“You’re getting quite good with that thing,” Claes said.

“I’m not bad with two hands.” Farisa fired upon the hull of a dead cactus. “One-handed, I still miss as often as I hit.”

“It takes time. You’ll get better.”

The sun was about to rise over the desert plain. A pale tumbleweed rolled between Farisa and her target. “Kanos didn’t take it well.”

“Losing at cards?”

“Aye. Out here, things seem to become more than they’d be somewhere else.”

“It’s true.” Claes, on a turn-and-draw, scored a bullseye. “That’s why people come to places like this.”

“Such as when Mazie and I—never mind.”

“Mazie,” Claes said. “Is she feeling any better?”

“She is, but she and Talyn had the exact same symptoms: vertigo, headache at the bridge of the nose, nausea, exhaustion. It’s strange. I don’t think it’s just the heat.”

“I don’t think it is either,” said Claes. “Nor does Garet. Something evil is afoot, and we should leave this town as soon as we can.”

“What if it’s not the town?”

“What would it be, then?”

“Let me empty this chamber.” Farisa, shooting two-handed, scored three bullseyes in a row. The cactus imploded. “I don’t know. Forget I said it.”

“Saito looked over our animals’ injuries,” said Claes. “Those didn’t happen by accident. They were deliberate.”

“Deliberate?” Farisa lowered her gun hand. “Why?”

“The longer we’re here, the more they can sell us overpriced junk. That’s the only rationale I can come up with.”

“The feeling I get here is the opposite,” Farisa said. “The locals are eager to have us go. It might be something else.”

“In any case, we should aim to be rid of it, and move.”

They were out of bullets for the morning, so they walked back to the tavern tent, arriving just before seven o’clock. Saito and Garet, already awake, had finished their morning coffee. Eric joined at half past; Kanos and Runar, just before eight. Talyn arrived at eight thirty, insisting her headache had cleared, but still unusually demanding in her request coffee. Mazie came last, at nine, looking like she hadn’t slept at all.

A server came to ask Mazie if she wanted breakfast.

“I wouldn’t be able to keep it down.”

Claes said, “Our animals are well enough to travel. We think it’s best to get out of here as soon as we can.”

Mazie put a hand on her neck.

Garet said, “The animals have healed, and we think the reason you’ve gotten sick is bad water. We’ve dumped everything, to be safe. We’ll go dry for twelve miles. Once we cross the ridge out east, we’re in a different watershed.”

Talyn pushed her plate, barely touched, to the center of the table. “It’s going to be so damn hot.”

“It is,” Garet said. “There are parts of the Road where one prefers to travel by night, due to the heat. However, what I have heard around town is that orcs are far more active this season than before, and orcs, while they see poorly during the day, have an advantage at night. Therefore, we’ll have to keep traveling by day and taking rest—a watchful rest, of course—in the dark hours.”

“Of course,” Runar said.

Claes asked, “Are we all ready?”

They looked at each other and their finished plates.

“Then let’s go.”

#

The nine of them left Obbela, on foot because the animals were still recovering from their injuries, in addition to their having to go without water for the first part of the day. Farisa, coming down a hill at more speed and carrying more weight than she could handle, twisted her ankle and fell. Eric struggled to keep up with the others. Runar got stung on the wrist by an insect; Mazie, on the shoulder. Garet overtaxed his arm while leading a husker back to the trail, and the animals were struggling in general, despite their lightened loads. This all happened in the first two miles.

Still, travel went better when their up-and-down ceased and they found themselves on a higher flat. As Garet had predicted, Mazie’s and Talyn’s headaches disappeared as soon as they left town. Obbela, even by sundown, seemed so distant in memory they could have told themselves they’d been there years ago.

They worked their way south. As days passed, life resumed the trail’s familiar routine: wake at dawn, have dried meat and oats for breakfast, try not to step in husker shit, then ride or hike fifteen or twenty miles, stopping when the untas began to pant. Scenery, beyond Obbela, was much like what Farisa had seen before: yellow hills, parched scrubland, and shimmering pools of false water. The monotony was not unpleasant—the odd play of it on her waking memory seemed to have a compressive effect: the days seemed to be getting easier, more familiar, and therefore speedier through the boring parts. Two o’clock, typically, would be the time when the animals started showing a need to rest. At this point, they’d have a long lunch; if the air cooled or a cloud covered the sun, and if the animals were able, they would squeeze out a few extra miles using the last of the light before setting camp.

