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through the door, shifting into some sort of ibis, and took to the night skies.
    “Grandfather Gozreh damn that lizard! I should—”
    The thump-squelch of ponderous footsteps in the mud, and a high-pitched wheezing of animal fury, announced that her time had run out.
    They announced, too, who approached.
    The room was empty, save for the broken cross. Nowhere to hide. And even after Seyusth’s curative magics, Ameyanda didn’t think she had it in her to face the Gullet directly.
    Her frantic gaze alighted upon the shaman’s blood, only just beginning to seep into the saturated wooden floor. With no other choice, she dropped to her knees and began to arrange things just so…
    A grunt as he came through the door, a faint creak of wood beneath his feet. She knew what the walking avalanche of flesh must see: Her body, lying crumpled in the midst of a sizable blood pool, her stolen weapon lying beside her. Using techniques she’d learned long ago to avoid the sensitive ears of prey and predator both, she breathed lightly, softly. In the feeble lighting, it should appear she didn’t breathe at all.
    She hoped.
    “Well, haven’t you been trouble?” the high, breathy voice asked from behind. “Not as ripe as I’d like, but you’ll still taste fine. And more of you to go around, with fewer mouths to feed.”
    She felt flabby fingers close around an ankle, lift in preparation to drag her from the room…
    Ameyanda rolled upright, stomach muscles screaming, and struck. The iron spike that had nailed Seyusth’s feet to the cross now plunged through Galgur’s own. The lumbering giant shrieked, a sound almost too high to hear, and crumpled, grasping reflexively at the sudden agony.
    The huntress’s other hand, clutching one of the sharpened brackets that had held the shaman’s arms, punched between those toothy ridges and down that screaming gullet. She felt things tear around her makeshift weapon, the skin of his throat quivering obscenely at the touch of the thing’s vile magics.
    “How does that taste, you motherless hyena?”
    Galgur managed a single, wet choke. Blood bubbled up around Ameyanda’s hand, and she yanked it back, leaving the cursed bracket behind.
    The room shook as the Gullet’s body rolled to the floor. Ameyanda decided to believe that her brief gasp was a result of that shuddering, and not a near-sob of relief at the creature’s death.
    All right, now what?
    She had no idea of how quickly the others would return, and she’d never find her way out of here wounded, in the dark, without Seyusth. So what could she possibly…
    Ameyanda studied the massive corpse, then the blade on the floor beside the puddle of blood, and heaved a thick sigh. In a day of sickening tasks, what’s one more?
    At least now she had somewhere to hide…
    ∗∗∗
    “I knew you would run.”
    Seyusth dropped through the branches, shifting out of bird-form as he landed with a muddy thump. “After what you told me, I knew you would see the sudden commotion as your opportunity. Perhaps even a gift from the spirits.”
    Issisk straightened, hand hovering near the blade at his belt. “What do you intend?”
    “Issisk, please. I will help you get home, and submit myself to whatever penance you see fit, but do not tell the others! Their belief may be all that keeps us from the Terwa!”
    “I am not you, Seyusth. I will not deceive our people. I will let them make their own choice. And where Hasseth and the others were tribesmates, I am family. I do not believe you would murder me to keep your secret.”
    Seyusth lowered his gaze, and Issisk turned to walk away.
    ∗∗∗
    For several days they traveled. They rested as well as they could, in the best shelters they could find, and said little. Finally, they awoke one morning to the welcome sight of the Mwangi jungles against the eastern horizon.
    Ameyanda rose, stretched, preparing herself for another day’s hike. She eyed the rough blade she carried with distaste and more