after all. Fir-Noy, Vargon, or Shoka—did it matter which clan they belonged to?
He looked into their eyes and saw it did not. Talen took a step backward.
Long Lark swung his noose.
In his mind’s eye, Talen saw himself hanging from the village wall with that noose around his neck. The thought jolted him. And despite his earlier protestations, he turned tail and ran.
A shout rose up behind him so full of menace that it almost loosed his bowels.
He stretched his stride, expecting that noose to fall about his shoulders or to catch an arrow in his back. He ran like a thief, like a rabbit coursed by dogs. He ran with the speed only fear and bewilderment bring.
He sprinted back over the bridge and thought he saw the flash of an arrow out of the corner of his eye. He needed to make the woods, the only place where he might have a chance to lose these madmen. Back up the road he ran, the dirt hard under his bare feet.
Talen was not the fastest runner in the district, but he wasn’t the slowest either. He knew he should measure his pace, but he’d seen that lazy-eyed Sabin among them, him and his shaved head and violent speed, and Talen sprinted for all he was worth.
He could hear the men behind him and pushed himself until his breath came in ragged gasps and his head felt dizzy. But it did not last. By the time he reached the oat field the rogue cows had broken into, his lungs and legs were burning, and he had to stop. He panted and turned.
Sabin, a look of murder in his eyes, was almost upon him.
Movement farther up the road drew his attention: a rider galloping toward him on a horse. They were boxing him in.
Lords, but he had to make the woods.
Two more ragged breaths and he hopped the fence on his left and the fieldstones piled up next to it and struggled up a fallow field of knee-high grass.
The tall grass pulled at his feet. The slope sapped his strength. But neither seemed to slow Sabin.
The woods stood only a few paces away.
Talen glanced back to see Sabin reach out with his long tattooed arm for Talen’s hair.
River loved Talen’s hair. Loved it long. And at that moment he wished he’d never listened to his sister and her stupid appraisals of men.
Sabin grabbed a handful of Talen’s hair. He yanked, brought Talen up short, then backward to the ground.
Talen scrabbled to his knees, but Sabin kicked his side and knocked the breath right out of him.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. By the time his body finally remembered it had lungs, the rest of the men were rushing up the hill.
Sabin kicked at Talen’s face, but Talen curled up and the blow glanced off the back of his head.
Someone struck him with a staff. Another kick caught him in the hip.
Talen tried to get up and lunge out of the circle, but before he could get his legs, one of the tanner’s boys landed a blow to Talen’s head that dazed him and knocked away all sense of balance. He turned, falling, and saw a sea of men.
Someone kicked him in the back and the pain made him gasp. Someone else went for his neck.
Talen brought his arms up to shield his face.
“Where’s that rope?” one of them shouted.
Talen tried to roll over.
“Out of the way!” someone shouted.
“Now you’ll get it, half-breed,” a man said.
The blows lessened and then stopped. Talen glanced up.
Sabin stood above him, lifting what must have been a forty-pound fieldstone the color of fresh liver.
He raised it high, preparing to crack Talen’s head like a nut.
BOUNTY
T
alen rolled away, trying to escape Sabin’s stone.
“Hold!” someone shouted.
A horse snorted.
Talen tried to dart through the legs of the men surrounding him and was flung back to the ground. He froze, cringed, waiting for the crushing stone. But it did not fall.
“Twenty stripes, Sabin,” a man said. “I swear it!”
Talen glanced up. The men were not looking at him. They were looking at the bailiff of Stag Home who sat upon his dappled gray horse, glaring at Sabin. It was he who had been the rider bearing down on Talen from the other direction.
Sabin hesitated, and then, almost in defiance, he dropped the stone perilously close to Talen’s head.
“That,” said the bailiff, pointing at Sabin, “has just made you my riding horse.”
The bailiff was not a large man. But he was strong and fearless