They walked until the sounds of the fighting faded behind them and any hope of being seen and rescued by Sir Theodore, and however many of their own men remained, first dwindled and then died.

They walked as the trees and undergrowth grew increasingly dense around them, the daylight more and more heavily filtered by greenery above, and any realistic hope of Dragon spotting them by happenstance from the air likewise faded away.

Jane couldn't seem to regain her coordination, for all that she gritted her teeth and forced herself to keep putting one foot in front of the other. She found herself listing to one side repeatedly, mild dizziness a constant physical background noise as she stumbled on, it seemed, endlessly.

She knew she had to fall eventually, knew it with a dull, resigned certainty. It was still bad when it happened. She tripped over an exposed tree root and with her arms bound behind her, she had no way to steady herself or break her fall.

She went hard to her knees, twisting her ankle painfully, her teeth clacking together with the jarring impact.

Then everything just seemed to… grey out for a moment or two. She didn't lose consciousness entirely, but it was a near thing. She felt herself slumping sideways, fetching up at the base of a tree.

She gave a little groan, a tiny, despairing sound, and shook her head to clear it – but that turned out to be a mistake. Far from lessening, her sense of disequilibrium surged – so intense that now it almost felt like nausea. The sound of raised voices filtered through the haze that had enveloped her, one voice in particular tugging at her consciousness, keeping her at least partially tethered to reality.

Gunther.

She couldn't possibly float away while he was shouting her name like that.

She forced her surroundings back into focus. Gunther was a few feet away, struggling to reach her, but his arms were bound just as hers were, and two men were holding him back besides. He still had a gag in his mouth, but she could understand him well enough despite it. He was, after all, only shouting one word.

"Jane! Jane, JANE!"

"I… I am all right," she managed, for his sake. Whether it was, strictly speaking, true or not was irrelevant in that moment.

Then she was grabbed hard by the upper arm and hauled back to her feet. Her captor – Hugh, she recalled dimly – shoved her into the arms of one of his men, crossed the distance to Gunther in two strides, and drove a fist into the center of his stomach with brutal force.

"NO!" Jane screamed as her husband doubled over, the wind knocked out him, struggling for air. She gave a desperate lunge, trying to reach him, only to be yanked roughly back again. The man who was holding her now was not as large or as strong as Hugh, but he was more than equal to Jane's current, badly compromised state.

A second later Hugh himself was back in front of her, grabbing her by the chin and compelling her to meet his gaze.

"I told you, did I not," he asked Jane, whose eyes were dark with panic, "that if you stopped walking he is the one I would hurt? Well? Did I say that, yes or no?"

"Yes," Jane said hoarsely, forcing the word out around the hot, heavy ball of loathing that seemed to have lodged in her throat.

"And now you know that I do not make idle threats. So do we understand each other?"

"Yes."

"Good. Then I suggest you walk. Because I said to you, when we met that day on the road, that I looked forward to getting to know you a great deal better. And I am most… anxious… to reach our journey's end so that can happen. So, my pretty little bauble – move!"

And turning her brusquely in the direction he wished her to go, he gave her another hard shove between the shoulder blades.

She choked back a cry the first time her weight came down on her twisted ankle, but she could not – would not – allow herself to falter again. Not when it was Gunther who would have to pay the price.

Limping now, she had no choice but to stumble on.