ick, that had lain next his left hand, he missed it;
then he recalled the girl, reached out for her, found she was gone too.
He drew the back of his arm over his eyes and cleared the gore a trifle.
"Jerran?" he said quietly. No answer.

Blinking, he saw the vast meeting place empty, lit by the blue lanterns.
He rolled his head and there, its point buried deep in the sward an inch
from his right ear, was his pick. He sat up. Jerran lay a dozen feet
off, looking very dead indeed, with his thin hair matted with blackening
blood.

Instinctively he tore the pick out of the ground. It was buried so deep
that only a very strong hand could have sent it in; not the girl, he
thought, somehow relieved that she hadn't done it. No, a miner's blow
alone might have done it, for the earth was packed solid as oak's wood
by untold multitudes of rebels' feet.

Wait a minute, he said to himself: this is all wrong. That blow should
have opened my skull like a walnut. It missed me by a fraction--either
the aim was poor, or else damned good. I could have struck such a blow,
sure to miss where I wished to, but not even many miners could duplicate
it.

Had the enemy missed, then walloped him with another weapon and left him
for dead? Gingerly he felt the wound on his head. It was healing
already, a tap that might have laid him out for a few hours, but would
never have slain him.

He glared at the pick in his hand. Then he brought it up and in the
combined light of the blue lanterns and the dawn filtering in from the
woods, he squinted at the handle.

Where his own pick bore the crude carving of a mink (he had taken the
beast as his symbol a long time ago, another sign of his identity), this
one had a jumble of grooves meant to represent a woods lion.

This wasn't Revel's pick--it was his brother Rack's!

Caught in an appalling dream that was the hardest reality he'd ever
faced, he pored over the pickax, scanned the motionless form of his
friend Jerran, then goggled foolishly at nothing in particular as he
thought of his situation, stranded in a place he could not escape from
alone, with many half-formed plots in his head but no way to carry them
out. Between him and Dolfya, and the other rebels, lay miles of tangled
forest no man, be he ever so skillful at woodscraft, could penetrate
without the knowledge of a route; thousands of the ruck were depending
on him to lead them, and he couldn't even lead himself home.

"If you're the Mink