Riot walked with his head down. There was nothing to see anyway, except stained brown hills heaped like dung piles for miles around.

  The waterlogged dales had given way to ravines with bare rock faces and the narrow tracks grew treacherous. Loose stones shifted underfoot on paths less than a yard wide over a drop of a hundred feet. Piled-up snow drifts, and landslides forced them to backtrack on trails that twisted maddeningly between and over the hills, so that a day's march only gained them a third of the distance as the crow flies.

  All of this took time, time for the leyline to ooze in through the cracks in the barrier. Riot's body creaked with every step, and he wiggled his finger in his ear in a bid to relieve the pressure that made the world sound muffled.

  A shriek bounced off of the slopes around them, and one of Moran’s white and green-uniformed toy soldiers flailed his arms like a windmill in a storm, teetering on the edge of the cliff before pitching down, his wail of terror ending in a fleshy thump.

  “Watch your step, stone-eye.”

  Before Riot could react, Loic was on him. He grabbed Riot around the neck, dragged him toward the edge of the drop, and held him out into the empty air, his heels scrabbling on the lip of the pathway.

  Up ahead Moran shouted orders amid the chaos, but the Leybound nearby froze, watching this murder wide-eyed.

  “Let him go, Loic.” Riot hadn’t seen her move, but now Quinn was behind Loic, a short knife pressed against the northman's thick neck.

  “Stay out of this. He killed Price, he has to pay for that,” Loic hissed.

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  “Price is alive, you stupid bastard. The wikkan said they never found his body,” Riot croaked, forcing the words out through his restricted airways.

  Loic looked to Quinn, who nodded confirmation, and he pulled Riot back from the edge and dropped him on the narrow path where he lay gasping.

  There was a commotion in the line, and the men ahead of them squeezed against the rock wall as Moran pushed his way through and took in the scene. If he could see what had happened, he didn’t show it, instead addressing Loic in a polite tone. “Loic, would you be so kind as to join me at the front? My horse is rather skittish, and you have a way with the beast,” he said.

  “Yessir,” Loic replied with a smart salute.

  “Sergeant Riot, when we make camp you can enjoy all of the rest you need, but until then I would appreciate a good example to the men. You don’t see any of them flagging, do you?”

  Moran led Loic back to the head of the file, and everyone moved on slowly as Riot flopped over onto the pathway and let the rock he held tumble out of his hand. “You could have told him Price was still alive at any time,” Riot said to Quinn.

  “You want me to fix all of your problems? I told you what you needed to do to avoid this.” Quinn nudged the rock with her foot. “You were going to hit him with this? You would have both fallen.”

  “That was the idea.” Gods his body was aching.

  “Ask Moran for help. It will help you to gain the respect of the Leybound.”

  “I don’t need their respect.”

  “You think you have a boot on your head holding you down, and so you do the same to them. Why can’t you see that there is no boot and you hold yourself down?”

  Quinn continued down the pathway, and Riot groaned and hauled himself up.

  Surprisingly he felt better than he had in days. The jolt of fear had been just what he needed. The leyline was a low, uncertain death that lingered in the back of his skull.

  But now, someone had tried to kill him and there was something familiar in that. He’d stared into the eyes of death, and death blinked.