I turned back around. “You make it easy to dislike you.”
He fell into step behind me. Not close enough to crowd me, not far enough to give me the privacy I'd asked for. The exact distance calculated to be both present and plausibly not following.
I hated how good he was at that.
I stopped when I reached a flat rock that wasn’t thick with ice and sat down on it, and stared at the southern horizon in the dark. He stopped behind me. I could feel him standing there, probably with his arms crossed, doing his watching thing, and I concentrated very hard on breathing slowly.
“You don’t seem to be doing what you claim you need.”
“Fuck off.”
He laughed. I heard him retreating loudly, for my benefit. “I’ll be back shortly to make sure you haven’t fallen asleep.”
“Asshole!” I called over my shoulder, and he laughed louder.
I wasn’t proud that I checked over my shoulder twice to make sure he was gone. When I was sure he was, I decided I might as well relieve myself.
I didn't hear them.
That was the thing I kept coming back to afterward. I didn't hear them at all.
One moment, the dark beyond me was empty. The next, a hand clamped over my mouth from behind, an arm locked across my chest, and I was hauled backward from the rock before I had a chance to defend myself.
I didn't scream. My instincts kicked in before fear could. I bit down hard on the hand covering my mouth, drove my elbow back into the ribs, and twisted. The grip adjusted immediately, which meant whoever had me had done this before.
“Trailfinder.” Vorn's voice sounded low in the quiet of the night. Calm. Almost apologetic. “Don't scream.”
I went still.
Not because I was afraid… or not only because of that. Because Vorn's voice had come from my left, and the hands restraining me were in front and behind. I could scream, but screaming would bring the camp. The camp was a minute away at a run, and a minute was a long time when you were with men who knew the landscape as well as you did.
“This doesn't have to be difficult,” Vorn said. He stepped into my eyeline, the same broad, unhurried man from the settlement, looking at me with the same weathered steadiness. “You come with us. Your companions don't get hurt.”
He looked at whoever had me, and they dropped their hand from my mouth.
“You waited for us?” My voice sounded steadier than I felt.
“I waited foryou,” he corrected, and the distinction was deliberate.
“Vorn—”
“I need a trailfinder,” he said simply. “I need the best one. That's you. Come willingly, and everyone goes home.”
“And if I don't?”
He looked at me for a long moment. Not threatening, just honest. A man who had already decided what would happen and was giving me the courtesy of a choice, knowing it made no difference to the outcome.
“Then I take you anyway,” he said, stating the obvious. “And your Darysian friends get to find out how many of my people they can fight in the dark.”
Which would be none.
I heard movement behind me, and I was spun around so my captor could see as well.
Fast. Faster than I'd expected, the sound of boots on snow, then impact, someone going down. I wrenched sideways and nearly got free, but a second pair of hands had me, then a third, and I understood, with the clarity of someone who had spent years assessing odds, that there were too many of them for me to fight.
Behind me, the sounds of fighting continued, then fell quiet.
I heard a grunt, and my stomach plummeted.
