Uachi stood at the top of the hill, surveying the scene before him with a sinking heart. The battlefield was still smoking, and the land was littered with corpses.

"Gods below," murmured Diarmán. He was standing a few paces away, his hand on Uarria's head. "There isn't a living man on that field."

As if on cue, a cry split the silence. It rocked through Uachi's bones, rattling him to his core. He had heard such a sound before: it was the sound of a man who was not long for this world, a man who would suffer every moment until he was gone.

"Stay here with the horses," he told Diarmán, turning to his own mount to take his bow and quiver. He slung the quiver over his head and tightened the strap, and then he checked his knives out of habit, though every one was in its place. "Keep Uarria with you. Farra, come with me." He clicked his tongue and set off down the hill.

It took him a quarter hour to find the man. Farra trailed at his heels, her hackles up and her whiskers aquiver as she prowled through the human wreckage around them. The wounded man was lying in a patch of bloodied mud that had soaked his black-and-yellow livery, holding his belly with both hands. He looked up at Uachi, his hands and his lips quivering. "Water," he gasped. His voice was hoarse, his lips parched and flaky. He had surely been lying there, the sole survivor adrift in such human wreckage, since the previous day.

Pity tugged at the back of Uachi's mind, and he pushed it ruthlessly away. "Tell me: where are Koren and Jaeron?"

The man rocked his head from side to side. "Please...Water. Please..."

"Tell me, and I will give you some water." Water wouldn't help this man now, though. Even had there been a healer at Uachi's right hand, this man was going to die.

"Gone. They're gone...Left us here to die."

"Gone where?"

"Don't...know. Disappeared." His face went slack, his eyes wide. "The stones. Those red stones."

With an uneasy feeling, Uachi knelt at the man's side. He reached for the water skin strapped to his belt. "The red stones? Bloodstones?"

"Nngh...please..." The man's eyes rolled, bloodshot and wide, watching Uachi's hand.

"Tell me where they went."

The man shook his head. When he coughed, a thin trail of fresh blood streaked down over his chin, already smeared with red. "Don't know...Gone in a blink. Unnatural."

Uachi cupped the man's face in his free hand. "Thank you. Quiet, now; be calm. I'll give you a drink."

The man let his eyes fall closed; he looked sleepy, his deep complexion waxen and gray. Uachi slid his hand forward along his belt, away from the water skin. He unsheathed his dagger silently. In two efficient motions, he pushed the man's head back, exposing his throat, and drew the blade swiftly across from ear to ear. The soldier made a gurgling sound; blood bubbled from his throat, soaking the collar of his tabard. Before Uachi had drawn a second breath, it was done.

He wiped his dagger clean and stood up. When he turned back the way he had come, he saw Diarmán approaching him across the field. He led both agitated horses, one bearing Ealin, still glassy-eyed from her morning tea, and on the other side of the beasts, Uachi could make out Uarria's movements trailing at Diarmán's heels.

Anger rose in his breast at once. "I told you to wait!" he snapped. "I didn't want her to see this!"

"I was uneasy, and the horses were skittish. I think it best we get across this field as quick as we can," Diarmán said. He sounded distracted, his eyes lingering on the newest corpse on the field.

When Uarria came more clearly into view, Uachi saw that Diarmán had draped a sack over her head and was leading her with a hand on her shoulders. Uachi wondered if, in giving her the body of a shadowcat, Diarmán had also given her the senses of one; could she hear and smell the scene around her? Did it frighten her?

Still, the man's foresight in covering her eyes eased Uachi's anger.

"Hurry, then. I want her away from this place." Uachi jerked his head, and they began to walk again, heading toward the stand of trees that rose on the far side of the field. It took them the better part of an hour to cross the battlefield, and when they did, Uachi felt as if a lifetime had passed him by. He had been hardened by many a battle, but carnage such as this he'd never seen. The dead man's words lingering in his mind.

They're gone...Left us here to die.

It must have meant that the Imperial army had had the upper hand. Indeed, the corpses in yellow outnumbered the corpses in blue.

There was no clear end to the battlefield, simply a thinning of the number of bodies that lay strewn over the ground. When they were clear of as much as they could see, Diarmán helped Ealin down from her mount. Once she had gained her feet, she stood motionless, staring back whence they'd come, her gaze drifting over the gruesome field.

"Drink some water," Uachi said, offering her his skin.

She obeyed. Diarmán and Uachi had continued to bind Ealin's hands, but they had put them in front of her to enable her some self-sufficiency. After sipping from the waterskin, Ealin handed it back, and Uachi took a swallow.

Diarmán headed their way, looking grim. It was an expression that did not suit him, but then again, being on a battlefield suited few. "Do you think it's safe to let her see?" He nodded toward Uarria, who was standing some distance away. She seemed agitated, but she was silent and had made no attempt to wrestle her way out of the sack. Had Uachi dared to blindfold Farra, he'd have been lucky to escape with all of his fingers, and he would certainly have heard a piece of her mind.

"I think so. We're away from the worst of it."

Diarmán slipped the sack off of Uarria's head and knelt down. He had taken one of their bowls from the pack and now poured a little of his water into it so that Uarria and Farra could have a drink. "What became of the man who was crying out?"

"He didn't make it," replied Uachi. There was no need to linger over what he had done. The man had already been dead. Uachi had just helped him see it. "He spoke before he died, though."

"Aye? Anything to do with wayward princesses? I'm eager to add to our collection."

Uachi sighed, rolling his neck and his shoulders. "I asked him about Koren and the archmage. Which way they'd gone—the army—and he said they left them here to die."

Diarmán raised his eyebrows, turning back to look toward the battlefield. A slow frown overtook his features then, and he said, "I hadn't thought anything of it."

"Of what?"

"Their uniforms. Did you notice?"

"Oh, aye, I noticed," said Uachi. "Most of them were yellow and black. All I have heard and what little I've seen of Koren suggests he's a fighting man with battle in his bones, but he's the Corpsemaker's son. He would leave his men to perish to preserve his own skin."

"But how did he escape? It cannot be an easy thing to break and run from a battle like that one."

"By the blood, no doubt." Uachi narrowed his eyes, mulling over what the soldier had told him. They'd been there one second and gone the next—there was no other explanation. "But where?"

"Probably back to Coratse's castle." Diarmán kicked a stone buried in the mud. It did not move. Shaking his foot, he swore under his breath. "Just our bloody luck. We come all this way, and they pass us by on their way back to their den and hole themselves up again."

"Mm." It made about as much sense as anything Uachi could think of. Koren had nowhere else to go. If he'd been routed, he might have broken and run, slunk off to save his own skin and to lick his wounds. It would put the princesses back within their mother's reach, but Koren would no doubt have a way to retain control.

What of his wife, though, and their son? Had they been stowed away in Koren's borrowed castle, too?

What were Uachi and Diarmán to do now, with their plans torn apart by the results of this dreadful battle?

"What now?" Diarmán asked, as if he could read Uachi's own thoughts.

"Give me a moment to think, unless you've any brilliant ideas." Uachi sank down to his haunches, rubbing a hand over his neck. "Ealin, sit for a minute. We'll take a rest here."

When he turned to look at Ealin, who was standing some distance away, the look on her face struck him like a fist to the chest. She was looking right at him as if she were aware of him and everything around her more clearly than she had been for days.

She looked vengeful.

It seems things will never be easy for our unfortunate captain. He was so close...