I went through all the pockets and purses of the slavers and emptied out all their money. “Thieves,” snarled one of the slavers. “You won’t get away with this.”

One of the slaves laughed harshly. “And if you catch us, what? We will be sent to the mines?”

The Attolian took up the hammer again and dragged the end of the chain to one of the rings set in the rock wall around the campsite. Once he’d secured it, using an ankle cuff to make a closed loop, he stood. Muscles straining in the red glow of the firelight, he pulled until he was certain it would take a hammer to get free. Then the Attolian threw the hammer as hard as he could into the dark.

“You cannot leave us here,” protested one slaver.

I translated for the Attolian.

“Tell him he’s next to the road,” said the Attolian. “Someone will come by.”

“And if no one does?” said the man, when I repeated the words in Setran.

The Attolian snorted, guessing what the slaver’s words meant. “Then maybe Kepet will have got off easy,” he said. I didn’t bother to translate that.

We packed up the mules, and the Attolian herded all of us down the road. The slaves moved slowly, but the Attolian was patient. He and I could hardly move faster anyway in the pitch dark over the rough surface, and we would have missed the spring on our own. One of the slaves warned us when we were close, and we listened for the sound of water murmuring over rocks. We stopped there to fill waterskins—two of them our own, taken back from the slavers. The Attolian explained that he and I would take some of the provisions and head back up the road toward the mines. “We go north,” he said. “We are hunted, and our hunters will come after each of you. You may want to try to hide in the hills or make your way down to the plain. I can’t tell you which is best.”

“And the mules?” The slaves were resting in the dark all around us and I didn’t know who spoke.

“You can have the mules,” said the Attolian, “but ride them hard, and abandon them in the first village you come to.”

“Those slavers will be out for blood,” said another voice.

“And our pursuers even more so,” the Attolian warned.

Diffidently I said, “There is a temple of Amrash at Nerket. Go west on the wagon trail below here, and when it joins the emperor’s road to Zabrisa, go back east. It’s not far from where the roads meet.” The temple at Nerket was a sanctuary for escaped slaves, which would have angered local slaveholders more were it not that the slaves, once received in the temple, were forbidden to leave. The priests of Amrash were very poor—it was a subsistence living a slave faced within the temple walls. Common decency should have allowed such a haven for those so abused by their masters that they would choose that life. Cynicism made me think the sanctuary was tolerated because the slaves there had so little value. For the men crouched in the darkness around us, a life of peaceful service to the god and a roof over their heads would be a haven indeed.

There was quiet while each considered the risk and weighed it against his good fortune in being free at all.

“I’ll take a mule,” said one of the men.

“I as well,” said another, “but I have the strength yet in my legs to get along on my own. I won’t take a mule if there is someone who needs it more.”

No one else, weak though they were, was willing to risk being mistaken for us. We stripped the packs from the mules, passed out what was valuable in them, and then handed them over to their riders.

“When you reach the first town, ride through it, so you can be seen to be a gray-haired slave on his way to the sanctuary—not an Attolian, not a Setran house slave. Then abandon the mule and hide for a while, or go overland. Those hunting us should not follow you further.”

Odd that he called me Setran. I had not felt myself a Setran in a long time. Nor Mede either, for that matter. Our earlier conversation seemed to belong to a different world now, when the Attolian and I were comrades by the nighttime fire. Setra was no homeland to me. I had no homeland, but perhaps the Attolian only wanted to think of me as something other than Mede because he hated the Medes, or because he hated and respected the Medes but merely hated me. I didn’t know.

With two waterskins between us and much less than our share of the food and money, we started back up the road toward the mines. The Attolian had not dithered over the disposition of the food and money, and I think that he gave most of it away. We each had a blanket roll and a set of spare clothes, useful but smelly. The Attolian was armed again with one of the slavers’ swords as well as a hunting knife and a small bow and its arrows. We were better equipped now than we had been on leaving Koadester, except for the Attolian’s missing breastplate and our cookpot and all our money gone.

I would miss the cookpot. We should have taken the slavers’ when we had the chance, but we’d left it in the ashes of the fire. I know the Attolian was thinking of his sword and his armor, buried somewhere under the rocks to the east of us, but there was no time to go hunting them and little chance we could find them anyway. He said nothing, but I could guess how much it pained him to abandon them.

I had a long knife and a very small one that I had taken because it was just like one I had used for years to shape my pens. I felt I was more likely to get something done with the smaller knife in the right place than with the larger one, which I was afraid even to draw from its sheath. I did not discount the possibility that I might be using the knife on the Attolian, who had not once looked at me, though he had addressed several remarks meant for me to the air above us as if I were floating somewhere overhead, and several to the ground as if I were reclining somewhere to his left. Even if it had saved us, I did not expect him to forgive me that kick to the groin. I would pay a price, I was sure.

Head down, I followed him back up the road. When we got close to the slavers, we could hear the sullen argument going on as they tried to twist the pin out of the cuff and work the iron staple out of the rock. It was easy, in the darkness, to pass by without being noticed. The ground was dry and hard, and I doubt we even left footprints.

We went on as quickly as we could without risking a fall. As the sky began to lighten, we came to the end of the road. It opened out, to our right, into many smaller tracks around the tips and tailings of several mines. Sheds scattered across the hillside were dark and silent and still in the predawn air. Ahead of us, only a thread of a hunting track continued up the rocky slope. Without speaking, the Attolian began to climb. With the growing light, it was not impossible to find the way, and by the time the sun cleared the horizon, the mine was some distance below us.

The hunting track began to cut farther and farther to the right, headed toward a stretch of scrubby bushes. It was probably a loop that would eventually return to the mine, whereas we needed to make our way uphill. The Attolian picked a likely saddle in the ridge above us and began moving toward it. The whole hillside was rocks. As we moved higher, there was no more soil, just an unending pile of stones, all of them rounded, even the ones as big as a bull, unstable and threatening to roll underfoot. Picking a way, step by awkward step, was exhausting. I fell farther and farther behind.

Finally, the Attolian passed out of sight behind a large boulder, and I stopped to catch my breath, seeking some hidden reserve of strength that I didn’t find. While I was still looking for it, the Attolian moved back into view and waved at me to catch up. I put my head down and focused only on my next step and the one after that. When at last I reached the place where I had seen him, I found behind the large boulder a flat area the size of a large tabletop, mostly level. The Attolian was already lying down on it with his back to me. I dropped beside him.