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stepped from the trees.
    She met his leering eyes, narrowing her own. Each night he picked a woman, ordering her off into the trees for his pleasure. So far, he had taken Kicking Fawn twice, and Blue Wing once.
    “Need help with the load?” he asked Ashes.
    Her daughter just bowed her head, trudging forward.
    “Don’t even think it,” she barked.
    “How about you, Skimmer?” he asked. “Tired of the cold at night?”
    “Oh, yes, Goodeagle,” she said with cunning. “Pick me tonight. If nothing else, I’ll gouge your eyes from that too-pretty head and tear your testicles off your body.”
    He matched her pace as she followed the line of women down to the first of the shallow channels.
    “Do you know why we attacked your little band at the Nine Pipes camp?”
    “Guide’s orders, I heard.”
    “He wanted a Nine Pipes woman.” Goodeagle sloshed into the shallow water with her. “Maybe he heard that it was you who was plotting to kill the Guide.”
    “Your Prophet can run his head up his ass and breathe deeply for all I care.”
    “Such anger, Skimmer.”
    “You should know. It was you, as Windwolf’s deputy, who put it there.”
    Goodeagle nodded. “You and Hookmaker never did understand war.”
    “We were hunters, you piece of filth.”
    “That’s what killed the Sunpath People,” he said. Then in a lower voice, “That’s what killed me. But I understand now.”
    “I hope the rest of the women here are right, and Windwolf comes to free us. I want to see what he does to you.” Skimmer put her concentration into keeping her feet on the slippery round rocks under her feet. The water was cold, with rims of ice on the rocks. She sloshed through, with the current pulling at her thighs.
    “You always had to go it alone, didn’t you?” Goodeagle asked. Then he paused. “And now you’ll do it with Councilor Nashat.”
    “Is that why you betrayed Bramble? Because she couldn’t see it, whatever it is?”
    He looked away, a spear of guilt on his face.
    “Go on,” he muttered. “Shiver yourself to sleep tonight. And while you do, imagine what the Nightland are going to do with you.” Then he turned. “Blue Wing! When you cross, drop your pack. I think I’ll give you the honor of warming my robes tonight.”
    Skimmer sighed as the man walked back down the line to match his pace with the hapless Blue Wing’s. Once she had admired both Blue Wing and Kicking Fawn for their good looks, and the way men watched their bodies as they passed. Now she knew it for the curse it could be.
    “Is that true, Mother?” Ashes asked. “Did he really kill Bramble?”
    “After a fashion, yes.” She took a breath, walking out onto one of the rocky islands, following the wet trail the others had left on the rocks. “But then, maybe we all did.”
    “Good.” Ashes said softly. “Bramble was evil.”
    “And Windwolf?” she asked.
    “I don’t know,” Ashes said between panting for breath. “People here think he’s going to come and rescue us.”
    She considered that as she followed Ashes into the next ford.
    Would Windwolf come to rescue the Nine Pipes? Even after all that we did to ensure that none of the other bands would join him in an alliance?
    “We have only poisoned ourselves.”
    She followed the long line across the narrow channels, through the willows on the far bank, and struggled, her muscles protesting, up into the trees on the first terrace.
    “Camp here!” the warriors called as they entered a small clearing in the trees.
    Skimmer shrugged out of her pack, looking around at the rest of the captives. These women, people she’d known for years, now appeared as strangers, expressions haunted, faces slack, and eyes dull. Each was living her grief, remembering dead husbands, brothers, and sons left lying, unburied, in the smoking ruins of the Nine Pipes camp. They had become strangers.
    As I have become to myself.
    “We’ve been fools, Ashes.”
    And now it’s too late.
     
     
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