Sig's bad leg had stopped healing sometime around the second morning. By the third, it had fallen back into the old rhythm. Sometimes it obeyed him. Sometimes it caught on loose stone and nearly threw him, just as it always had since the mansion had torn the calf apart beneath him.
He shifted his weight away from it whenever the ground gave him the chance and left it at that. There wasn't much point dwelling on it. Two days of fighting had ruined stronger men than one stubborn leg ever could.
His company still occupied the same stretch of earthworks it had held ever since the guns shattered the first cavalry charge the day before. Stakes stood buried deep across the open ground east of the ridge, guarding the only stretch of the valley broad enough for horses to gather real speed before impact.
Thick smoke had been climbing from the mouth of the pass since before dawn. Somewhere beyond the rocky shoulder to the north, steady rifle fire had echoed down the slope for over an hour.
