intimacy, but the Urghul woman hadn’t bothered to dismount. She sat her horse lazily, short spear balanced in the crook of her arm, the thin line of a smile creasing her face.

“I told you this. I told you I would find you.”