Song Of Unmaking

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

One

The sky was raining stars.

Euan Rohe lay in the frozen sedge. The river gleamed below, solid with ice from bank to bank. The brighter stars reflected in it as they fell, streaks of gold and white and pallid green.

He was dizzy with cold and hunger and long running—and there were the damned imperials, yet again, between him and his hope of escape. Though winter had set in early and hard, the border was crawling with them. Every ford, every possible crossing was guarded.

For days Euan had been struggling along the river, while the hunting grew more and more scant, and the cold set in deep and hard. He was ready to swear that the emperor’s patrols were waiting for him, even herding him, driving him farther and farther downriver. His own country seemed to mock him, rising in steep slopes black with pine and white with snow, so near he could almost reach out and touch, but impossibly far.

He could appreciate irony. He had come out of the heart of the empire, a big redheaded man in a world of little dark people, with a price on his head and a cry of treason that echoed still, months after his stroke against the emperor had failed—and none of the emperor’s hounds had been able to find him. But then, why would they trouble themselves? All they had to do was close the border.

He was trapped like a bear in a pit. They would herd him all the way down to the sea, then corner him on the sand—or they would catch him much sooner, when cold and starvation and sheer snarling frustration made him drop his guard.

Maybe he would die and cheat them of their revenge. They could do what they liked with his corpse—he would not be using it any longer. Even soft imperials might turn savage toward the man who had reduced their emperor to impotence, disrupted their holy Dance, and come near to destroying their herd of horse mages.

His lips drew back from his teeth when he thought of those stiff-necked fools with their overweening arrogance and their worship of fat white horses. At least six of them were dead, and good riddance, too.

One of them was still alive, and that might be good, or it might be very, very bad. If he closed his eyes, he could see her face. Its lines were burned in his memory, just as he had seen her in that last, desperate meeting. Black hair in tousled curls, smooth rounded cheeks and firm chin, and eyes neither brown nor green, flecked with gold. She was bruised, filthy, staggering, with one arm hanging limp—but she held his life in her one good hand.

She could have killed him. He would have bared his throat for the knife. He could have killed her—and by the One God, truly he should have, because she had betrayed him and broken her word and brought down his plot against her empire.

She had let him go. And he had let her live. Because of her he had failed, but also because of her, he had escaped.

That might have been no mercy. He had won through to the border, but the border was closed. The emperor’s legionaries would do her killing for her.

Twenty of them camped now between him and the river. He was not getting across tonight.

His belly griped with hunger. He did his best to ignore it. There were no villages or farmsteads within a day’s hard slog—more than that for a man as worn down as he was. The last rabbit he had managed to snare was long since eaten, down to the hide and sinew. He would be starting in on his boots next, unless he went mad and tried to raid the patrol’s stores.

Maybe that was not so mad. Most of the patrol were asleep. Their sentries were vigilant—and well hidden—but he knew where each of them was.

There was a light in the captain’s tent, but no movement. Probably the man had fallen asleep over his dispatches.

Euan gathered what strength he had. He had to do it soon or he would freeze where he lay. Slip in, snatch what he could, slip out and across the river. He could do that.

He could die, too, but he would die if he stayed where he was. Die doing something or die doing nothing—that was not a choice he found difficult.