Fia could feel the walls closing in. She cast a look over her shoulder at her captive riding along close behind her.

Gunn smiled sardonically and itched at his nose. He had to do it with both hands raised, as Fia had manacled his wrists together. He’d another set of manacles attached tight to both his legs, over his boots and above the ankles, so that he couldn’t slip out of them. The two restraints were fastened under the stolen horse by a length of chain. It was an ingenious trussing system. Meant that if he didn’t make an effort to sit his horse he’d find himself under it; back broken, face scraped off, all trampled to shit.

“You’re new to this,” Gunn said.

Fia didn’t reply. She just continued to trot on, one hand clutching the reins of the horse she’d stolen and on which her prisoner was now riding, the other holding a pistol. She was winding her way into the heart of Yellowbend, hoping to obscure her and Gunn’s tracks in the muddy, trampled streets from whatever members of his crew might follow.

“Oh, you’ve got to be new at this," Gunn repeated. "If you weren't new to this, sweetheart, you wouldn't ever have taken this job."

Fia wound the loose rein once more around her fist. Kept her mouth shut and her eyes open as they jogged slowly along. Every now and again, she would take a turn, always sticking to the busiest thoroughfares.

Gunn shook his head sympathetically and sighed.

“Rookie mistake for a bounty hunter,” the longrider said. “You made your pick without first walking the length of the counter. Had eyes bigger than your belly. Ain’t uncommon in the young and the restless.”

“If you could stop your lip from flapping for a few moments it might save me from pistol whipping you, Gunn,” Fia said.

Up ahead she saw that the street became congested. Looked to be a cart with a broken axle blocking most of the road. Fia turned her horse off down a side street, cut left and carried on parallel to the Yellowbend’s main thoroughfare.

“My boys know this town pretty well, woman,” Gunn said.

“That so?”

“By the way your head’s bobbing from side to side like a chicken, I’d say you don’t. Always been a policy of mine not to go in somewhere if you don’t know the way out.”

“My policy’s always been to steer clear of jobs like this,” Fia muttered, more to herself than to Gunn. “Keep your fucking head down, because if something doesn’t seem to be worth the effort it probably ain’t.”

Gunn hadn’t seemed to have heard her. “Like the barkeep said back there, I don’t rate your chances of getting out of here.”

“Bet you wouldn’t have rated my chances of getting you by the balls in the first place, would you?” Fia said, placidly, craning around to check their tail.

Gunn snorted. “I’ll admit that there ain’t been anyone dumb enough to try take me in for so long it must’ve made me complacent. I’ve got a lot of friends, you see, miss––and I don’t say that as some societal boast. There’s a fair few outcasts, vagabonds and other folk who are ignored and shit on by the Counts and Countesses of the tribelands who think that me waylayin’ the upper-crust's tax caravans, trade convoys and the like is somewhat of a public service. Lot of poor people around this isle who are willing to earn a few gold bits helping out Torsten Gunn.”

Fia grunted non-committally. “That shit doesn’t really concern me, right now. I’ve only one concern, and that’s delivering you to Gray.”

Gunn spat at the mention of the name.

“What’s this Kerr and the rest of your crew like?” she asked. “Any good?”

“When they’re sober there’re none better. More’s the pity for you.”

Fia saw that his head was lolling loose on his neck. She realised he must be more rat-arsed than she suspected. That’d either make him stupid and ballsy, or lazy and compliant.

“You seem like a good girl,” Gunn suddenly said abruptly. “Remind me of someone I used to know. Obviously, you’re in a hole right now. Why not stop digging?”

The street that Fia and Gunn were riding down wasn’t as wide as Yellowbend’s main avenue, but it was still fairly busy. It ran for what must’ve been the length of the Yellowbend township. On either side were stone houses and stores that rose two, sometimes three, stories above the street. Their roofs were tiled with wood and steeply pitched to keep the snow, which managed to make its way even this far south in the bitterest winters, from piling up. Most of the windows bore shutters, but there were a few shops and houses that boasted glass; a testament to the prosperity of the owners.

