Broken ribs and shattered breathing, heart shocked still. Dag let his groundsense, nearly extinguished so as to block his targets’ agony, come up fully, then flow into the boy. The pain was immense. Heart first. He concentrated himself there. A dangerous unity, if the yoked organs both chose to stop instead of start. A burning, lumping sensation in his own chest mirrored the boy’s. Come on, Saun, dance with me… A flutter, a stutter, a bruised limping. Stronger. Now the lungs. One breath, two, three, and the chest rose again, then again, and finally steadied in synchrony. Good, yes, heart and lungs would continue on their own.

The stunning reverberation of Saun’s targets’ ill fates still sloshed through the boy’s system, insufficiently blocked. Mari would have some work there, later. I hate fighting humans. Regretfully, Dag let the pain flow back to its source. The boy would be walking bent over for a month, but he would live.

The world returned to his senses. Around the clearing, bandits were starting to surrender as the yelling Glassforge men arrived and broke from the woods. Dag grabbed up his bow and rose to his feet, looking around. Beyond the burning tent, he spotted Mari. Dag! her mouth moved, but the cry was lost in the noise.

She raised two fingers, pointed beyond the clearing on the opposite side, and snapped them down against her armguard. Dag’s head swiveled.

Two bandits had dodged through the perimeter and were running away. Dag waved his bow in acknowledgment, and cried to his left linker, “Utau! Take Saun?”

Utau signaled his receipt of Dag’s injured partner. Dag turned to give chase, trying to reaffix the bow to its clamp as he ran. By the time he’d succeeded, he was well beyond the light from the fires. Closer…

The horse nearly ran him down; he leaped away barely before he could be knocked aside. The fugitives were riding double, a big man in front and a huge one behind.