He should have told them to put out the fire immediately. Instead, he nodded numbly and turned toward Dasie. She didn’t look good. She gave him no greeting, but hunched round-shouldered on her log seat, her hands clasped over her belly. Her other feeder was on his knees before her in the snow, his warrior’s sword discarded. As Soldier’s Boy approached, the young man looked up at him, barely controlled panic in his eyes. With both hands, he held a dripping red cloth against Dasie’s lower leg. “I think the bone is broken,” he said, and his voice shook. “Can you heal her?”

No. “Let me look at it.”

Dasie still didn’t make a sound as Soldier’s Boy got down awkwardly on his knees before her. Her face was white, whiter than the cold would make it. All around her foot, the snow had been melted away by bright red blood. “Get me some rope, a string, a tie, a leather thong, anything I can bind around her leg. And bring a small stick, too,” he commanded her other feeder. To the boy who held the bandage, he said, “Keep it firm. Put pressure on it.”

“But that hurts her! Because it’s right on the break of the bone.”

“We have to keep her from bleeding to death. Hold it firm,” Soldier’s Boy commanded him. He saw the boy’s hands tighten, but gingerly, as if he gripped an egg. Not enough to stem the flow of blood. Irritably, he reached down to set his own hands over the feeder’s and push the grip tighter. Instead, reflexively, his hands jerked back from her injury. Iron. There was iron in there and it burned against his magic. He could only imagine the agony for Dasie, yet she sat silent and impassive. He had to admire her courage.

He looked up into her face. Her eyes stared straight ahead. “Dasie?” he said softly.

Her feeder shook his head. “She has had to leave us, to escape the pain. If we cause her too great a pain, it will pull her back. For now, she is in stillness.”

Soldier’s Boy nodded curtly. He did not entirely understand but decided that didn’t matter. The other feeder brought him, finally, a long strip of woven fabric and a stick. Dasie gave a small shudder and moan when he first touched her leg. He placed his tourniquet above her knee, and turned the stick. He watched, sickened, as the fabric bit deeper and deeper into her fleshy thigh. “Take away your hands. Has the bleeding stopped?” he asked the feeder who knelt beside him.

Slowly the man took away the cloth he held and then peeled off another sodden wrapping under it. The wound still oozed blood, but not as it had. Soldier’s Boy felt he could not kneel there another moment. “Clean it well and wrap it fresh. One of you will have to hold the stick as you do. Wait a little while, then loosen the stick and see if the bleeding has stopped. If it bleeds again, tighten the stick. The most important thing now is to keep her from bleeding to death.”

They looked aghast at him. The one holding the tourniquet spoke first. “Can’t you heal her with magic? She can heal all sorts of hurts with magic. Cannot you?”

“Not while there is iron in there. I cannot so much as put my hands to her wound. We need to get her back to the pass and then home, to where skilled healers can remove the bullet.”

Both her feeders looked frightened. “But…can you quick-walk her to the pass if she has iron in her? How will we get her there?”

“I will try my best. If I cannot quick-walk her there, we will use the horses to get her there as quickly as we can. More than that, I cannot do.”

Both feeders stared at him, one with his mouth hanging open in shocked disappointment. He had betrayed their trust, the looks said. It was not the first time someone had looked at him that way today. He pushed the memory of Spink’s face away and then tried to stand. He didn’t think he could until he felt someone take his arm and help him to his feet. He turned to see Sempayli.

“I am glad to see you reached here safely, Great One. I brought the others as best I could.”

And then he had to turn his head and see the men who had gathered round them as he tried to help Dasie. These were the men he had left to fend for themselves. They stood staring at him. Soot, smoke, and in a few cases, blood obscured their speckled faces. They wore the same expressions that weary soldiers always wore, no matter whose side they fought on, no matter if they had tasted victory or been drenched in defeat. They were cold, they were tired, they were hungry, and they had seen things that no man should have looked on, done things that no man should have to do. He had expected to see anger and disappointment in their faces as well, and the bitterness of defeat, but if they felt it, it did not show there. They were new to war-making. It was possible they did not know whether to consider it a victory or a defeat.

It came to him then that they had accepted his right to ride off and leave them to fend for themselves. He was a Great One, full of power, and he made his own rules. These were not Gernian soldiers, trained to have certain expectations of their leaders. There was no contract of command between him and these men. They had expected of him only what he had taught them to expect. He had told them, over and over, that they must obey him, that they must not run away from battle. But he had never told them that if things went against them, he would not desert them.

And so they had not expected that of him. It was not a Speck value. It was a Gernian value. And still it scalded him that he had not lived up to that value and that expectation.

“Perhaps, beneath it all, you are still more Gernian than you know. And unfit to command these warriors.” I pushed my words to the forefront of his mind.

“Be silent!” His hatred of me, of the Gernian part of him, buffeted me so strongly that I felt I spun in nothingness. It was all I could do to keep a firm grip on my sense of self.

When I gained access to the world again, time had passed. Darkness was around me. Soldier’s Boy quick-walked us through snowy forest. Behind us, Clove dragged a makeshift travois. One of Dasie’s feeder-guards led him. The other carried a torch beside it. Through Soldier’s Boy’s eyes, I peered around me into the darkness. We moved with a very small force, perhaps no more than a dozen men. Had his losses been that heavy? I thought I had seen more men than that by Dasie’s campfire, but perhaps—Even as my spirits rose, Soldier’s Boy dashed them. “You have been absent for days, fool. I quick-walked our force back to the pass. Then Jodoli helped me quick-walk a healer back to Dasie. The healer was able to get the iron out of her leg. Now we take her to where she can find warmth and food and rest.”

Something in his voice spilled his secret to me. “She’s still going to die. Her wound is poisoned.”

He struck me again, but not as hard. In the weakness of his blow, even as I spun in darkness, I read that he was cold, very hungry, and that his magic had been drained. More quietly than a spider, I righted myself and then pawed through his memories of his last few miserable days.

He had failed everyone. Nearly a third of his small force had been killed or captured. I’d been right about the troops. They’d tracked down and shot all the stragglers they could find. It had been sheer luck that they hadn’t discovered Dasie. When he had quick-walked the remains of his army to the pass, Kinrove’s first words to him had been, “But where are the others?” Soldier’s Boy had not even been able to answer. They had read it in his face.

Jodoli’s words had laid bare a great fear. “So we have failed. And now that they know of our war against them, they will turn their guns on us at every sight of us. We will not even be able to use the Dust Dance against them. We had only one chance to succeed, one chance to surprise and destroy them. It is gone. They will always be waiting for us now, and always with iron. The hatred and anger of the Plain-skins will never end now, not until they have hunted us to the ends of the earth.”