"How many are there?"

"I do not yet know. Quite a few from the sound of it."

Marika moved out into the open to look across the valley. She was surprised at the effort it took to make her muscles carry out her will. She could see nothing through the falling snow. "I am still worn out. I used up far more of me than I thought yesterday."

"I can handle this, Marika. I have been unable to detect any silth accompanying them."

Marika's head had begun to throb. "Go ahead. I must eat something. I will be with you when I can."

The firing was moving closer. Dorteka hurried off into the falling snow. Marika turned, stiffly returned to the fire where she had slept, snatched at scraps of food. She found a half-finished cup of soup that had gone cold, downed it. That helped some almost immediately.

Stiffly then, she moved on to the prisoners.

Grauel sat watching them, her eyes red with weariness. "What is all the racket, Marika?"

Marika glared at the prisoners. "Nomads. Our friends here had a band trailing them, probably to take the blame." They must have known. "I wondered why the reports mentioned sighting nomads but not vehicles." She paused for half a minute. "What do you think, Grauel? What should I do?"

"I can't make a decision for you, Marika. I recall that you and Kublin were close. Closer than was healthy, some thought. But that was eight years ago. Nearly half your life. You've gone different paths. You're strangers now."

"Yes. There is no precedent. Whatever I do will be wrong, by Degnan law or by Reugge. Get some rest, Grauel. I'll watch them while I'm thinking."

"Rest? While there is fighting going on?"

"Yes. Dorteka says she can handle it."

"If you say so."

"Give me your weapons. In case they get ideas. I don't know if my talents would respond right now."

"Where are your weapons?"

"I left them where I fell asleep last night. Beside the big fire. Go on now."

Grauel surrendered rifle and revolver, tottered away.

Marika stared at the prisoners for a few minutes. They were all alert now, listening to the firing as it moved closer. Marika suspected they would be very careful to give no provocation. They nurtured hopes of rescue, feeble as those hopes might be.

"Kublin. Come here."

He came. There seemed to be no defiance left in him. But that could be for show. He was always a crafty pup.

"What do you have to say this morning?" she asked.

"Get me out of this, Marika. I don't want to die."

So. He knew how much real hope there was for a rescue by the nomads. "Will you stand witness for me?"

"No."

That was an absolute, Marika understood. The brethren had won Kublin's soul.

"I don't want you to die, Kublin. But I don't know how to save you." She wanted to say a lot more, to lecture him about having asked for it, but she refrained. She recalled how well he had listened to lectures as a pup.

He shrugged. "That's easy. Let me run. I overheard your huntresses saying there were two vehicles that weren't damaged. If I could get to one ... "

"That's fine for you. But where would it leave me? How could I explain it?"

"Why would you have to explain anything?"

Marika indicated the other prisoners. "They would know. They would tell when they are interrogated. You see? You put me into a terrible position, Kublin. You face me with a choice I do not want to have to make."

The firing beyond the river rose in pitch. The nomad band seemed to be very large. Dorteka might be having more trouble than she had expected.

"In the confusion that is causing, who is going to miss one prisoner? You could manipulate it, Marika."

She did not like the tone of low cunning that had come into his voice. And she could not shake the feeling that he was not entirely what he seemed.

"My meth aren't stupid, Kublin. You would be missed. And my novices would detect you sneaking toward those vehicles. They would kill you without a thought. They are hungry for blood. Especially for male blood, after what they have learned here."

"Marika, this is Critza. Critza was my home for almost four years. I know this land ... "

"Be quiet." Marika folded in upon herself, going away, opening to the All. It was one of the early silth lessons. Open to intuition when you do not know what to do. Let the All speak to your soul.

The dream returned. The terrible dream with the pain and the fever and the fear and the helplessness. That had been Kublin. Her mind had been in touch with his while he was in his torment. And she had not known and had not been able to help.

Grauel was right. Though he appealed to the memory, this Kublin was not the Kublin with whom she had shared the loft in their dam's loghouse. This was a Kublin who had gone his own way, who had become something ... What had he become?

That horrible dream would not stay away.

Perhaps her mind was not running in appropriate channels. Perhaps her sanity had surrendered briefly to the insanity of the past several dozen hours, to the unending strain. Without conscious decision she captured a ghost, went hunting her novices, touched each of them lightly, striking them unconscious.

Dorteka, though, resisted for a moment before going under.

She returned to flesh. "All right, Kublin. Now. Start running. Go. Take one of your vehicles and get out of here. This may cost me. Don't slow down for anything. Get away. I can't cover you for long."

"Marika ... "

"Go. And you'd better never cross my path again, in any circumstances. I'm risking everything I've become for your sake."

"Marika ... "

"You damned fool, shut up and get out of here!" She almost shrieked it. The pain of it had begun gnawing at her already.

Kublin ran.

The other prisoners watched him go, a few of the males rising, taking a pace or two as if to follow, then freezing when they saw the look in Marika's eye. Their mouths opened to protest as, slowly, as if of its own volition, Grauel's rifle turned in her paws and began to bark.

They tried to scatter. She emptied the rifle. Then she drew the pistol and finished it.

Grauel and the surviving bath sister rushed out of the snowfall. "What happened?" Grauel demanded.

"They tried to run away. I started to nod off and they tried to run away."

Grauel did not believe her. Already she had counted bodies. But she did not say anything. The bath looked studiedly blank. Marika asked her, "How do you feel this morning? Able to help me move ship?"

"Yes, mistress."

"Good. We'll start toward Akard as soon as Dorteka finishes with the nomads."

The firing was rolling toward the river quickly, Marika realized.

Then she gasped, suddenly aware of what she had done. By knocking out the novices so Kublin could slip away, she had robbed her huntresses of their major advantage in the fight. They had no silth to support them. She plunged into the hollowness inside herself, reached out, found a ghost, flogged it across the river.

She had done it for sure. The huntresses were in retreat from a nomad party that had to number more than two hundred. Most of the novices had been found and slain where she had left them unconscious.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

She captured a stronger ghost. With it she hit the nomads hard, decimating them. They remained unaware of what was happening because so few could see one another through the snowfall. They came on, and they kept overtaking Marika's huntresses.

She extricated Barlog from a difficult situation, scanned the slopes, killing here and there, and by the time she returned to Barlog found the huntress trapped again.

Only a dozen of her meth made it to the river.

Only when they assembled before taking up the pursuit in the open did the nomads discover how terribly they had been hurt.