Still, it was hard not to feel a hot, bright ember of hope. They’d fought clear of the last knot of Urghul, ducked through some more tents, and suddenly they were alone, free, with room to run. Annick pointed toward a picket of horses a hundred paces distant, but before they’d even begun to cross the space, the riders caught up with them, at least a score of horsemen, spears leveled even as they jumped the tent lines, voices raised in triumph.

“Not ideal,” Pyrre said, slowing, shaking her head.

“We can break through,” Gwenna said, waving to a gap. Even as she waved, it closed.

Annick was shooting. Where she’d picked up the arrows Gwenna had no idea—probably plucked from the dead. The crude bow still looked ridiculous in her hands, but it was proving deadly enough, and the sniper didn’t hesitate as she loosed into the attacking Urghul. A few riders fell, but more arrived to take their place. The sniper’s shafts were soon gone, and the horsemen were closing.

“Now what?” Gwenna asked, turning to put her back to Annick and Pyrre, shifting her feet, searching for the best footing.

“Now,” Pyrre said, “it is time to greet the god.” She sounded ready. Eager, even.

“You’re giving up?” Gwenna spat. Not that she could see any way free, but the assassin’s calm conviction baffled her. Worried her. If she let go of her own fury, she wasn’t sure anything waited beneath but mindless, gibbering fear, and so she clung to her rage, stoked it, heaped it with fuel. “Fuck that,” she shouted, then turned to the Urghul. “Who’s first?” She gestured with her high blade. “Which one of you bloody shits is first?”

Sorry, Valyn, she said silently. We made a go of it. . . .

The lead rider—Huutsuu, Gwenna realized—shook her head, lowered her spear, and nudged her horse forward. The scars on her face and arms glistened with sweat in the torchlight. Her lips curled back in a smile or snarl. She had wonderful teeth, Gwenna thought pointlessly. A savage with perfect teeth was going to kill her. . . .

The scream came first, a sky-shattering, blood-boiling scream. The Urghul closing for the kill suddenly struggled to rein their rearing horses, but that scream drove straight into the beasts’ brains, triggering something ancient and undeniable in their hearts, a terror that would not be soothed. Again it came, and again, like steel shrieking through ice. The scream, then the wind, then the great shadow of outstretched wings, a perfect dark against the greater darkness of the night, and then the figures in black alighting silently as shadows.

“Valyn,” Gwenna called, shock and relief raging through her. “It’s Valyn!”