He thinks, all is gamble: their surroundings, the path narrow and sleek before them. The sleepy, argent languor of a moon that seems to know no waning, no cloud. There is a thrall to the woods, a silent and waiting reckoning.

Inertia is a sullen master. To wait is to fail, to risk, to achieve nothing. To move is simply to wager an ideal gain against a probable, cresting cost. He cannot choose for two, yet he has done so. The war still beats a drum his temples remember as a migraine, come misty, autumn mornings.

He watches her, owlish, for a moment, taking the tally of her visible injuries, her frame, her weaknesses. There is little one can estimate in the dark. "Wounded?"

Before, she kept the pace in ways that did not suggest the distraction of hurts, any impairment of her body. But deformities of bone do not reveal themselves swiftly. She could hide a cleaving of muscle, an erosion of cartilage. Slow, but deepening bruising.

"Decide. I run first, you see what gives chase." If anything. Perhaps there is nothing, waiting. And yet. "But you come after unguarded. Or the reverse."

Each proposition with its own demerits. Were they a larger contingent, strategy would come into play. This is a mere game, no less, no better.