They left the dam with the river at their side and the enemy camp at their backs.
For the first stretch the current did the thinking for them. It pulled north through the timber and they followed it down, fast enough to eat distance, slow enough to keep branches from snapping under careless boots. The day was already bleeding away. Light ran thin under the trees. Pools of meltwater held the last of it in weak gray strips. Every now and then Ouz caught one of the signs they had read on the way south, only backward now. A crawl lane pressed through reeds. A cord loop near a fern. Hatchet marks on pine where men had worked fast and meant to hide it.
Butcher kept the lead over that ground. Captain had sent them back together on purpose. Ouz had the markers fixed in his head and the sense to move without drawing eyes. Butcher was the steadier man for a broken return. If the road turned bad, he would keep the mission from turning with it.
“Keep the river close until the clean bank,” Butcher murmured.
Ouz nodded.
They moved through the timber without another word. The river shallowed by degrees. The trees opened. The too-perfect camp ground appeared again through birch and alder, pale bank, low rise, clean water, the same easy ground that had been built to kill whoever trusted it. Ouz gave it one look and kept going. He could still see the shape of the trap even with the camp hidden upstream from sight. Wagons in the mud. Horses screaming. Boys from the wagons pushed first into the dark where officers pointed.
They crossed well back from the open bank and cut north. The marked trunk from the mud sink sat where Captain had left it, one hard notch on bark above a patch of ground that would swallow a wagon to the axle. Ouz touched the cut in passing. After that the return line came easier. Short stakes before covered pits. Peeled patches of earth where Sleeper had exposed trap mouths. Once Ouz found a strip of alder root with the silk trigger cut clean and hanging dead against the bark. The path they had burned through the southbound problem still held.
They stayed off the road. That cost them some speed. It also kept them alive.
The main track ran close enough to hear in places. Water in ruts. Wind through the open stretches. Once the far bark of voices. Not near. Not close enough to sort words. Ouz and Butcher kept to brush, pine shadow, low folds in the ground. They crossed the road only where they had to, and never in the open for long.
By full dark they had half the distance behind them. The first day ended in a shallow fold under spruce, too cramped for comfort, good enough to vanish in for a few hours. No fire. No talking. Butcher checked the sky through the branches, drank one mouthful from his skin, and passed the time by rubbing mud from the short sword at his hip with a scrap of cloth.
Ouz sat with his back against a trunk and watched the dark. His body wanted sleep. His mind kept its hands on the trail. Captain’s last words had fixed themselves too deep to shake loose. No detours. No hero work.
Butcher broke the silence first. “You still remember every marker?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
That was all.
They rose before dawn and moved again. Morning came cold enough to firm the top skin of the mud. It helped their pace. Boots bit cleaner. Brush held less water. The road kept its distance on their left through the first hours while the land slowly lifted away from the river country. Ouz began to feel the convoy before he had any proof of it. Not sound. Not sight. Only the sense of weight somewhere ahead. Thousands of feet. Wheels. Animals. Ledgers. Orders. Men who believed the road behind a sweep team had already been made safe for them. The sun climbed. The ground softened again.
They had been moving for hours when Ouz caught the first warning. A faint clink. Metal against metal. Far enough that another man might have taken it for branch tap or loose kit. Wrong rhythm. Too measured. After that came a flicker in the trees to their right. Color where there should have been bark and wet brush. Ouz slowed a fraction and caught Butcher lightly at the forearm.
Butcher felt it and eased his pace a fraction. “What?”
“Movement,” Ouz whispered. “Right side. More than one.”
Butcher’s head stayed forward. “How many?”
“Don’t know yet.”
They drifted toward a thicker patch of pine and hazel. Ouz went low behind a screen of brush and watched through a gap no wider than his hand. A file of men moved through the trees beyond, spread enough to keep eyes on more than one line of approach. Ten of them by the count he could get before trunks broke the view. One carried a short bow unstrung across his back and had the armguards to match. The rest wore small round shields or curved blades at the hip. Their clothes were wrong for Zhanar from the first glance.
This was Ouz’s first close look at Samraj.
