Lords, but he had to make the woods.

Two more ragged breaths and he hopped the fence on his left and the fieldstones piled up next to it and struggled up a fallow field of knee-high grass.

The tall grass pulled at his feet. The slope sapped his strength. But neither seemed to slow Sabin.

The woods stood only a few paces away.

Talen glanced back to see Sabin reach out with his long tattooed arm for Talen’s hair.

River loved Talen’s hair. Loved it long. And at that moment he wished he’d never listened to his sister and her stupid appraisals of men.

Sabin grabbed a handful of Talen’s hair. He yanked, brought Talen up short, then backward to the ground.

Talen scrabbled to his knees, but Sabin kicked his side and knocked the breath right out of him.

He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. By the time his body finally remembered it had lungs, the rest of the men were rushing up the hill.

Sabin kicked at Talen’s face, but Talen curled up and the blow glanced off the back of his head.

Someone struck him with a staff. Another kick caught him in the hip.

Talen tried to get up and lunge out of the circle, but before he could get his legs, one of the tanner’s boys landed a blow to Talen’s head that dazed him and knocked away all sense of balance. He turned, falling, and saw a sea of men.

Someone kicked him in the back and the pain made him gasp. Someone else went for his neck.

Talen brought his arms up to shield his face.

“Where’s that rope?” one of them shouted.

Talen tried to roll over.

“Out of the way!” someone shouted.

“Now you’ll get it, half-breed,” a man said.

The blows lessened and then stopped. Talen glanced up.

Sabin stood above him, lifting what must have been a forty-pound fieldstone the color of fresh liver.

He raised it high, preparing to crack Talen’s head like a nut.

4

Talen rolled away, trying to escape Sabin’s stone.

“Hold!” someone shouted.

A horse snorted.

Talen tried to dart through the legs of the men surrounding him and was flung back to the ground. He froze, cringed, waiting for the crushing stone. But it did not fall.

“Twenty stripes, Sabin,” a man said. “I swear it!”

Talen glanced up. The men were not looking at him. They were looking at the bailiff of Stag Home who sat upon his dappled gray horse, glaring at Sabin. It was he who had been the rider bearing down on Talen from the other direction.

Sabin hesitated, and then, almost in defiance, he dropped the stone perilously close to Talen’s head.

“That,” said the bailiff, pointing at Sabin, “has just made you my riding horse.”

The bailiff was not a large man. But he was strong and fearless in battle. His face was shaven close, which revealed three scars where a bear had tried to take off his jaw. But it was his eyes, as pale as the horse upon which he rode, that fixed Talen’s gaze. Those eyes had scared Talen as a boy. He had thought the man was full of evil. His father had convinced Talen otherwise, but, faced with those eyes, Talen could never maintain his certainty.

The bailiff directed that hard gaze at the other men. “What is this here? Why are the fields empty?”

“There are Koramite Sleth about,” someone said.

Sleth? Soul-eaters?

Sleth were those who had given themselves over to Regret, the one Creator of seven who, when he’d seen what he and the seven other Creators had wrought, recognized that it was flawed and despised the work of his hands. To the men, women, and children who came into his twisted power, he gave horrible gifts-unnatural strength and appetites, odd growths and manifestations of beasts, and the power, with a touch, to steal Fire and soul. The stories of Sleth and the hunts the righteous led against them were legion.

Had Talen heard that right?

“This one ran like a monster,” one of the men said.

“Yes,” said the bailiff. “But it appears you caught him anyway.”

Talen looked up at the bailiff, but a wave of pain and nausea slammed into him, and he was forced to turn and vomit into the grass. He hurt everywhere.

“Get up,” said the bailiff.

Talen gagged once more, spit. He took three breaths to steady himself. He was dizzy and shaking.

He got to one knee. Something was running out of his nose. He wiped his face with his sleeve expecting blood, but it was nothing more than snot. There was a ringing in his ears, and he didn’t know if he could stand.

But he did know one thing: he would not show weakness. Not in front of these men.

Two more breaths. He could barely open one of his eyes.

Goh, these arrogant Mokaddian garlic-eaters. This would go to the Koramite Council. And the Council would take it to the Shoka lords. He was within his rights-every one of these men should pay! And that thought was enough to take the edge off the flood of tears pushing up within.

Talen stood. He almost toppled over, but then his dizziness seemed to recede.

Two other horsemen rode up from the village and joined the bailiff. One was the bald Fir-Noy he had seen at the gate. His black beard and eyebrows were even bushier than they had first appeared. His Mokaddian wrist tattoo with its boar’s tusk had been extended up his forearm, showing not only his clan, but also the military order to which he belonged. The other Fir-Noy was a small man, a messenger. He rode a horse that was lathered and blowing from a long gallop.

The bearded Fir-Noy shifted on his saddle and the leather creaked under him. “We tried to find you, Zu,” he said to the bailiff. “There’s been a Sleth hunt, and it appears that things have taken a turn for the worse.”

The bailiff turned. “A Sleth hunt?”

The messenger eyed Talen, then addressed the bailiff. “We identified the parents of the abomination pulled from the river. Yesterday, our forces closed in on Sparrow, the Koramite master smith of the village of Plum. But things did not go as planned. His two hatchlings escaped. And then some Sleth spawn came back and slaughtered a family in the village.”

Except for the buzzing in Talen’s head there was dead silence. Sleth, he thought. What are these men doing wasting their time chasing me? They should be out-

Then his brain processed that last statement. There were Sleth among the Koramites, among Talen’s people.

“We have reports,” the messenger continued, “that they were spotted in this district. A Koramite girl and her blind brother.” He turned to the men. “There’s a sizeable bounty for any who bring them in, dead or alive. A miller’s annual wage.”

The reports of Sleth that sailors brought this spring had given him nightmares. A Sleth wife taken in Mokad who had filed her teeth into sharp fangs-they’d all thought it was to make her more fearsome in battle. But the hunters discovered the true reason when they broke open her smokehouse and found the bodies of four men hanging, butchered and half cured.

And that was just this year. There were stories of Sleth stealing your soul away, then walking about in your body. Sleth growing horns, growing gills so they could swim in close and drag unsuspecting fishermen into the watery depths. Sleth were forever stealing sisters, wives, and husbands to use in unnumbered abominations.

If these men thought he was associated with Sleth…

Or was this simply another Fir-Noy scheme?

He realized it didn’t matter at this point. If these men thought he associated with such evil, then his life floated like a piece of duff over a bonfire.

“What are you doing here?” asked the bailiff.

“Trading for chickens, Zu,” said Talen. “That was my crime.”