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Chapter Thirty-Two

As the Crewe’s strange procession finally cleared the lichen tracts, Peter looked back along its moonlit length. Seen from the low rise that marked the beginning of the wastes, it was part marching order, part prisoner escort. And it would remain so until Bey and the other trog survivors from the hovel—thirteen in all—had their status determined: captives or allies.

For now, that meant Peter on point, a primary reaction force fifteen meters back, then the kajh, followed by the main van. The urldi followed close behind with most of the goods from the hovel, watched over by the rearguard. Between their numbers, the extended formation, and the slower pace of the wounded, they had only covered two thirds of the distance they had planned. Still, by staying close to the river, bright in the glow of the moon, they had managed to put almost ten kilometers between themselves and Forkus.

But false dawn was already starting to tint the eastern sky, and if they did not manage to increase their—

A whistle rose from the rough ground ahead and then warbled as it faded.

Wu brought up his fist. Creaks of creased leather and tucked gear told him that his signal had brought the formation to a crouching halt. “Truth,” he announced into the darkness to the north.

“Dare,” came the countersign . . . but the voice was not Ulchakh’s. Still, it was familiar.

The silhouette of a head rose up from behind the long low ridge ahead. From the shape alone, Peter knew whose it was. “Ta’rel!”

The mangle rose, spatulate teeth shining in the moonlight. “Your Low Praakht is much improved, Friend Wu. I see you have brought many new friends.” The mangle paused as he stood on the low spine of the rise. “They are friends, are they not?”

“That remains to be seen. As does the rest of your group.”

Ulchakh rose into view. “Well met. Ta’rel and I are the only two in this place. Those who were sent along from our mutual friend have watched over us and your goods and kits. I suspect they are departing even now.”

Wu didn’t need his HUD to detect Tasvar’s overwatch group departing, their outlines moving beneath the crest of the next ridgeline toward the sheltering bulk of the next. They were a covey of dark shadows, slipping into even darker shadows . . . and were gone in an instant.

Ulchakh gestured to Wu. “Come. There is much to carry.” He scanned the column, crouching behind Peter. “But I see you planned for that.”

Unwilling to point out they’d had no such foresight, Peter waved the formation to its feet and led the way toward the slope behind which their gear and goods were hidden.

***

Bey had gradually increased her pace until she reached the head of the kajh marching between the small group that the harrows called their “reaction force” and the main van. She glanced sideways. “How do you fare, Zaatkhur?”

The maimed kajh started. Realizing who had brought him out of his daze, he smiled crookedly, “I am alive, Little Bey. And after such a night, that is something.”

“It is indeed, old friend.” Uncertain if their captors would see danger in two trogs walking close together, she kept her distance from the protector who’d kept her warm and fed after her mother’s death. “These harrows are puzzling,” she muttered.

“If harrows they are.”

“I have wondered the same thing.” She reminded herself to speak quietly. None of the harrows were in easy earshot, but they had strange abilities, particularly when their helmets’ mirror-visors were closed. “But if not harrows, what are they?”

“That is a question for which I have no answer. But they are almost certainly the ones we heard rumors about, the ones that visited Kosvak’s vansary several days ago. Like that group, they do not show nor claim themselves sworn to any liege, for certainly, with so much magic kit, they would not serve any lesser lord.”

Bey nodded. “Yet that merely makes their origins mysterious. What I find most interesting is that this group does not act like harrows.”

“In what way?”

“The one who gives orders—Leader Caine—must be the group’s First Harrow, and so, should have the hardest heart. No liege, x’qao or otherwise, would allow any less. Yet, his questions about punishing the oathbreakers and about the young in the underground are not those that come from a hard heart.”

“Ah, Little Bey is curious.” Zaatkhur smiled despite his savaged hand. “Which means she is about to get into trouble. Again.”

