“Kira stood on top of a grassy hill, her feet planted on the frozen, hard ground. Snow fell on her as she tried to ignore the stinging cold, raising her bow and concentrating on the target. The girl squinted, shut out the rest of the world—the gust of wind, the cries of distant birds—and forced herself to focus only on a skinny birch tree with white bark that stood in the distance among a landscape of purple pines. Forty yards was a shot that neither her brothers nor even her father's men could manage, and it was what made her more determined. She was the youngest in the group, the only girl among them...”