The sun beats down like a great bronze maul as we march, and I am reminded that there are good deaths and bad deaths.<br/><br/>Keeling over from being charbroiled in one's chain mail would be a bad death.  Tumbling down a scabrous, scrubby hill as erosion-leeched soil crumbles below a misplaced boot and breaking one's neck would be a bad death.  Ameobic dysintery from the bog water, intestinal parasite up the breeches, mosquito borne blood fever; all bad deaths.<br/><br/>We run like treasure thieves, sprinting with nearly a hundred pounds of metal on our bodies, and the sharp, unsympathetic sun laughs a thousand promises of bad deaths to us.<br/><br/>I care only for good deaths as we go.  I keep my mind focused on them; on the good ground ahead, and on the bodies we will plant there, and how.  I run through my internal notes on the vulnerabilities of bog dweller anatomy.<br/><br/>Displaced spinal accessory nerve.  Massive artery 13 centimeters from the shoulder cuff.  Vulnerable heart below the stitching of the deltoid to the trapezius.  Don't shoot for the belly.<br/><br/>I tell my companions this.  Between panting.  "Don't shoot for the belly."<br/><br/>I take stock of them.  In many ways, they're more adept at this than I am.  In battle, I do not tire easily.  I have fought too many battles to think I can afford to be tired in them.  But forced marches are few and far between in my experience.  I focus on the good deaths ahead - I care only for them.  Not the sweat sluicing down my neck and breast and belly like boiled honey.  Not the steel wool of my breath.  Not that laughing sun.<br/><br/>I care only for good deaths.  That, and Amara.  I find myself wondering about her, the way I used to wonder why flowers smell as they do.  I wonder also whether she realizes she is on a quest to save herself; that she and the girl, Anissa, are only one in the same.  I wonder how she will endure feeling so important.  I wonder how she shoots.<br/><br/>As we dip down the crest of the hill, to where the bog spreads like the tears of a rubber tree within the green scab of forest, I begin to focus on good deaths again.  I see them everywhere they might be hidden; I try to find them before they find me.  My bow comes out, and coasts like a golden eagle before me, its beak an arrowhead unmoving in its aim.<br/><br/>Unmoving for now.  I am ready for when the next now comes.  When the time to unleash good death arrives.  And it must be near, for just as there are good deaths and bad deaths, there is good ground and bad ground.  And this is very good ground.<br/><br/>There, in the wormlike warp of the banyan trees, there could hunker an archer to shoot me through the eye - a good death.  There, in the bubbling, tarry water of an inlet, a scout might be in wait to slit my femoral artery - a good death.  Everywhere in the fens that spread like black sores, corrupt with vomitous islands of vegetation, there bristle good deaths: Bear traps through severed hamstrings.  Wire traps crossbow bolts in the duadenum.  Decapitations.  Open wrists.  Incineration.<br/><br/>I keep the bow focused on every possibility.  I kill these potential deaths before they can kill me.  I abort them with speed and attention.<br/><br/>My attention only slips a little.  I wonder where Marius met the animal traced on his body.  I wonder how Amara would react to the bog dwellers worshipping her.  I wonder what she would act like kidnapped.<br/><br/>I wonder if I could kill them both.<br/><br/>Idle thoughts, but they keep my mind off of the water snakes, the poisonous frogs, the necrotizing fasciitis in the bog - all those bad deaths in this very, very good killing ground.  I think about how Ymir smelled in the morning, rather than think about how the air smells like the belly of a corpse burst open.  I think about how Marius would smell.  I think about ten thousand ways I could kill an ambusher before they kill me.<br/><br/>So it is that I notice the figure of a good death ahead in the shadow before it notices me - a chunky, slouching figure moving at the shambling gait of an ape.  I motion for everyone to stop and sink into concealment.<br/><br/>As I do, I find Marius is already down there.  Amara is just a bit slower than me, and I catch sight of her eyes - they seem distant, washed out; the color of a slate board that has been written on and erased too many times.  She moves her slender limbs into place the way one would steer a cart.  She moves like she's just now getting used to being inside herself again.<br/><br/>Our arrows raise.  By then, the shape in the shadow has broken from the ragged edge of the tree line and is dashing across the fen in front of us.  Four more forms follow - all slinging themselves forward, brutal and brachiated.  All bog dwellers.<br/><br/>Like their companions at the village, they look like infected corn that someone sicked up and then wired into a long-armed humanoid shape.  Like gigantic babies made out of black mushrooms.  Like death sneezed.<br/><br/>They wear loose belts and a casual collision of armor pieces plucked from victims and belted haphazardly into place on their deranged forms.  The belt buckles jingle and clack as they move, giving them the sound of a calamitous festival parade.  Beside that, they make no sound as they lash their snotty limbs forward, tumbling legs and arms, their fat faces all teeth and murky, fishbowl eyes.  The bog dwellers never make sounds - until they are ready to attack.  Then the hooting starts, and continues until they are dead.<br/><br/>Stretched and swollen, lanky and lumpy, the gang of five bog dwellers splash and clack their way across our path.  I figure they are moving too fast to be a rear guard.  I do not see humans among them, or captives.  I figure them for the vanguard.  Most importantly, I figure them for about fifty yards ahead, dashing towards the tree-shrouded catacomb islands of the central bog.<br/><br/>I twist the sight on the side of the Hyrkanian bow.  The mist sighs like a cancer victim, rinsing my brow of concerns about falling under the bad death of sunstroke, the bad death of dehydration.  I sight through the rising mist at the rear bog dweller.<br/><br/>I wonder about Amara and her mist-haunted eyes.  "Don't shoot for the belly."  I tell her.<br/><br/>The killing ground air hisses as I let the first arrow fly.