Riot rounded a corner and skidded on loose stones. He lunged in desperation and his fingers closed around a thick tree branch that nearly pulled his shoulder out of his socket as it jarred him to a halt, inches from the edge. He took a deep breath as small rocks skittered into the raging torrent of water five feet below.

  Careful, he said to himself. From here he couldn’t see a damn thing, only the sound of Faelen darts slicing through the undergrowth and the scattered snapping of leybound charges. Skirmishes were about control and when you lose it all you have is instinct. He crouched and slipped forward.

  The first body he found was Rife, a quiet man with lumpen, leybound scars. The bloody burned wound in his leg could be bandaged, but the broken spine would kill him.

  After a battle, friars and priests moved about the wounded and dying, dispensing mercy. But there were no holy men here.

  “Go easy lad.” Riot slipped his knife between the upper ribs to pierce Rife’s heart and the man's eyes fluttered softly before he stilled.

  Riot moved on, finding Loic crouched behind a rock. Natalia was close by and stood briefly to let the dirty gray charge of arcane light flicker up the ravine before ducking for cover once more.

  Her target was the ragged prisoner who killed Riley on the road, and Riot slowed as he approached. The mangy beard was gone, and the rags had been replaced with an ill-fitting Mazral uniform, but there was no mistaking him. Gerrard Price, the leybound prisoner from the farmhouse.

  He wasn’t hiding. In fact, he stood on the rocks above them as if they were the battlements of a castle. There would be no victorious charge to dislodge him, only an uphill slog to find the point of a sword or a burning arcane charge to the gut.

  Riot threw himself down beside Loic and Natalia.

  “What’s happening back there?” Natalia said, shouting to be heard over the sound of the pounding water.

  “Moran and the others are holding the ridge, we have to pull back. Is that Price?” Riot said, looking to Loic.

  “Traitorous bastard,” Loic growled.

  “That proof enough for you? I told you, he sold us out,” Riot retorted.

  “He’s wearing their damn uniform,” Loic said, glaring up the ravine.

  “I don’t give a damn if he’s painted his face and taken up embroidery. Moran and the others are holding the ridge, we’re leaving.”

  Riot grabbed Loic's shoulder, and the northman turned on him, a murderous look on his face. “He needs to pay for what he’s done.”

  “Loic, we pull back. Price can wait, he is not the mission,” Quinn insisted.

  The young Northman’s lip curled, and a vein stood out on his forehead. “Price!” he bellowed.

  “Loic Fitchen? I thought that was you,” Price called over the roar of the river.

  “You fight for them now?” Loic replied.

  Price’s proud laughter floated down to them. “You know me better than that, Loic. They joined the long list of my enemies, and they have paid with their lives.”

  “Enough of this.” Quinn crushed the gray charge in her cupped hands and stood, but before she could release it, she gave a cry and spun around.

  Riot reached for her but she slapped his hand away with a curse, clamping a hand to her shoulder where the flesh still burned.

  “We can take him,” Loic growled.

  “Don’t be a fool. He wants us to go up there. We go back,” Quinn snarled.

  But Loic ignored her, instead drawing leypower into his cupped hands. More than Riot had seen anyone hold before. The gray light expanded as the young northman drew his hands apart, his muscles corded with the strain.

  “Loic, don’t be a fool,” Natalia hissed.

  “You know we can’t let him get away with it, stone eye.” Loic said, his voice was tight with the strain of holding the leypower.

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  Riot glanced up at the ravine. Price had the high ground, and he was taunting them. But Loic was right, traitors were worse than deserters, and Price was a killer, and smart. They couldn’t leave him alive and have him follow them.

  Riot drew his sword. “We go together.”

  “Get ready,” Loic grunted. The flaring light in his hands was a foot wide now, and his arms were shaking with the strain. He stood and there was a deep crack, as if the very earth had been sundered, and everything in front of them exploded in gray light.

  The tortured sound of shredding trees filled the air as Riot staggered forward, blinking as he fought to steady his gaze. A low-hanging branch caught him in the face, and he flopped to the floor, dazed, and hauled himself to his feet. He could hear the pounding water to his left, but there was no sign of Loic.

  “You should know, Loic generally knocks himself unconscious when he does that. The power to shatter a city gate without the skill to control it,” came the confident voice.

  Price was a few yards away. His left eye was a burned, empty socket, and the skin around it was pulled tight. It looked like someone had branded some kind of symbol into his chest.