They were about halfway down this long street when Fia’s uncanny senses twanged, her heart skipping in her chest, gut twisting.

She looked back over her shoulder and saw the bloodied face of Kerr, his nose noticeably bent, sitting atop a horse and peering over the crowd of pedestrians milling up and down the thoroughfare. Next to him, two grim-faced women, also horsed, were scanning the crowd. They both had their hair hacked short, one raven-headed and the other blonde.

“Damn,” Fia said softly.

Gunn twisted in his saddle. Smiling coldly, he turned back to face Fia. “Sometimes you get, sweetheart, and sometimes you get got.”

“I ain’t got yet,” Fia said, her opalescent eyes darting around the street.

“They’ll be in shooting range before I’m in hollerin’ range, miss,” Gunn said, as they passed by a potter’s shop.

If Fia hadn’t been aware of Torsten Gunn’s reputation of being one of the most hard-bitten and ruthless outlaws on Fallaros, she might’ve almost thought the man was giving her a chance to leg it.

“You’re telling me they’re stupid enough to throw down on a street in broad day––” she started to say.

The rifle shot cracked over the heads of the crowd of shoppers and merchants. Reverberated off the sides of the tightly-packed buildings. Something whined past Fia’s right ear and a sturdy clay urn, displayed on a shelf outside of the potter’s shop, exploded.

“That’d be Rule,” Gunn said over the chorus of screams that suddenly filled the street. “Not in her nature to hesitate. Not after she lost her eye.”

Fia ducked instinctively as another rifle shot punched into the beam of a porch behind her, sending splinters flying.

Using her legs, she urged her brumby across the street. She chanced a look towards Kerr. Saw the grizzled man driving his horse through the panicking crowd, kicking out at those who wouldn’t get out of the way. She saw the two women reloading their long rifles; pouring powder, dropping down wad and ball, tamping them down with unthinking efficiency.

“Go on now,” she hissed at her mount. The black mare snorted and jogged out into the stream of scurrying humanity that was fleeing down the street away from the gunfire. A running man bounced unceremoniously off the mare’s chest and crashed through a couple of stacked kegs.

Fia hoped that Gunn being behind her might afford her some measure of cover. As she rode across the street with her prisoner still in tow, aiming for an alley over the way, another report snapped out. Fresh screams. A woman standing in a doorway, one shopfront down from where Fia and Gunn were hustling past, crashed backward into the jamb, blood spraying up the wall from a wound in her side.

Fia rode into the mouth of the alley as a faerie-powered lantern hanging on the wall disintegrated, freeing the little creatures and sending glass and metal shards spraying in all directions. She heard Gunn laughing softly behind her.

The alley was tight and wouldn’t allow her to give her horse its head. They jogged down it, sending a beggar diving for cover behind a pile of rotting vegetables, then turned left down a residential street. The houses here, like all dwellings set back from the main streets of settlements in Fallaros, were shabbier and more crooked. They leaned together like scheming old drunks. Washing lines criss-crossed from one side of the skinny street to the other. Tubs stood outside most doors, some with water and suds in them. Balconies ran across the fronts of the low second stories, making it all the easier for the washerwomen to get to their drying lines. It smelled like damp and lye. It was dingy, what with dusk on its way.

Fia was doing some quick thinking. Three against one wasn’t great odds. She had the advantage of still being an unknown entity to her three pursuers though, which would count for something. They wouldn’t know what she was capable of. She imagined that Kerr’s pride would only allow him to admit that a woman had got the drop on him because he was half-pissed. He’d be angry, with a tarnished ego, and out for blood.

“Go right, down here!” the furious voice of Kerr bellowed from out in the street, reaching Fia’s keen ear.

“Here comes trouble,” Gunn said lackadaisically.

His smug smile turned into a frown, as he watched Fia fasten his mount’s rein to her own horse’s saddle. “Hey, where the fuck’re you goin’, girl?”

