Instinctively he tore the pick out of the ground. It was buried so deep that only a very strong hand could have sent it in; not the girl, he thought, somehow relieved that she hadn't done it. No, a miner's blow alone might have done it, for the earth was packed solid as oak's wood by untold multitudes of rebels' feet.
Wait a minute, he said to himself: this is all wrong. That blow should have opened my skull like a walnut. It missed me by a fraction—either the aim was poor, or else damned good. I could have struck such a blow, sure to miss where I wished to, but not even many miners could duplicate it.
Had the enemy missed, then walloped him with another weapon and left him for dead? Gingerly he felt the wound on his head. It was healing already, a tap that might have laid him out for a few hours, but would never have slain him.
He glared at the pick in his hand. Then he brought it up and in the combined light of the blue lanterns and the dawn filtering in from the woods, he squinted at the handle.
Where his own pick bore the crude carving of a mink (he had taken the beast as his symbol a long time ago, another sign of his identity), this one had a jumble of grooves meant to represent a woods lion.
This wasn't Revel's pick—it was his brother Rack's!
Caught in an appalling dream that was the hardest reality he'd ever faced, he pored over the pickax, scanned the motionless form of his friend Jerran, then goggled foolishly at nothing in particular as he thought of his situation, stranded in a place he could not escape from alone, with many half-formed plots in his head but no way to carry them out. Between him and Dolfya, and the other rebels, lay miles of tangled forest no man, be he ever so skillful at woodscraft, could penetrate without the knowledge of a route; thousands of the ruck were depending on him to lead them, and he couldn't even lead himself home.
"If you're the Mink, Revel m'lad," he said aloud, "it's time you came up with a brilliant idea!"
And there wasn't a scheme in his head.