The trees whipped past Nath’s head in blurs of white and brown. The dead man’s horse groaned beneath his legs, worn almost to exhaustion. He urged the beast on to catch up to Gruffydd’s men up ahead on the mad dash down the slope.

Nath turned his head as far as he dared while the horse ran at full gallop. The attack hadn’t followed him once the wolf got to the first of the archers. He thought Eva would scatter them like she had with the bear and then run after him to catch up. He searched the blurring forest for a flash of gray fur bounding along beside them. Nath saw nothing, but heard a howl not far away.

The horse jerked at the reins. Tymon’s mount had been bred for tourneys and coursing, not warfare. Nath swore to himself and eased off his grip to give it time to shake off panic. For his own part, he felt strangely calm. He’d survived his second ambush in a week and now he knew his traitor’s name.

Owain, his father’s vassal, his one-time tutor. Nath could not even imagine why the man would do this — let alone how. The Orsid family had governed a tract to the west of the Witch’s Teeth for almost a hundred years. A small, proud house without dire strife and good breeding stock. Nath should have known more. If he’d been the first son, King Alieus might even have had him fostered there instead of in a monastery. Now Nath doubted he even knew that as well as he thought. He sighted the valley from a gap in the trees and realized Griffy had been right — they were closer to Thornhaven than Nath had thought. The fortress spread from the foot of the Tooth like a frond of curling ivy, with high stone walls and a sprawl of houses sheltered inside.

Nath looked behind him. Still no wolf. And no one following him. He breathed the air and looked along the slope to either side until at last he saw movement beneath the tree cover and spotted a few bright heads of hair moving beneath the sunlight. Nath patted the horse’s neck and turned it toward where Gruffydd’s party straggled toward the switchback path that led down the slope.

He rode as quietly as he could between the trees. Nath chided himself at having gone the wrong way -- again! -- when he realized just how far off the path Tymon’s horse had taken him. He came to the place where the trail picked up, and knew from the churned ground which direction he should take. He gave the horse a quarter hour to walk before he gently kicked it into a trot. Nath kept one hand on his hilt when he rode past a few places marked with bloodstains in the snow. He muttered prayers and curses beneath his breath. More than two hundred of his men were dead somewhere on the Witch’s Teeth, and he could not even find their graves. Somewhere more were missing, still.

His mind swirled with fury. Only after he’d ridden an hour did Nath notice that the sky itself had darkened. Afternoon wore quickly on to early evening and Nath could see more clouds gathered in the sky, heavy with rain and thunder that would turn to ten feet of snow once it got high enough in the Teeth.

When Nath came to the tattered line of Griffy’s men on the switchback, the storm was plain to see in the valley. A black shaft of rain poured down onto Thornhaven’s fields, and a wet cold wind slapped at the dozens of men resting the horses before the long plunge down the bald slope. A few panicked faces met him when he cleared the trees, but once they saw it was the man Owain had named the king, a few ragged cheers broke out.

Nath kicked his horse into a trot to bring him among the men. He slid down from his saddle, searching the faces that pressed close to him. They looked at him with mouse-eyes, adrift now that the panic of the attack had worn away. Nath felt a sickening rage build within him. These were the men he was left with to defend Ammar, and they were nearly as inexperienced and incompetent as their king.

By the time Nath found Gruffydd, stretched out flat on the ground while Rhys tended his broken leg, he was ready to explode. He drew his sword.

“Did you know?” Nath asked. He put the tip of the blade just beneath his cousin’s eye and stared down hard into his face. This was the last man alive he could call a brother -- and that made Griffy the only outlet his rage could find. “Did you know what Owain planned?”

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Gruffydd blinked up at him through a haze of pain and horror. His lip quivered as it did in childhood when he was accused of whatever Nath had done. “What? No! Fuck your mother, you think I wanted this to happen…!”He grabbed his thigh and tried to sit up. “Where’s my sword. I’ll cut you straight right now…!”

