The riders seemed as tired and ill kept as the horse. A big fellow looking not much older than her actual age rode in front, all rumpled jacket and stubbled chin. Behind him, his bigger companion clung on. The second man had lumpy features and long untrimmed nails so crusted with dirt as to look black, and a blank expression. His too-small clothes seemed an afterthought: a ragged shirt hanging open with sleeves rolled up, trousers that did not reach his boot tops.

His age was hard to guess. Fawn wondered if he was a simpleton. They both looked as though they were making their way home from a night of drinking, or worse.

The young man bore a big hunting knife, though the other seemed weaponless.

Fawn marched past with the briefest nod, making no greeting to them, though out of the corner of her eye she could see both their heads turn. She walked on, not looking back.

The receding rhythm of hoofbeats stopped. She dared a glance over her shoulder.

The two men seemed to be arguing, in voices too hushed and rumbling for her to make out the words, except a reiterated, “Master want!” in rising, urgent tones from the simpleton, and a sharp, aggravated “Why?” from the other. She lowered her face and walked faster. The hoofbeats started again, but instead of fading into the distance, grew louder.

The animal loomed alongside. “Morning,” the younger man called down in a would-be cheerful tone. Fawn glanced up. He tugged his dirty blond hair at her politely, but his smile did not reach his eyes. The simpleton just stared tensely at her.

Fawn combined a civil nod with a repelling frown, starting to think, Please, let there be a cart. Cows. Other riders, anything, I don’t care which direction.

“Going to Glassforge?” he inquired.

“I’m expected,” Fawn returned shortly. Go away. Just turn around and go away.

“Family there?”

“Yes.” She considered inventing some large Glassforge brothers and uncles, or just relocating the real ones. The plague of her life, she almost wished for them now.

The simpleton thumped his friend on the shoulder, scowling. “No talk. Just take.” His voice came out smeared, as though his mouth was the wrong shape inside.

A manure wagon would he just lovely. One with a lot of people on board, preferably.

“You do it, then,” snapped the young man.

The simpleton shrugged, braced his hands, and slid himself off right over the horse’s rump. He landed more neatly than Fawn would have expected. She lengthened her stride; then, as he came around the horse toward her, she broke into a dead run, looking around frantically.

The trees were no help. Anything she could climb, he could too. To get out of sight long enough to hide in the woods, she had to outpace her pursuer by an impossible margin. Might she stay ahead until a miracle occurred, such as someone riding around that long curve up ahead?

He moved faster than she would have guessed for a man that size, too. Before her third breath or step, huge hands clamped around her upper arms and lifted her right off her pumping feet. At this range she could see that their nails were not just dirty but utterly black, like claws. They bit through her jacket as he swung her around.

She yelled as loud as she could, “Let go of me! Let go!” followed up with throat-searing screams. She kicked and struggled with all her strength. It was like fighting an oak tree, for all the result she got.

“Well, now you’ve got her all riled up,” said the young man in disgust. He too slid off the horse, stared a moment, and pulled off the rope holding up his trousers. “We’ll have to tie her hands. Unless you want your eyes clawed out.”

Good idea. Fawn tried. Useless: the simpleton’s hands remained clamped on her wrists, yanked high over her head. She writhed around and bit a bare, hairy arm.

The huge man’s skin had a most peculiar smell and taste, like cat fur, not as foul as she would have expected. Her satisfaction at drawing blood was short-lived as he spun her around and, still without visible emotion, fetched her an open-handed slap across the face that snapped her head back and dropped her to the road, black-and-purple shadows boiling up in her vision.

Her ears were still ringing when she was jerked upright and tied, then lifted.

The simpleton handed her up to the young man, now back aboard his horse. He shoved at her skirts and set her upright in front of him, both hands clamped around her waist. The horse’s sweaty barrel was warm under her legs. The simpleton took the reins to lead them and started walking once more, faster.

“There, that’s better,” said the man who held her, his sour breath wafting past her ear. “Sorry he hit you, but you shouldn’t have run from him. Come on along, you’ll have more fun with me.” One hand wandered up and squeezed her breast.

“Huh. Riper than I thought.”

Fawn, gasping for air and still shuddering with shock, licked at a wet trickle from her nose. Was it tears, or blood, or both? She pulled surreptitiously at the rope around her wrists uncomfortably binding her hands. The knots seemed very tight. She considered more screaming. No, they might hit her again, or gag her. Better to pretend to be stunned, and then if they passed anyone within shouting distance, she’d still have command of her voice and her legs.

This hopeful plan lasted all of ten minutes, when, before anyone else hove into sight, they turned right off the road onto a hidden path. The young man’s clutch had turned into an almost lazy embrace, and his hands wandered up and down her torso. As they started up a slope, he hitched forward as she slid backward, shoved her bedroll out of the way, and held her backside more tightly against his front, letting the horse’s movement rub them together.

As much as this flagrant interest frightened her, she wasn’t sure but what the simpleton’s indifference frightened her more. The young man was being nasty in predictable ways. The other… she had no idea what he was thinking, if anything.

Well, if this is going where it looks, at least they can’t make me pregnant.

Thank you, stupid Sunny Sawman. As bright sides went, that one stank like a cesspit, but she had to allow the point. She hated her body’s trembling, signaling her fear to her captor, but she could not stop it. The simpleton led them deeper into the woods. Dag stood in his stirrups when the distant yelling echoed through the trees from the broad ravine, so high and fierce that he could barely distinguish words: Let! Go!

He kicked his horse into a trot, ignoring the branches that swiped and scratched them both. The strange marks he’d read in the road a couple of miles back suddenly grew a lot more worrisome. He’d been trailing his quarry at the outermost edge of his groundsense for hours, now, while the night’s exhaustion crept up on his body and wits, hoping that they were leading him to the malice’s lair. His suspicion that a new concern had been added to his pack chilled his belly as the outraged cries continued.

He popped over a rise and took a fast shortcut down an erosion gully with his horse nearly sliding on its haunches. His quarry came into sight at last in a small clearing. What… ? He snapped his jaw shut and cantered forward, heedless of his own noise how. Pulled up at ten paces, flung himself off, let his hand go through the steps of stringing and mounting and locking his bow without conscious thought.

It was abundantly clear that he wasn’t interrupting someone’s tryst. The kneeling mud-man, blank-faced, was holding down the shoulders of a struggling figure who was obscured by his comrade. The other man was trying, simultaneously, to pull down his trousers and part the legs of the captive, who was kicking valiantly at him. He cursed as a small foot connected.

“Hold her!”

“No time to stop,” grumbled the mud-man. “Need to go on. No time for this.”