The front pair wore quilted coats heavy with brass studs that caught stray light and broke it dull. The cloth over the armor carried deep green and dark saffron, rich once, now mud-marked from field work. Under the studded layers Ouz saw the edges of hidden plates where the coats pulled across the ribs. Their helmets sat low and round with wrapped cloth wound over the crown, and fine mail hung from the rim to jaw and collarbone. The man behind them carried a small black round shield with four raised metal bosses and a curved sword with a broad forward pull to the edge and a round disk at the grip. Another wore a mail veil beneath a cloth-wrapped helmet sewn through with brass and had metal bracers over both forearms engraved in a pattern Ouz could not read. The brass had gone dull where hands and weather had worked it, but the edges stayed clean. Someone in that army still made men maintain their kit. Nothing on them looked accidental. Their boots were better than brigand work. Their spacing was better. Even their silence was better.
Scouts. Messengers. Road-watchers. Men who belonged to an army that expected to be obeyed.
Butcher eased down beside him and took one look. His face did not change. “Seen?”
“Ten.”
“Same.” Butcher kept his voice low enough to die in the leaves. “What do we do?”
The question came too quickly to be real uncertainty. Butcher was testing him. Ouz watched the Samraj file another breath. They were moving north through the timber, looking for signs. Looking for missing powder signals. Looking for why nothing had answered from the road traps. “We leave them alone,” Ouz said. “The convoy matters more.”
Butcher gave one small nod. Approval, almost hidden. “Good.”
The Samraj line drifted out of sight behind thicker timber.
Butcher touched Ouz’s wrist once and pointed deeper into the woods. “We make a half-circle. Wider. Keep north.”
They moved inward from the road and the return trail both, stepping into denser brush where pine gave way to mixed oak and low thorn. It was ugly ground. Better for disappearing. Worse for speed.
Ouz kept counting the Samraj in his head. Ten.
He had just begun to think the circle would carry them clean around when the back of his neck tightened. No sound at first. Only the sharp lift inside his skin that came when danger entered the world a heartbeat before the mind caught up. The hairs on his arms rose under the gambeson. Air cut somewhere ahead and right, a fast split against leaves.
He hit Butcher hard in the shoulder and dropped with the shove.
The arrow passed through the place Butcher’s throat had occupied an instant earlier and drove deep into an oak behind them.
Butcher stared once at the shaft, once at Ouz.
Ouz had already turned toward the shot. Shapes moved through the timber. The same Samraj file, only wider now, shields out, line half-formed, using the trees the way good men used them. They had looped back. They had expected someone to try the brush. The archer was already reaching for another shaft from farther right. Nine others advanced in a loose spread behind shield rims and hanging mail.
Butcher slid behind one trunk. Ouz took another three paces off. For one beat the world narrowed to bark, breath, mud, and the fast working of both their minds.
Butcher pulled his flask, took one swallow, and capped it again. “You run north. I pull them.”
Ouz snapped his head around.
Butcher’s mouth bent in the nearest thing he had to a smile. “I know what I look like, boy. I only need to make them hate me for half a mile.”
“You won’t make half a minute.”
Butcher’s eyes stayed on the line ahead. “Better odds than both of us stuck here.”
“You’re lighter,” Ouz said. “You’re faster on a long road. You go.”
Butcher gave him a flat look. “No.”
“Qiwu.” Ouz kept his voice hard and low. “You know I’m right. They have an archer. They have shields. You have a satchel and a sword.”
“I also have experience.”
“You also have no armor.”
The first Samraj shield showed between two trunks, black boss wet with leaf water. A voice barked something in a language Ouz did not know. Short. Sharp. Command.
Butcher leaned enough to look, counted, and came back into cover. “Ten.”
“Nine in a breath.” Ouz pulled one throwing knife free. “You won’t hold them.”
“And you will?”
Ouz did not answer that. There was no answer worth giving. He looked down once at his own body and let Butcher do the same. Feathered plates over the shoulder and upper arm. Heavy gambeson under it. Short sword at the left hip. One hand blade at the belt, one at the ankle. Throwing knives across chest and waist. Weight enough to slow him on an open road. Enough steel to buy him work in a close kill.
Butcher saw the sum. His eyes sharpened. He had known Ouz could fight. He had not known all of this. “You’re still a fool,” he muttered.
“Maybe.” Ouz’s gaze stayed on the advancing line. “I’m a fool with better chances.”
A second arrow hit bark near his head and tore wood chips into his hair. That settled it.
Butcher took one slow breath. “If I don’t see you at the convoy, I come back. I find your body. I drag it upright. I kill you myself for the walk.”
Ouz almost smiled. “That sounds like work.”
“It is work.” Butcher’s hand closed once on Ouz’s shoulder. Hard. Brief. “So live and spare me.”
“Run when I move.”