“I’ve only just set it, your lordship.” Rhys protested with a hard hand on Griffy’s chest. He swung his eyes up to Nath, pleading. “Your Majesty, Gruffydd-kin makes no plots with Orsids. They’re a bunch of land-bound plunder-lords without a port to their name. Whatever quarrel they have with the crown, we’ve no part in!”

“It’s not a quarrel with the crown. It’s a quarrel with Nynomath,” Nath kept the blade where it was. “I’ll ask only one more time, Griffy: Did you know Owain planned to kill me?”

“No.” Griffy blinked, his eyelashes brushing against the tip of the sword. “I swear, my king, I did not know.”

Slowly, Nath felt his anger drain. He had no other choice but to believe his cousin. And Eva had said Griffy was not his traitor. If he wanted to know how or why Owain had turned on the royal family, he would have to ask Eva. The next time he saw Owain, he’d take the man’s head. He took the sword away from his cousin’s face.

A soft sob drew his ear. Nath turned to look at where the three village girls were lashed to the saddle of a fearsome destrier. Their brown hair whipped in the wind that raked up the slope. The witch girl’s flower crown had been blown down to twigs tangled in the braid that slipped from her head. He felt a pang of guilt seeing their hands tied, but the tears in their faces stoked the righteous fury he felt. These were the daughters of traitors.

Sword still in-hand, Nath advanced toward the witch. She flinched from the anger in his face and tried to duck down behind the taller of the brown-haired girls. He did not point the blade at her, but he did raise his voice to scream at her.

“Do you know how many men are dead up here? Have you counted them all up, witch, to twist Winze dolls for them?”

“Please lord… please,” she begged. The witch went to her knees, dragging on the rope that bound her to the other two girls. The elder of the two knelt with her, joining her pleas and adding, “Our fathers will pay a bride-price for me. Please, please let Kesheyla and Seren go. She’s only thirteen…”

“Fourteen,” the youngest said. She looked up at Nath with wide eyes. When she spoke to him, it was not with pleading, but a sort of awed reverence. “Your Majesty, my father would offer a bride-price for me, too…”

Nath stared at them, uncomprehending. The thought of taking them hostage had not occurred to him. King Alieus scorned the tactic, calling it a slavers’ gambit. Ammarish knights killed mages outright to claim all their worldly goods -- they had no families to ransome them, anyway.

Eva, he thought suddenly. “How far is your village from here? How many men are there? Have they always lived there or did Orsid bring them?”

The witch's pale tongue flickered across her lip. “I don’t know… I don’t know how many. It’s just three miles up and two over… Two dozen families. All our men pay tithe and tax to Lord Orsid…”

“Your lord is a traitor and your lands are forfeit,” Nath snapped. “I’ll burn the whole damn thing to the ground if I find so much as a hair of my men in your village. How many unmarried girls is that, little witch? The Winze doesn’t pay bride-prices!”

All three girls dissolved into wild weeping. Nath stalked away from them to keep from cursing at them. He glared at the trees while his shame and anger mounted. Barely a shadow moved within them as the evening wore on to darkness. He paced, stalking back toward the valley to look down the slope. He could see how the storm crept further up the mountain with each passing minute. When it met the cold air rushing down the mountain, there would be lightning. The trek down would be wet and treacherous. He wouldn’t dare try it at night lest a horse break a leg in the mud.

We’re trapped here, Nath realized. The attack hadn’t broken off, it had fallen back to regroup. He turned back toward the trees and knew now that Eva was lost somewhere back there where a third attack was brewing.

If he was close enough to get stabbed, he didn’t deserve to be king. But if he wanted to die with Eva, he would have to go and get her. The thought didn’t daunt him. He’d found her once, before.

Resolved, he went back to where the girls knelt in the grass. He tugged the witch to her feet by the rope that tied them together and used his sword to cut her wrists free of the line. “Take me there. Now. Tonight.”

He pushed the witch ahead of him and went to find a horse with a stronger stomach than Tymon’s.