As she watched, he was directing a knot of taabe and ksaabe to make a space in the open area between the trees and the mud flats. When most of the riders had moved aside, Pikker John was thrust, stumbling, to the ground. Balendin stood above the man for a while, gazing over the river toward the town, as though he felt Gwenna’s eyes upon him from behind the barricade. While he waited, other prisoners were dragged forward from the trees—scores of them—then forced facedown in the dirt where they could see the leach and the old logger. Someone stepped forward with a handful of ropes, and Balendin, with a few practiced motions, cinched them around Pikker John’s wrists and ankles.

“What are they doing?” Bridger asked.

“I don’t know. Something fucking terrible,” Gwenna said. She didn’t want to watch. It was one thing to kill and see people killed in the middle of a fight. The fear and fury that came with battle didn’t leave any time to dwell on the sights and sounds of men becoming meat. Watching from behind the barricade though, as they hitched the four ropes to the saddles of four separate horses, Gwenna felt like she might retch all over her boots. A dismayed muttering spread through the crouching townspeople as they realized what was about to happen, and their fear and nausea quickened her own. She wanted to turn away, but she couldn’t, not while she was the leader of the town’s miserable defense, and yet her body needed an outlet, needed something to distract her from the scene playing out on the far side of the river.

She surged to her feet, drew her sword, and leveled it across the river. “Watch!” she shouted.

The loggers turned to her, but she shook her head angrily. “Don’t look at me, you assholes. Look over there, at the man you called your neighbor. Watch what they do to him.”

The riders of the horses, two taabe, two ksaabe, nudged their mounts forward, slowly, slowly. As the ropes drew taut around his wrists and ankles, Pikker John’s body rose into the air, and an awful, guttural moan escaped his lips. The Urghul had fallen utterly silent. Balendin, however, began to chant something incomprehensible in Urghul. Where the bastard had learned the words, she had no idea, but the thousands of horsemen seemed mesmerized by the spectacle. Gwenna could hear the horses’ hooves striking the ground, the strain of the ropes as they pulled.

“Watch!” she shouted again, her heart slamming away at her ribs. “You want to know who the Urghul are? This is who they are.”