The Samraj line tightened. Ouz heard shield leather creak. Boots pressed wet leaves flat. The archer had shifted farther right for a cleaner lane.
Ouz filled his hand with steel. “Now.”
He broke from the tree in a low sprint and threw all through the first rush. Knives flashed through brush and cold light. One struck a shield and spun away. Another buried in a trunk. A third cut cloth and failed to bite through the armor beneath. A fourth missed a face by inches when the man jerked his head at the last instant.
The fifth hit. It took the archer through the throat just above the studded collar, slipped into the gap where the mail had lifted with his draw, and drove him back into a birch with both hands clawing at the hilt.
Ouz kept running. Behind him he heard Butcher’s boots tear loose northward through the brush and did not look back.
The Samraj line reacted fast. Faster than brigands and deserters. Two men surged to close the gap while the others spread to catch angles through the trees. Shields came up. Swords cleared in a single wave of steel and cloth. One of them shouted again, voice iron-flat, and the whole line shifted with it. Ouz hit the first man before the line finished settling.
The Samraj soldier met him behind a small round shield and a short curved blade aimed for the gut. Ouz slapped the cut aside with his left forearm, felt the shock ring through the feathered plates strapped over the gambeson, and drove shoulder-first into the shield. The impact jarred his teeth. It also slammed the man back into a trunk hard enough to lock him in place for one heartbeat. Ouz’s short sword came up under the mail veil and into the soft gap behind the jaw. Hot blood ran over Ouz’s hand at once.
He ripped free and pivoted right.
A second shield crashed into his ribs before he found the angle. Pain blew through his side in a white pulse. A curved blade scraped across the layered shoulder plates and peeled one loose on its leather tie. Ouz turned with it, gave ground two steps, saw lines open in his vision, and cut low. His blade took the man above the knee where the armor ended. The Samraj soldier folded with a grunt. Ouz stepped through before he could recover and drove his boot into the man’s face with all his weight behind it. Bone gave. Blood burst across the leaves. The body dropped flat and stayed there.
Three down.
A fourth man was already on him. This one carried no shield, only a heavier sword and a wrapped helmet with brass sewn into the cloth. He moved with discipline. Short cuts. Tight feet. No wasted swing. Ouz felt at once that this was a soldier used to drilling against men who answered with steel instead of panic.
Ouz barely had time to register that before another blade came from his left. He dropped under that one, felt the wind of it pass over his head, and the heavy-sword man was already there, cutting for the wrist. Ouz snatched his hand back in time to keep it. A shieldman pushed in from behind the cut a heartbeat later, trying to crowd Ouz off his feet, and another sword flashed from farther right through the trees. Ouz had to give ground fast, a short backward hop over wet roots, just to keep all three from closing on him at once.
The heavy-sword man followed at once and chopped for the side of the knee. Ouz twisted off it too slow to clear fully. Edge bit through cloth and scored across the outside of his calf. Shallow. Hot. Bad enough to remember. Another cut came high before he had fully recovered. Ouz slipped half a step off line and let it scrape bark. Someone behind that strike shouted in Samraj. Boots tore leaves apart closing the space.
The heavy-sword man committed to the next opening. Ouz gave him one. Steel scraped feathers and skidded off hardened leather when the blade hit the plated shoulder instead of flesh, and another man tried to rush the same opening from Ouz’s blind side. Ouz drove forward before either of them could settle it, smashed his forehead into the mail-guarded face beneath the helmet rim, and felt the man reel half a pace. Ouz’s short sword punched into the front of the throat before the balance came back.
Four.
The line finally got enough men into range at once. Two shields pressed him from front and left. Another sword came over one shoulder while a fourth soldier tried to circle the back side of the tree line and take his unarmored flank. Voices snapped in Samraj. Not panic. Control. They were trying to net him and kill him in pieces.
Ouz retreated through a knot of roots and brush that forced them to narrow. One shieldman lunged too far to keep pace with the others. Ouz took the rim of the shield on his forearm, slid with the hit, caught the man’s wrist on the return, and dragged him forward into the path of his own comrade’s cut. The curved blade meant for Ouz bit through padded sleeve and into flesh at the shoulder. The wounded Samraj cried out and stumbled. Ouz stepped past the shield edge and buried his ankle knife in the side of the man’s neck.
Five.