Fia had hopped up on her saddle and launched herself at one of the low balconies. She managed to get a hold on the railing and scrambled up and over it, just as Kerr, Rule and Winnie rounded the corner of the alley, their horses snorting and jostling.

“Just because trouble comes visiting, that doesn’t mean you’ve got to offer it a place to sit down,” she said.

She whistled at her brumby––a signal for it to jog on and keep on jogging––then ripped the door open behind her.

A rifle shot whined past her head, blowing a chunk out of the roof eaves above her. Another tore into the door before she could get through it, slamming it closed, splinters slicing into her cheek.

Fia hissed a wordless curse, wrenched the door open again and fell through it into a deserted bedchamber as a pistol shot punched through a shutter, half tearing it off its hinges.

“What the fuck! She’s bolting!” Kerr cried, his words etched with savage glee. “Rule, get after her. Winnie, you and me’ll get the boss.”

As her brumby continued on, towing Gunn and his mount behind it, Fia spared herself just enough time to ensure that Rule was following her. When her three pursuers drew level with the balcony she’d leaped onto, the woman with black hair, rifle slung over her shoulder, threw herself from her horse and grabbed for the rail. Kerr and the blond-haired Winnie trotted on as fast as the detritus-strewn street allowed, leaving Winnie’s horse behind in the street.

Fia ran.

She burst out of the bedchamber and into a clean but cramped hallway.

At the sound of Fia’s booted feet thundering across the cheap wooden boards, a moustachioed man with a prominent nose stuck his head out of a door and into the corridor.

“Here, who the hell are y––”

Fia pulled one of her pistols free. The man’s head vanished like a gopher down its hole. The door slammed.

Behind her, she heard the sound of another door being kicked open.

Fia knew that the margin for error for what she had planned was almost non-existent. Spring her move too early and she’d risk having to fight it out with Rule, spring it too late and she’d lose Gunn.

She counted the doors on her left.

She didn’t know if the knack she had for sensing the whereabouts of a person or thing was know-how––what commoners called thaumaturgy––or whether it was just intuition honed by a hard life to the point where it appeared preternatural. Didn’t really matter. She felt Gunn’s presence, his location, tugging at her like a hot wire around her heart.

“Right… about… here,” she muttered, reaching for a door handle and yanking the door wide.

“Bitch!” she heard a woman’s voice snarl from behind her.

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A deafening pistol shot boomed through the close confines of the corridor. The bullet ripped plaster out of the wall in a starburst of dust, but Fia was already through the door.

A half naked woman shrieked as Fia shoved her aside into a dresser, knocking a bottle of very expensive, no doubt very stolen, scent to the floor with a crash and filling the room with the smell of rose petals. She ripped the balcony door open.

Without stopping to think, she stepped up onto the balcony railing and vaulted into the void.

The timing was good. Just below her in the street, her brumby and the stolen horse carrying the trussed Gunn had only just jogged past. Kerr and Winnie, having reeled in the distance, were trotting by with their eyes fixed on their prize.

Fia’s pistol kicked in her hand. The ball, aimed at Kerr’s chest, hit him in the shoulder. He was spun clean out of his saddle, crimson speckling the pale neck of his horse, one foot catching in his stirrup.

Fia’s momentum carried her on and down and she ploughed gracelessly into Winnie, who’d barely had time to turn her head at the sound of the gunshot. She tackled the woman clean off her horse and the pair of them crashed through the window of a building on the opposite side of the street. Glass rained down around them. Slivers of lead came bounced off their hats and a cheap table collapsed under them as they landed on top of it.

Kerr’s startled horse reared, turned and plunged back up the street of washerwomen, kicking out at barrels and tubs, reducing them to splinters. The stunned Kerr was dragged along behind, one arm flopping limply behind him, the other making half-hearted efforts to free his boot from his stirrup.

