The man Cassian had hauled upright at the edge of the wash did not look like someone who had planned to die there.
That was the first thing Sable noticed once the clash settled into its aftermath and the dawn finally began to show what the dark had only suggested in pieces. He was not wild-eyed, not grand with threat, not eager to spit some last loyal oath into the snow. He looked angry, cold, and deeply inconvenienced, as though the morning had gone wrong in a way that still offended his sense of order more than it frightened him.
The arrow through his lower leg had taken his escape but not his pride. He held himself too straight for a man with blood running into his boot, and when Cassian dragged him to his feet and forced him to face the wall in the growing light, he set his jaw with the stubbornness of someone still expecting that silence might save something farther north.