The center of a shield slammed into Ouz’s mouth hard enough to split the inside of his lip. He tasted blood at once. Another cut rang off his upper arm and left his whole hand numb to the elbow. The fourth man finally reached his flank and chopped for the ribs. The gambeson took the edge. Force still got through. Pain spread deep and blunt.
Ouz moved because stillness would kill him. He rammed backward into the flanker, felt the man lose footing on wet roots, and hooked a heel behind the ankle. They went down together in leaf mold and blood. A boot crashed into Ouz’s thigh from somewhere above. He ignored it, got one hand under the Samraj soldier’s chin, and sawed his short sword across the exposed throat before the others could close the space.
Six.
He rolled as a blade chopped into the ground where his head had been. A man with a saffron wrap and etched bracers came in low behind a shield, clearly the best of the survivors. His feet were quiet. His shoulders stayed loose. He did not waste his breath shouting. He simply advanced, cut, covered, and let the other two near him work around the same rhythm. Whoever held command in this little road-watch, it had become him.
A good one. That meant the rest would move on his timing. Ouz needed to break that fast. He gave ground again, let them think the pressure was working, let the pain in his side show in the drag of one step. The saffron-wrapped soldier took it for weakness and drove forward to pin him against a pine trunk while the man on the right cut for the exposed hip.
Ouz turned with the shield impact and made the hip cut land on bark. Steel bit wood. Stuck for half a beat. Ouz’s hand knife flashed up and into the attacker’s eye through the half-lifted veil.
Seven.
The saffron-wrapped soldier punched with his shield and caught Ouz high on the chest. Feathers cracked. Breath left in a grunt. The soldier stepped in after it, sword point angling for the belly seam. Ouz caught the sword wrist with his left hand and clamped down hard while keeping his own blade low in the right. He felt the strength in that arm at once. Felt trained resistance.
Another man was still there on the edge of the exchange. Ouz saw him through the corner of his vision, trying to work around the trunk and find a clean line in. That made the next heartbeat matter. The saffron-wrapped soldier twisted, trying to free the blade. Ouz drove his knee into the man’s thigh once, twice, felt the leg buckle, and wrenched the trapped arm across his own shoulder. The wrist held. The balance did not.
Steel hissed in from the side. Ouz had to finish before it landed clean. He used the broken balance, shoved the saffron-wrapped soldier headfirst into the pine, and drove his short sword under the back rim where mail met spine.
Eight.
e tore it free with a hard wrench that nearly pulled him off line.
The remaining two closed together, breathing hard, shields high, blood on both of them that was no longer clear whose it was. One had a cut over the brow that leaked into his eye. The other still moved well and had the steadier hands. They glanced south once, back the way they had come, and Ouz saw the decision pass between them. Duty before survival. He knew that shape. He hated it more for that.
The steadier one barked a quick phrase. The blood-eyed man answered with the smallest nod and ran. No backward glance. No hesitation. Shield slung. Sword kept low for brush. He broke south through the timber at a speed born from orders and fear.
The other stayed. He did not rush to win. He set his shield, lowered his center, and gave Ouz nothing but guarded steel, short steps, and ground that kept slipping away. Every step said the same thing. Delay me. Buy the runner distance. Give the camp time to hear. Ouz clicked his tongue, blood on his teeth.
The defender gave no sign he understood. His sword hand remained patient. His shield moved only enough.
Ouz attacked anyway. The first cut landed on metal and glanced. The second met shield rim. The third forced the Samraj soldier back one step and no more. Good training. Good nerve. He had chosen the right task for a dead man. Ouz changed the ground instead.
The archer’s body still leaned against the birch off to one side with the knife in its throat. Bow near the roots. Quiver spilled into damp leaves. Ouz began turning the fight that way by inches. Pressure high. Step outside. Cut low. Crash shoulder. Withdraw. Each exchange bent the circle a little farther. The Samraj soldier held his guard and tried to keep center. Ouz denied him center. A trunk closed on one side. A corpse on the other. Mud underfoot. Branches low.
The soldier finally understood the drift and stepped hard to regain better ground. Ouz had already walked him there.
His heel struck the dead archer’s bow stave and rocked his balance for one blink. Ouz went through that blink. He beat the shield down with all the weight left in his arm, crashed body to body, and drove his short sword under the lifted chin where the mail had ridden high from the stumble. The man died trying to push Ouz away.
Nine.
Ouz dropped with the corpse, rolled through it, snatched bow and three arrows from the mud, and came up running south.
Blood dripped from his sword hand. One shoulder burned. His calf stung at every stride. His ribs felt packed with stones. None of that mattered while a messenger still had legs.