Fia still had her empty pistol in her hand and she came up swinging. Winnie had rolled to her feet too, dirk in hand. She grunted as Fia’s blow hit her high on the shoulder, numbing her arm and sending her knife clattering away.

With a guttural snarl, Winnie lashed out with her boot and caught Fia in the guts, doubling her over. The blond woman then delivered a fierce uppercut that snapped Fia’s head back and sent her staggering back a pace. Winnie roared wordlessly and tackled Fia around the middle, driving her back towards the wall near the front door.

Applying a deft pivot and trip that Fia had used many times on her despised younger half-brother when had tried to tackle her in just such a way, she managed to manoeuvre Winnie so that the woman’s own impetus drove her head into the wattle and daub wall.

Fia stepped aside and brought her empty flintlock down hard in the middle of Winnie’s bony spine. Her adversary collapsed to her knees in a spray of spittle. Fia spun, grabbed the door latch and swung the front door open as hard as she could. It caught Winnie in the side of her head and sandwiched her skull between wall and door with a dull crunch of plaster.

Fia whirled, snatched up her fallen hat and jammed it onto her head. She tucked her empty pistol into her belt and stepped out of the open front door and whistled for her horse.

Down the street, the brumby pulled to a halt and whinnied.

Fia ran down the street, jinking left and right, trying to use the hanging laundry that festooned the second-story lines as cover. She heard a curse from behind her and slid through the mire of mud, water and soap scum into the cover of a stack of wooden crates just as Rule levelled her rifle and squeezed off a shot. A metal bucket above Fia’s head tumbled away.

She spun out of cover, her second pistol in hand and fired towards the balcony that she could just make out between a couple of hanging shirts. Her shot sparked off the muzzle of Rule’s rifle, knocking it from her hand even as she reloaded it.

Another curse. Another pistol shot rang out, kicking up a spray of muddy water at Fia’s heels.

Fia vaulted onto the back of the brumby, ignoring the incredulous look on Gunn’s face.

“Any holes in you?” she shot at the man.

“Just the ones I was born with.”

Fia spurred the brumby down the last stretch of the alleyway, the stolen horse carrying Gunn galloping at her rear.

Behind her, she heard Rule yell through the gun smoke. “You’ve fuckin’ bitten off more than you can chew, bitch!”

Fia pulled a splinter of wood from her cheek and let the wind whip it away. There was blood in her mouth and sweat in her eyes.

“Wouldn’t worry about that,” she said under her breath, as they thundered up the road and headed for the maze of hills and gullies that led up over the border to Arifold, “turns out my mouth is a whole lot bigger than I thought anyway.”

* * *

Fia and Gunn sat by a campfire that Fia had had Gunn build in the hollow of an old, dry boar wallow. The hollow was ringed around by a thick tangle of bearded flatsedge and honey gorse. Fia couldn’t help but think the pleasant scent of vanilla emanating from the gorse incongruous when she considered her company.

They’d eaten a meal of hard cheese and dried venison in silence, each of them eyeing the other across the flickering fire. Cynically amused grey staring into open, unreadable blue-green.

“Got anything to drink?” Gunn asked.

Fia tossed him the water skin.

Gunn opened it, took a sniff and then stoppered it again. “Anything a little harder?”

Fia tossed a rock at the outlaw. It hit him in the chest and fell into his lap.

Gunn picked up the rock in his manacled hands and flipped it away.

“Didn’t take you for someone with much of a sense of humour,” he said.

“I wasn’t trying to be funny,” Fia said. “Drink’s something you share with friends, Gunn. And we’re not that familiar.”

Gunn puffed out his cheeks and stretched out his chained legs. A rope ran from the manacles at his ankles to Fia’s wrist.

“You ain’t worried that my band will find this campfire?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t have lit it if I was.”

“Why not?”

