They rode through the remnants of our camp, around the fire and around me, and a little distance more. They looked at me, but they rode past, down the trail my brother and our warriors had left. I stood up to meet them, raising my hands to show that I was bound to a stake driven into the frozen earth-to show that I was tuyo, left here for them. They came riding between the great spruces and firs, tall dark men on tall dark horses, with the Sun device of their banner snapping overhead in the wind. I held very still, though stillness would not protect me now. Then I heard them, the hoofbeats of their horses, and there was no more time for hope. I tried not to hope that I would die before they found me. Even an Ugaro will die of the cold eventually, without fire or shelter. I hoped they came before the fire burned out, or I might freeze to death before they found me. It was better than thinking about the Lau. That was as close to thinking about nothing as I could come. I wished I could build the fire up again.
Now it was only embers, and the cold pressed against my back. My brother had built it up with his own hands before he led our defeated warriors away. That might have been a different kind of cowardice. Also, I did not want to look north because I did not want to see that trodden snow and remember my brother leaving me behind. I faced south, so that my death would not ride up behind me on his tall horse and see my back and think that I was afraid to face him. Before long, dusk would fold itself across the land. Beside the coals of the dying fire, within the trampled borders of our abandoned camp, surrounded by the great forest of the winter country, I waited for a terrible death.
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