He ran light because half his knives were gone and half his strength had been traded for bodies on the ground.
The timber opened in strips ahead. Once he caught a flash of saffron cloth between trunks. The runner had chosen well. Straight line. Minimal noise. No panic waste. Ouz respected that in the same breath he decided to kill him.
He ran until the distance shortened enough to be honest. Breath steadied. Vision narrowed. He drew while moving, planted one foot on a low root, and let the familiar strike line settle through shoulder, wrist, nock, the lane between branches, and the rise and fall of the man ahead.
The arrow left.
It took the runner at the base of the skull and burst from the throat in a spray of red. He dropped in full stride and slid through wet leaves on his face.
Ouz reached him a moment later and stayed there long enough to make sure.
After that he searched the body fast. A folded oilskin packet sat inside the coat under the studded outer layer, tied flat against the chest. Ouz took it. The writing on the outside was not Zhanar. Tight script, hooked and flowing, Samraj by any guess worth making. He searched the others after that, quick hands, quicker eyes. More arrows from the dead archer. Two powder packets. One little brass whistle. No second letter.
The light had gone ugly by the time he turned north again.
He found Butcher’s line where it crossed the main return trail and trusted the signs from there. Captain’s markers helped. So did the simple fact that Butcher was moving hard through bad country with no reason to hide his passing from Ouz. A bent fern. Bark scraped by satchel buckles. Mud kicked high where a boot had slipped on the downslope. To another eye the woods might have looked untouched. Ouz had learned enough from the steppe, from Hermit, and from days spent watching Captain’s team work to see what a hurried man left behind.
He moved through dusk and into full night. The moon rose fat and clean. Fortune had no habit of kindness toward him, yet that night it gave him light. Silver lay across wet trunks and pooled in the road ruts where he crossed them. His wounds stiffened as the air cooled. Once he stopped at a spring no bigger than a bowl under rock, drank, washed blood from one hand, and kept going. He did not sleep. He did not let himself think longer than the next sign and the next. If Butcher reached the convoy alone, Captain still got men. If Butcher bled out in the dark because Ouz misjudged his own odds back there, that sat on Ouz and stayed there.
Near midnight he found where Butcher had paused long enough to retie one boot strap beneath a pine. The heel print dug deeper than before. Fatigue starting to tax the step. Good. Human. Meant Ouz could still catch him.
By dawn the moon had sunk and the world went gray again. Ouz lost the trail over a stony patch near the road and spent too long hunting it. His ribs throbbed with every breath. His left hand had swollen around the knuckles. Blood had dried in one sleeve and glued cloth to skin beneath.
He found the line again in a patch of young grass where a man had stepped off the harder earth to avoid a wagon rut.
After that the convoy announced itself by degrees. Dung. Smoke. Iron. Mules. Wet canvas. The layered smell of an army before any sound carried clear.
Ouz put on speed. He caught sight of Butcher late in the morning. The man was moving along the timber edge parallel to the road, with enough distance left between himself and the convoy for caution to still matter.
Ouz called once, low. Butcher spun, blade halfway out before recognition hit. For one instant all expression left him. After that he shoved the blade back, crossed the distance in hard steps, and seized Ouz by both arms. His hands moved at once over shoulder, ribs, throat, side, calf. Not a greeting. An inventory. “You idiot,” Butcher said. His voice had gone rough.
Ouz stood still and let him work. “You look relieved.”
Butcher pressed fingers along Ouz’s ribs until pain flared sharp enough to make his vision jump. “I look busy.” He checked the cut on the calf, looked at the dried blood, and swore under his breath. “How many?”
“Ten.”
Butcher’s eyes lifted.
“One archer. Nine closer.”
Butcher stared a beat longer, searching for a lie, a joke, some boy’s attempt at glory. He found the bruises instead. The split mouth. The rent feathers hanging from one shoulder. The dried black on the sword hilt. His grip eased. For the first time since Ouz had known him, Butcher looked as though he had run out of words. “Sit,” he said.
“We need the convoy.”
“We need you walking into it alive.” Butcher already had salve in one hand and a strip of linen in the other. He cleaned what he could while Ouz crouched under the pines. The man’s fingers were quick and efficient. They were also less steady than usual. Ouz noticed. Butcher caught the look and ignored it.
The salve hit the cut on Ouz’s calf and burned. Butcher wrapped it tight, checked the shoulder, smeared another line of ointment along a slice hidden under the armor straps, and muttered at the swelling on Ouz’s hand.