Bey would have liked to punch his arm. “Sometimes, curiosity is necessary, you old thickhead. As it is now. City trogs live or die by understanding the intents and ways of those who hold them in thrall. But this group, these harrows-who-are-not, are unknown. Leader Caine, and the others who counseled him, spoke of us as if they were determining the fate of their own kind. Even among independent humans, such as Vranadoc and the Legate, that is not often the case.”

“Unless they are speaking of a whakt,” Zaatkhur muttered with a mischievous side glance at Bey.

“True, but in this case, it does not seem to matter how much human blood was in our veins. They did not even seem to be aware of the differences.”

“Yes, that was strange. As was the leader’s insistence on executing the first oathbreaker with his own hand. I thought it would be out of rage. What else would motivate one so powerful as he to act so far beneath his station? But I saw no anger. Only . . . regret?”

Bey shook her head. “Far more than regret. Did you see how pale he became, even for a burntskin? Yet he insisted on doing so. As if it was a terrible duty.”

“Ah,” Zaatkhur hummed, “so your curiosity is personal, too.”

Bey would have liked to buffet her avuncular tormentor about the ears, but even if he had not been wounded, she could not have brought herself to indulge in one of their fond traditions. Because he was right. The more she reflected on Leader Caine’s strange questions, and what at times seemed like his solicitude, the more she recognized that his reactions were much as her own had been when she and her mother had first arrived in Forkus.

Not that life among the Free Tribes had been easier: the dangers of the wastes were more profound than those of the city. Indeed, that was why the bonds of family and clan were their sacred sources of comfort, support and survival. Which was why lieges, but particularly x’qai, did not permit them to exist, let alone flourish. It had been a hard lesson, learning to conceal her hatred for life as it was lived in Forkus. But she’d had to keep that loathing from showing on her face . . . and now she saw something very similar in the expressions of Leader Caine and his group. The same kind of surprised horror and revulsion that it had taken her years to learn how to suppress in order to be deemed worthy of the titles “counselor” and “truthteller.”

Water glimmered to the east. They were finally nearing the river that flowed down from Khorkrag and, further north, from Fragkork. Once the column could simply parallel its high-water bank, they would travel more swiftly: partly because the way ahead became obvious, but mostly because their right flank would be safe against the western bank.

Anticipating that the formation would push harder to reach that better path, Bey shifted her load: a dead kajh’s pack in addition to her own. The not-harrows showed no enjoyment in the wealth they gathered from the slain, but had nonetheless been efficient and swift in deciding what to keep and how to distribute it among their captives. And although they had not shared their final destination, the rendezvous with a mangle and a h’achgan trader of repute made it easy to guess: one of those species’ communities in the wadi country east of Khorkrag.

Bey allowed herself a small smile. If she was correct about those destinations, that made it just that much more likely that by the time they got there, they would have become servitors, rather than corpses left to rot upon the dust.

***

When the formation reached the river, Yaargraukh guided his rearguard through the same tactical evolution that the other parts had carried out before. Bringing his detachment forward, he arrayed them in a long column that paralleled the landward flank of the bearers. They, too, had been reformed into a column, protected on the other side by the river itself.

Waving the grat’r ahead, the Hkh’Rkh took a moment to rearrange his cloak against the draft which had been blowing cold upon his right side, and over his wound in particular.

He released the handle of his tower shield, shifted the longsword into that hand, and used his now-freed right to probe the place where the trog throwing knife had found the one gap in his previously damaged duty suit. Surprisingly, he felt almost no pain despite the steady marching. Indeed, he could barely trace the wound itself, which his fingers now registered more as a swollen ridge.

But as he brought his hand away, he felt it grow suddenly cool as the night air found and attacked a moist spot upon it. Puzzled, raised his fingers up into the fading moonlight.

A black smear, maybe with a taint of dark maroon in this light. Sticky. Blood.

Yaargraukh’s eyes reflexively retracted as the chill of realization hit him; he was bleeding again. He returned his hand to the rent in his duty suit. He had to probe the injury carefully but thoroughly, had to find the gash in order to assess the amount of blood loss.

Except he could not locate the gash at all.

