They continued across the seemingly endless sands, watering every grain with their sweat, anointing every granule with their strain. In the hourglass of time the sands continued to shift, and they couldn't find their way outside the glass. Their shadows struggled with them, hauling and heaving, dropping with them, and clambering up with them, and reminding them constantly that otherwise they were alone.

The truth of it was that time was healing his outer wounds, but time with Jacob was healing the ones inside.

That was the thing about bad dreams in the Wild North. You still had them when you woke up.

She looked at her right hand, where the index finger was cut to a stump. Some said she lost it in an accident, when she was playing soldier with a live grenade. Others said she was taught a lesson by the law, and they took her trigger finger to make her keep on learning. Those were the lessons the Coilhunter liked. Why, he was quite the teacher himself.

But then the war didn't always harden you on the outside. The desert did that. The war crisped you up within.