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forest trail ahead of her. Ashes, too, carried a pack, smaller, but all that her ten-summers-old body could manage.
    They were but part of a line that wound down from the spruce-pine forests above Lake River. The way descended shale slopes, and into a narrow gap that led down to a gravel beach bordered by thick stands of willows.
    Skimmer shot a wary glance to the side, seeing Nightland warriors, each carrying weapons, ensuring that none of the women tried to step into the brush, drop their pack, and slip away.
    I am a captive! The notion still stunned her. Only days ago, she had been free. Free! Oh, Hookmaker, why didn’t you listen to me?
    But he hadn’t. And now, her only memory of him was his broken
and bleeding body, lying before the great hearth in the Nine Pipes’ winter camp.
    She looked out, past the line of sweating women captives bent under their loads, and tried to find Kakala. But he had already disappeared into the willows, probably to scout the river ford.
    “Ashes? Are you all right?” she asked as her daughter stumbled over an exposed root and almost fell.
    “F-Fine, Mother. I’m tired. That’s all.”
    “It’s only a little farther.” She glanced up at the low-lying sun in the west. The Nightland always let them camp at night. She tried to measure the angle of the sun. Kakala would push them across the river, though. The Nightland still believed that the Lame Bull lands on the other side offered some protection from the Sunpath warriors who followed Windwolf.
    She winced at the man’s name. Windwolf, the same warrior who had decimated her people five summers back in a bitter fight over hunting boundaries. Then she had cursed his name. The man had been a menace to her small band, beating them at every turn until Hookmaker had finally sued for peace.
    She had hated him with all of her heart. Then, with the coming of the Nightland attacks, Hookmaker had argued for peace, perhaps still stung by the defeat Windwolf and Bramble had handed them.
    “It is not our concern,” Hookmaker’s words echoed in her memory. “If the Nightland want to war with Windwolf, let them! We’ve suffered enough at his hands!”
    “How wrong you were, husband.” She shook her head, wondering how it had all gone so wrong. Poor Hookmaker, he’d paid for his belief in peace.
    When the attack came, it had been without warning, just at the breaking of dawn. She had been stewing dried camel meat in a hide bag when the first whoops brought her upright. She had seen the Nightland warriors emerging from the trees, tens of them, racing through the scattered lodges in her camp.
    “Ashes! Run!” she had shouted, and dove inside to find Hookmaker’s weapons. Wrapping her fingers around her husband’s atlatl and darts, she had emerged and handed them to him, and watched in horror as he fumbled to nock a dart, then cast it. Panic had dulled his reflexes; the dart hissed high over the attacker’s heads.
    Skimmer had stood rooted, disbelieving as Kakala charged up and knocked Hookmaker down with one blow of his war club.
    Husband, you never were a warrior. The thought lay dully in her head as she picked her way down a slope, her back and hips aching under the load.
    Oh, she had tried. The memory of the argument she and Hookmaker had had lay like a sour shadow in her soul. In the end, she had even traveled to Headswift Village, pleading with Chief Lookingbill to help her murder Ti-Bish.
    And to think I once gave him food. She could still see his hollow face and hunger-filled eyes as she handed him a bowl of hot food.
    When was I ever foolish enough to allow pity a place in my soul?
    This was how he had paid her back?
    Never again. “I will survive,” she hissed under her breath. She watched Ashes carefully wind her way through the willows. The winter-bare stems rasped on her clothing and the pack she bore.
    As she broke out of the willows, it was to find Goodeagle, the traitor, standing there, watching as each of the women