“They’ll have to get your buddy, Kerr, to a sawbones to dig that ball out of him,” Fia said, extracting her flask of red-eye and taking a pull. “Then I imagine those two sweet tempered lady friends of yours will hang around and wait for the rest of your bunch of bravos to ride in from wherever it is you sent them off to––I doubt they’ll come alone, or that Kerr would let them leave him. I’ve a skill for finding things, but I’ve learned a shitload about losing them in the process. I’d say we’ve got a day and a half before they’re poking at the remains of the fire we’re sitting around right now.”

She took another drink.

Gunn shook his head.

“What?” Fia asked.

“You sound so sure of yourself.”

“I am. It’s not a boast. I know myself. Know what I’m capable of. Know what I ain’t––that’s the part that trips most folk up, as far as I’ve seen.”

Gunn tipped his head back against the bank he was leaning against.

“I feel like I should know you, girl,” he said.

“I’d remember meeting the renowned Torsten Gunn, I’m sure,” Fia said, her expression deadpan.

“I mean, I’m surprised no word’s ever reached me about one such as you. Ain’t too many ladies on the bounty hunting circuit so far as I’ve heard.”

“I told you, I’m just adept at finding things that other people can’t. I never said anything about being or not being a bounty hunter. You assumed that. You should be more careful about that.”

“About what, woman?” Gunn said, fishing his tobacco pouch out of his coat pocket with difficulty.

“Assuming. Assumptions will get you killed out in the wild places. I’d have believed a man that’s lived your life would’ve known that.”

Gunn paused in the rolling of his smoke.

“You’re telling me you don’t hunt men for a living?” he said, pushing his long hair from his face as if to see the better.

“I hunt things, lost things––like cattle. Men are just like smaller, smarter, more vicious animals, I suppose.”

The slightly derisive half-smile that had been on Gunn’s face faded. His eyes fixed on Fia’s. Suddenly, Fia caught a glimpse of the man that had garnered a name so black that it had become a byword.

“A fucking greenhorn bounty hunter... Then why in the sweet hell did Gray come knockin' at your door?" he growled quietly, his teeth shining in the firelight. "Who are you, girl?"

Fia matched the bound man’s stare. “I’m a gods-damned cloisterer in my spare time,” she replied, unable to keep the acid from her tone. “Only, in between the brawling and the hunting and the surreptitious errands, I don't ever seem to have any spare time.”

They stared at one another. Hard stares flickering like blades while the fire popped and snapped.

Slowly, grudgingly, the suspicious cloud over Gunn’s face lifted. His mouth twisted back into that mocking smile.

“Well, disregarding your lack of experience on that score, miss, there’s no denyin’ that you must be a soft hand with the nags,” he said. “That’s a brumby taken from the horse-breakers of Skyvolla, unless I’ve gone and drunk myself blind.”

“That she is,” Fia said. Despite the cold anger that had flared in her an instant before and regardless of Gunn’s reputation, she felt a warm, unexpected flush of pride at the outlaw’s words.

“Takes a steady hand and a steady nerve to ride such an animal,” Gunn said, finishing rolling his smoke and tucking it into the corner of his mouth. “Riding one must be like how I imagine fuckin’ Countess Lila of Keldland to be.”

“Our circles haven’t ever converged, but I thought the Countess of Keldland was ancient and rotund as all hell,” Fia commented impassively.

“You’re right, and that’s what I mean: a turbulent ride, but worth it for the renown.”

It must’ve been the red-eye to blame, but Fia found a small grin tugging up one side of her crooked lips.

“Look at that now, you’re getting all giddy on me,” Gunn said drily. “Getting along like a couple of old mates. How about that drink?”

“I don’t think we’re quite there yet, Gunn.”

“How about your name then, miss?”

“I think you’re more likely to get that drink.”

“Now, what harm could a name do?”

“Names have power.”

“So the Painted Kyn believe,” Gunn said quietly. “Only things I’ve ever seen that hold any real power though, are those items hanging on your belt.”

Fia brushed the tarnished hilt of her broadsword with her fingertips.