Only when the work had a shape did he exhale.
“You should have reached me in the dark,” he said.
“I had bodies to search.”
That made Butcher look up again.
Ouz pulled the oilskin packet from inside his coat and handed it over.
Butcher took it, looked once at the script, and gave a low grunt. “Good.”
“They had powder packets too. Whistle. I left the rest.”
“You brought the useful part.” Butcher rose and offered a hand. “Come on.”
They reached the van guard by the road just before noon.
The convoy had not stopped. It had only slowed under bad ground and numbers. Wagons groaned through the ruts. Mule teams cursed in three dialects. Officers rode the edge of the line with rank cords at shoulder and belt. Sweep men watched the timber with tired eyes that sharpened fast when Butcher gave Captain’s name and General Guanyan’s brief in the same breath.
They were held at the timber edge first. Spearpoints lowered just enough to make the point clear. Butcher gave Captain Moying’s order to the van officer, produced the oilskin packet, and said nothing more until the man took it from his hand.
Key was not at the point of contact. He stood farther back near a knot of clerks, runners, and board-men trying to keep the moving line from eating its own tail. Slate under one arm, stylus in the other, he looked up only when voices sharpened near the front. His gaze found Ouz, tracked the blood, the torn armor, the dried black on the sword hilt, and narrowed at once.
“What happened?”
“Road,” Butcher said. That was all he gave him.
The van officer came forward at once, a hard-faced man in lamellar with double shoulder cords looped and tied. He heard Butcher out, took one look at the oilskin packet, and called for someone who could read Samraj hand.
The man who came was a thin lieutenant with dust on his boots and sleep in his eyes. He broke the seal, scanned the script, and the sleep left his face halfway through.
“Well?” the officer asked.
The man scanned it again. “Field hand. Short.” He touched one line with a dirty fingernail. “North line stripped. Triggers cut. Pits read.” Another line. “Convoy larger than brief. Twenty thousand plus with grain train.” His finger moved lower. “Likely sweepers. Trained hands.” He stopped at the last mark. “Blue mark exposed.”
The officer’s mouth tightened. “What does that mean?”
The lieutenant shook his head. “Not enough here to say.”
Ouz and Butcher did not speak.
The officer’s expression hardened. “Watch mark?”
“Evening watch. Yesterday.”
For one breath he said nothing. Then he moved like a man who knew exactly where his authority ended.
“No horns,” he said. “No shouted orders. Tighten the front. Pull eyes from the road edge in pairs. Quiet hands only.”
Men started shifting at once. Sweepers came in by twos and fours. Part of the van guard thickened around the head of the line. Shields were wrapped where straps might slap. Loose buckles got tied down. No torch was lit. The convoy kept moving, but the front of it hardened without noise.
The officer handed the packet back to the lieutenant. “You take this to General Guanyan. Now.”
His gaze shifted to Ouz and Butcher.
“You two come with me. The General will hear this from living mouths.”
Key had started forward by then, frown already forming around three questions and a complaint. The officer cut him off without looking at him.
“You. Keep the forward ledgers moving. No bottlenecks.”
Key stopped where he was, unhappy and overruled. That suited everyone else.
Butcher stood close to Ouz while the officer gave two more quick orders to the van guard.
“You still on your feet?” Butcher asked.
“Yes.”
“Good. Stay that way.”
Ouz looked past the officer and the tightened van line to the convoy mass behind it.
Wagon hands. Axle teams. Grain carts. Boys from the steppe among them with dust on their faces and mud-stiff trouser hems brushing the old scars at their ankles. Some still had the road in them. Heads down when officers rode past. Eyes up only when wagons slowed. Men his own people had sworn to him by sky and breath, whether they knew he stood thirty paces away or not. Captain had read the arithmetic right. So had Ouz. If the river ground had been taken clean, these were the bodies that would have paid first. He had made sure they did not.
The officer finished with his men and jerked his head farther up the line. “Move.”
Butcher adjusted his satchel, checked Ouz once more from head to heel, and started without waiting to be asked twice. Ouz went with him.
Blood had dried under his armor. His ribs hurt. His calf complained at every stride. Somewhere ahead waited General Guanyan, the Third Prince, and whatever happened when a blood-covered road runner arrived carrying proof that the quiet ground in front of the convoy had been built to kill it.
He was in a foul mood by the time the command knot came into sight. That suited him fine.