Our path wasn’t wide enough for a wagon, but it seemed quite reliable at first. It rose quickly, and became rockier, until it was no more than a broken ribbon twisting into the hills. We lost the track for a while and veered off course. We ended up retracing our steps, and that’s when we first saw our pursuers—or at least, the Attolian did.

“There’s a party out on the road large enough to throw up a dust cloud,” he said. “And a smaller group coming up behind us.”

“Namreen?”

“I can’t tell,” said the Attolian. “Try not to silhouette yourself against the sky. We’ll wait here until they have gone past.” He led the way to a spot where we could be unseen and still overlook a bit of the trail below.

When he next saw them, they had made up almost half the distance between us. “Probably coincidence,” the Attolian said, trying to sound optimistic as we waited for them to go by.

It was a tense wait. I wasted it being anxious instead of enjoying the rare opportunity to sit down. Eventually we saw them again as they crossed below us. I relaxed, but the Attolian didn’t, insisting we wait where we were. We were sitting there, sweating gently in the sun, when the party of men came back down the trail, watching the ground carefully as they came.

Hissing, the Attolian pulled me from where I was sitting and hustled me higher up the hillside.

“Not a coincidence,” I whispered.

“So,” the Attolian agreed, and proceeded to haul me bodily uphill.

As we climbed, we came to an open expanse of solid rock where we could move quickly. I thought this was lucky. The Attolian, still with his hand under my armpit, pulling me faster than I could safely go, didn’t seem to feel the same way. He risked many anxious glances over his shoulder as we went at a breakneck pace. Only when we reached cover did he slow and begin to pick his way more carefully.

They couldn’t possibly follow us, I told myself. We’d left no footprints behind on the rocky ground. Hadn’t the guards on the caravan been extremely watchful in similar hills—because bandits could disappear so quickly into the hills? Surely we could do the same.

When he thought we were well ahead of our pursuers, the Attolian tucked me into a rocky crevice and told me to wait while he climbed up to get another look at those hunting us.

“They aren’t Namreen,” he said as he dropped back down beside me.

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“If those ratty pieces of trash are Namreen, I’m emperor of the Medes. They are slavers and bounty hunters.” He appeared to be considering a fight.

“There are still—what, seven, eight of them?” I said, thinking that the Attolian had killed two Namreen, but that did not make him invincible.

The Attolian reluctantly took his hand off his sword.

“Have they found our trail?” I asked.

“Not so far,” he answered.

“Then we should keep going,” I said. I started up the steep-sided valley that would carry us farther into the hills, and the Attolian followed.

CHAPTER SIX

It was clear by sundown that we were in desperate trouble. I could no longer pretend to myself that we could escape. We’d run up against a cliff and moved as quickly as we could along the face of it, weaving in and out of rockslides that had come down. We’d found an opening that we’d thought might lead us upward, but the ravine had narrowed as we climbed, and we’d reached a point where the ground rose too steeply for us to continue without using our hands as well as our feet. Even the Attolian would find it a challenge, and I was almost out of strength, hunched over and gasping, when he looked up in alarm and dragged me backward under an overhang.

“What is it?” I asked. “What did you see?”

“They’ve skylighted themselves, probably on purpose. I’m sorry, Kamet, at least three of them are at the top of the slope above us.”

“Can we go back?”

“No. They revealed themselves because they know we are trapped.” He dropped the bag he’d been carrying, with the remains of our purchases from Koadester, and the waterskins as well.

“What now then?” I suppose I thought he’d produce another lion’s den for us to shelter in.

He didn’t. He loosened his sword and began to draw it out.

“No,” I said, pulling his hand away. He looked at me, startled, while I racked my brains.

“We’ve hardly seen them, and they haven’t had a good look at us. Take off the sword belt and your breastplate. They aren’t the Namreen—they don’t know for certain who we are. If we are two escaped slaves instead of one, then maybe we are not the prize they are hoping for.” Stripping the Attolian as I talked, I took his belt and the sword and the plate and hurried to push them deeper under the overhang where they would be out of sight, then directed the Attolian to empty his purse. Making a face, he tipped almost all of our coins out into the grass and replaced the purse in his belt. Then he helped me pile what loose rocks there were until our cookpot—I was really going to miss that pot—and his armor were well hidden.

When we were done, the Attolian stood staring at the rocks, like a man bewildered. I had to take him by the shoulders and turn him away.

“Don’t look anyone in the face,” I warned him. “Don’t say anything if you don’t have to. Let me talk. Don’t disagree with anything, don’t even think to yourself that you know what they do not because it will show on your face. Everything shows on your face, so just try to think of nothing at all. Look at the ground, do you understand?”

He nodded. I helped him to reshoulder the bag that had held our provisions, hoping that the men who pursued us would not notice any decrease in his bulk now that his armor had gone. Then I had to think how I could pass off someone with muscles like his as a slave. That he was a foreigner was not a problem—many slaves were. He was a field hand, perhaps, but that only raised the question of how he and I might be escaping together. Field hands would have little contact with the house slaves. If I’d ever planned an escape from my master, it would not have been with one of his ditchdiggers. The Attolian was very good-looking, though, and I chose that fact to guide my story. He might be a field hand brought into the house as a pet for the mistress. That was not uncommon, and it would only be helped if he played stupid and kept his mouth shut. I could only hope he would do so. He was far from arrogant, but his stubbornness might do us in.

Confident that they had us pinned, the slavers made no attempt to hide their approach. When I heard their voices, I began to berate the Attolian, blaming him for everything under the sun. He was slow, he was stupid, if he’d done as I’d told him, we would have been safe and—in ridiculous counterpoint—that we never should have tried to escape and it was his stupid idea and I shouldn’t have listened when he suggested it. The Attolian went along with me, punctuating my rant with bumbling attempts to interrupt me or accept the blame.

“Morik,” he said, giving me a common name, “Morik, I didn’t know. I’m sorry,” he said humbly.

Trying to conceal his Attolian accent, he spoke each word with deliberation that made him sound appropriately thickheaded. His accent really had improved, I noticed, but gods save us, he still had his earring in his ear. I fell silent, staring, and the Attolian hastily pulled it out of his ear and popped it into his mouth. Better to have thrown it away with the coins, but there was no time to argue with him.