Huutsuu, however, had other ideas. The woman rode up, surveyed the carnage, barked a few orders, and in a matter of moments the prisoners were separated, each dragged off by his or her own taabe or ksaabe. Old knots were retied and new restraints added at the elbows and knees, which meant an end to all walking and stretching. From that moment on, numbness alternated with screaming pain in Valyn’s legs and shoulders. He had to beg his taabe to pull down his pants whenever he needed to take a shit.

The ensuing days proved a repetitive itinerary of agony and endurance: struggling not to cry out each morning in the predawn dark as his nameless captor kicked him awake; refusing to wince as he was lashed across the back of the horse, tight cords biting into his bloody wrists and raw ankles; shivering in the icy rain or sweating beneath a brutal sun while the horse’s relentless gait bruised his ribs and battered the organs beneath; tucking his chin and holding his tongue whenever he was whipped across the back or shoulders; ignoring the famished ache that seemed to be boring a hole through his stomach. . . . And the days were the fucking good part. Every night, bound hand and foot and tethered to a stake, he shivered on the cold, broken earth, watching the flames of the surrounding campfires lap at the sky, listening to the strange cadences of chanting and song.

Valyn had his own chant and his own fire. His fire was the crackling rage inside him, a heat he fed with his hopes and vows, his shame and resolve, stoking it until it seared, even on the coldest nights. His chant was simple: Don’t quit. Don’t quit, you fuck. Don’t ever quit. He managed to break his captor’s nose one morning; to bite off a good portion of thumb on another, but, lashed tight as he was, there was no way to follow up the small victories, and each petty revolt ended with him curled on the ground, kicks and punches raining down. The struggle was pointless, but it was all he had, so he kept at it, looking for the openings, the little chances when he could get in his useless licks.

In between, the Urghul set an astounding pace, hammering westward from well before dawn until hours past dark, stopping only to switch horses, an excruciating process during which Valyn was untied, shoved to the ground, then, before he could do anything to stretch his legs, hurled onto another horse and lashed down once more. He tried to keep track of the days. There’d been at least ten when he was still with his Wing, and probably double that since they were separated. He had no idea where they were going, but there couldn’t be much steppe left.