Checking the rest of the formation to make sure that his actions were not attracting any attention, he dropped back slightly, released the side-seam clasps of his duty suit and felt around more carefully. When he still couldn’t locate anything other than the small ridge—which did not feel swollen so much as hard—he stopped, raised the flap of ballistic armor and looked.

The blood he’d found with his fingers was already thickening where it had run down his flank. But there was no longer any around the long welt that marked the knife’s passage along his flesh. Which meant that the gash that had been there two hours ago was gone. Not obscured or covered by swollen skin: it had disappeared.

Yaargraukh’s mind recoiled like a sand snake caught out of its lair in one of Rkh’yaa’s freak equatorial blizzards. It was not possible. The grat’r’s superstitious mummery about a mystic “physick” defied sense, did not warrant a shred of credence.

Yet there was no opening in his flesh, and the welt looked as if it had already formed and shed a scab.

Impossible. The last time the Hkh’Rkh had labeled something “magic” was when parahistorical soothsayers claimed to hear the words of the Ghostsires in every crash of thunder that had been heralded by a blue-white flash.

But as impossible as it might seem, the wound was gone.

Still, he thought as he resealed his duty suit with uncertain fingers, simply seeing something we do not understand does not mean it is evidence of “magic,” however miraculous it may appear. The grat’r explains it according to his limited understanding of the universe. I must share this with the others and, together, seek the actual agency at work.

Yaargraukh hurried to catch up to the rear of the formation, looked ahead to where Bannor was preparing to relieve Caine as the officer in charge of the main reaction force. They were the two humans who would most wish to know about this strange phenomenon. They were also the two people least likely to question the accuracy of his account. But this was not the time for yet another surprise, another unprecedented novelty to assess.

It would wait, he decided.

At least until tomorrow.

***

Bannor drew alongside Caine, who hadn’t spoken more than twenty words since they’d quit the hovel. Although not garrulous, Riordan had never been reluctant to talk, either. “Anything suspicious up ahead?”

“All clear. Behind?”

“Yaargraukh seemed to be having some trouble with his shield or his duty suit. Couldn’t really tell which. But he seems to have squared it away, now.”

Riordan nodded, slacked his pace to begin dropping back to the van.

“Caine, are you all right?”

Another nod. “I have to be. So I will be.”

Bannor shrugged. “I suppose that’s one advantage of the long walk ahead of us: a lot of time to sort things out.”

“To the extent they can be.” Rulaine looked at his friend, who waved away his concern. “I’m not talking about what happened tonight. I’m talking about how we got into it.”

“You mean, that we didn’t ask the right questions?”

“No: that we had no way to know what the right questions were. Because even Tasvar thought we were ready for what we had to do tonight. Remember what he said when Newton pointed out that we might have wounded leaving spoor that our enemies could follow?”

Bannor sighed, beginning to understand. “Yes: that we weren’t just warriors. We were soldiers, and so had experience making the difficult decisions called for in those situations.”

Riordan nodded. “But we don’t, do we? Yes, some of you have been in places where things like parole were provisional, or just a pleasant-sounding idea that most combatants ignored. But here? At best, those are just idealistic and ignored notions. The local traffic in life and death is no different than the trade in lichen or flint or dung. Everything and every life is just a resource. There isn’t even any concept of good or evil behind the choices made about them. The only criterion is utility and the only objective is survival.”

Somehow, hearing that come out of Caine’s mouth was more disturbing—and demoralizing—than the possibility that the deeds of the past night were tipping him into a fugue state. Bannor shook his head. “Well, at least some communities have values beyond survival of the fittest. They have enough conscience to be concerned with survival of their group, maybe even their allies. That’s something.”

Riordan shrugged. “I suppose so. But I think Dora is the one who’s done the best job of defining the basic nature of this place.”

Bannor raised an eyebrow. “Huh. She’s not usually the philosophical type.”

“She’s not. Maybe that’s why she saw, and articulated, the truth so clearly.”

“Which is?”

“That we really are in hell. You’ve got the lead. I’m falling back, now.”


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