  But Price’s wounds were nothing compared to the Faelen officer that crawled around in the undergrowth nearby. His face was a bloody ruin, and he reached out an arm that ended in a bleeding stump. “Help me,” he begged, staring around with ruined eyes.

  “Who in the gods is that?” Riot said.

  “You remember Tarir-del of course. He was going to keep me as a pet, to bring out at parties.”

  Tarir-dal, the High Faelen whose wagon they stole. The same one who turned a farmhouse into a pile of rubble, now flopped down in the dirt sobbing.

  Price took his ease, holding the sword nonchalantly. The blade was in the Faelen style, but it wasn’t like the swords most of them favored. There was no shine or engraving. It was made of dark steel and had a grim, workmanlike appearance. “You surprised me Riot, when you activated the hedron. I hadn’t planned for that.”

  “Damn thing nearly killed me. If that’s why you’re here, I don’t have it,” Riot said.

  The sounds of fighting had died down in the ravine, which meant the Faelen would be picking their way toward them.

  Price shook his head. “I’m not here for the hedron, Sergeant.” He pushed Tarir-dal with his boot, so he flopped over, placed the tip of the sword on the High Faelen’s chest and pushed down. Tarir-dal convulsed around the blade, then sagged down dead. “I was here for him, but that’s done now.” Price pointed the blade at Riot. “But you and I have a score to settle. You took my eye.”

  Riot was tired, deep into his bones, and Price looked like he knew how to use the sword. “You can come with us, Price. After what they did to you, you can say you were a prisoner.”

  “You think that Ritta Kerne will let me live?”

  “Probably not,” Riot conceded. “Go back into the hills, disappear. The gods know you deserve it.”

  “Listen to yourself. Why make bargains on their behalf? I can see the fouling on your skin. They bound you and sent you out to face me, and you don’t even know why you’re here.”

  An unpleasant truth. Riot had no idea why he was out here risking his neck. He’d thought that being leybound could help him rise out of the filth of the ranks, but now he felt a fool. Nothing had changed. “If you're not here for the hedron, what do you want?”

  “No, Riot, nothing so easy as that. While you serve their interests, you will serve blindly, or half blindly at least. I will give you the same offer you gave me. I will take one of your eyes and let you go to the coast and back to the city. If you’re lucky you’ll make it before the leyline consumes you.”

  “What about the others?”

  “I will take the woman, you can keep Loic.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “Then you leave me no choice.”

  Price took the four steps with such speed that Riot barely got his own blade up in time to block the blow. The man moved like a striking snake.

  “Look what they did to you, you fool,” Price said, and with a snarl, he wrenched the blade back and kicked Riot full in the stomach, doubling him over. “Killing you will be less pleasurable than I’d hoped. It's almost a mercy.”

  Riot staggered back, barely managing to keep the tip of his sword up as Price attacked again, his blade darting again and again as Riot desperately parried. The Faelen blade was ugly, pock-marked gray metal but so heavy that Riot felt like he was being battered with a lump of stone. By dead luck he caught Price's blade on the guard and threw his head forward, but Price bent his neck slightly, and Riot cracked his own nose onto the man's crown. Blood streamed down his lips into his mouth and dripped from his chin, and Price stepped past and kicked Riot in the back of his injured knee, and he fell, his short sword falling from his hand.

  Price picked it up and tossed it into the rushing water next to them. “I slaughtered Orcs in the mountains, Riot. Compared to them, you are a lamb.”

  Price stabbed his sword into the ground, and with a deep breath, let the leypower fill his cupped hands.

  Riot watched, mesmerized. Every other Leybound held a handful of raging, misty leypower that leaked over the edges of their cupped hands, but Price held a mirrored pool of gray light, barely a ripple disturbing its surface. In every way the opposite of the rampant, destructive power Riot had been given.

  Riot looked to the blackened hedron scar on his hand. He wanted control, but raw power was all he had. Moran had drained the leypower from his body, so he’d have to rip down both barriers, the one holding back the leyline and the one blocking the hedron scar. He'd be cooked alive, but the Leybound would live, and Natalia Quinn and Loic would survive. And gods knew he was tired, and if he was going to die, then he would take Price with him.

  Riot stood and flung out his damaged hand as the air behind Price rippled.

  Natalia Quinn appeared from the shadow of a boulder like a ghost and threw herself at Price, catching him between his shoulder blades and sending him staggering forward into Riot.

  Riot stepped back into the empty air and his flailing hands grabbed hold of Price's Faelen uniform, pulling them both into the raging waters below.

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  Peter