“Come on now,” Gunn said. “What’s your name. You’re so fuckin’ certain that you’re going to hand my arse to Gray, aren’t you? Only going to be a short hop, skip and a jump from him to the noose for me. What difference is your name goin’ to make?”

While Fia sat silently, considering Gunn’s words, the longrider shuffled forward awkwardly towards the fire, his smoke stretched out towards the embers at the edge of it.

“Fia.”

The word surprised even her.

“Fia?” Gunn said.

“Fia McCrae.” She took a slow drink from her flask.

“Fia McCrae,” Gunn repeated. “I’m Torsten Gunn, and it’s my profound pleasure to meet you.”

He leaned forward, his silver streaked hair glinting in the ruddy light. Got his roll-up smouldering and puffed it to life. He sucked in a lungful of smoke and breathed it out with a sigh.

“How’d someone like you end up out here, Fia McCrae?” he said through the haze of fine-smelling smoke.

“Someone like me?”

“I’ve spent most of my life surrounded by some of the most rotten bastards ever to pollute Fallaros’ green hills,” Gunn said easily. “What I said earlier, about bein’ able to judge someone quick in this life, it wasn’t horseshit. Something about you doesn’t belong here. Doesn’t fit. You ain’t from around here––and I’m not just talking about Arifold.” He took another deep drag on his roll-up, breathed out smoke through his nostrils. “You must have some past, tryin’ to hide from it all the way out here with the likes of me.”

Fia attempted nonchalance, though the longrider’s musings were striking a little too close to the gold for her liking.

“Everyone has a past, Gunn, an old life that was true at the time. Strikes me you can either embrace a new truth, a new reality, or run from it. You can let a stressful, unprecedented situation change you entirely, or you can allow it to reveal something about you that was already there,” Fia said.

Gunn’s grey eyes were rimmed in shadow. He looked tired and hungover all of a sudden. “Listen to yourself talk. Who the fuck are you, girl?” he asked, his voice barely audible over the crackling of the flames.

“Just another person passing through this world, that got forced into a life they never saw coming for them.”

Gunn snorted scathingly. “You know how many times in my life I’ve stood over a person and heard ‘em say, ‘I had no choice, I had no choice’?” Bleatin’ like a damn sheep.”

Fia’s hand dropped casually to the hilt of her dirk under her coat. “I wouldn’t fancy hazarding a guess,” she said.

“We all of us know there’s always always a choice,” Gunn continued. “Always. Even when we think there ain’t one there is. Whether to hide or stand. To stay and take accountability for somethin’ or run. To walk the right path or the easy one. To do wrong or otherwise die. Takes someone with a double backbone to do the right thing in that particular situation, sure, but there’s still always a choice.”

“That help you sleep at night, does it?” Fia asked.”Because if I was in your boots, staring at a future that involved trying to dance on air, I’m not sure if it would.”

Gunn threw a twig into the fire, his manacles clinking softly. “No, I’d say the credit for that lies mostly with the whisky,” he said.

Fia could relate to that. She lay back, making sure the rope that connected her and Gunn was secure. Across the rugged hills, a cold wind, smelling of rain, was rising.

“You stir in any way I don’t like, Gunn,” she said cordially, “and I’ll put a ball through your ankle from point blank and drag you back to Last Hallow. Gray said he needed you alive, not in one piece.”

She heard the grin in Gunn’s voice. “I don’t doubt you would, Fia McCrae,” he said.

They settled down. Fia took one last mouthful from her flask. The warmness of the liquor in her veins embraced her body like an old friend, but the wariness that had been instilled in her mind ever since the day she’d left her brother and half-brother in the storm-tossed heather would only permit her to doze.

“Gunn,” she said, “you really believe that shit about there always being a choice?”

Gunn’s manacles clinked as he shifted into a more comfortable position in the dirt.

“Ain’t nothin’ to believe. It’s the cold truth. And if there’s anythin’ to be believed in the rumours of war coming up from the south, from Vansgrima, we’re all goin’ to have to face that most uncomfortable of choices, sooner rather than later.”