Sixteen southward miles in a day, Farisa had come to appreciate, was often considerable progress here. They could walk three miles per hour on the flat, but hills and thick brush often slowed them down, as well as the zigzags necessary to stick to the trail, not to mention the extra yards to find campsites as well as water and grass. Runar was best at finding places to set camp, while Claes and Garet had the best knowledge of terrain and Saito was unmatched in the ability to find groundwater. Farisa, although she suspected Mazie and Eric were better, had developed an eye for grass—she knew which species the untas and huskers preferred, and would steer them toward the best fodder that could be found.

Sometimes, Farisa found herself craving the sort of togetherness that came from their long campfire chats into the wee hours—an opportunity to learn, for each of these people, the true story of their being here—but, almost always, they were so exhausted by eight o’clock that they all went quickly to bed, the exception being the person on first watch, who would begin to drink coffee as soon as a cooking fire was set. On the rare night when a fire couldn’t be made—not for weather, it being so dry out here, but for the lack of a concealed location—to brew it, one could eat the grounds as they were.

The stories that might have been told over a campfire were, instead, usually told in pieces over the day. Eric’s were often clearly made-up, but funny, while Runar’s were often gross and self-deprecating, and Kanos’s were bawdy and one-sided. Garet preferred to stick to the recounting of books he had read; he had been a sheriff, but seemed to regard his prior job as an encumbrance rather than an honor. Saito, on the other hand, was truly an enigma. He was competent in everything he did, and he was not shy when circumstances demanded he speak, but he never spoke of a personal life, so as to suggest he was a man with no past or future—he always knew what to do in the present, but he had always known. Eternal competence. Still, there was something he often said in his sleep, sometimes mumbled but sometimes with surprising emotion: “Sayuna, draw white.”

She did not feel she knew him well enough yet to ask who Sayuna was.

The weather improved. The rocky trail was rising more often than it dropped, the soil was darker and smelled fresher, and the sky was often mixing high clouds into its color. Brush grew as tall as an unta’s withers, and small conifers dotted the hills. When the overcast sky let fall a gentle drizzle, around noon on the fifteenth, Farisa and Mazie looked at each other and smiled, because while they had seen the harsh tropical rains that fell in buckets—the squalls that had stranded them in Muster came to mind—and they had seen cloudless days on which it stung the eyes to look anywhere near the sun, it was a relief to experience, if only for an hour or two, the light rains of the civilized world.

On July 17, they encountered a band of six northbound travelers. Usually, groups tended to avoid each other, using or inventing side trails due to a justified fear of orcs, bandits, and Globbos, but these people, haggard and exhausted, had lost the will to conceal themselves.

Garet was the first to speak to them. “What’ve you seen out there?”

“Orcs,” said the other group’s leader, who neither looked up nor halted at first. His black beard bore shocks of white, but no intervening gray. “That’s about all of it. Lots of orcs, lots of heat. It ain’t bad up in these mountains, though, so enjoy it while you can.”

Farisa asked, “Did you get to the Ivory Ashes?”

The weather-beaten man scoffed. “Not even close.”

One of the others said, “Portal was hot enough for one lifetime.”

“It’s been miserable. Truly miserable.”

Claes offered them water and food, but the man refused.

“We have enough to get back home, which is all we intend to do.”

The travelers had one husker wagon and one unta, a male barely in riding shape. The men’s shirts were tattered and red patches of sunburned skin were exposed. One of them wore shoes that had been pulled together by bandages. Farisa wondered if they had failed because they were underprepared, or were ill-provisioned now because all they had been through.

The next day was pleasantly cool, almost cold. At dawn, Farisa was able to see her breath. The animals seemed unusually tired, so they all agreed to walk on foot. The huskers began to turn skittish, even by the standard of their species, and required coaxing to climb even hills of moderate grade.

Around eleven, they were moving through a foggy cedar grove—a lush place, a temperate forest that looked similar to Cait Forest in early autumn—when Talyn screamed. Farisa looked back to see that she and Eric had fallen a hundred yards behind them. The boy was able to walk, but breathing heavily, and his glassy fear-struck eyes reminded Farisa of her own battles with the Marquessa. He had turned off the trail and gone down a slope—one no steeper or worse than so many others they’d climbed and descended, but dangerous to one without his wits about him. Mazie, who had been first to hear Talyn, caught up with the boy and wrapped her arms around him.

Claes said, “What’s going on?”

Eric, when brought back to the main trail, seemed to wake from a dream; he bent over and vomited.

“We might want to take it easy,” Garet said.

“What the hell is wrong with him?” Talyn asked.

“If I had to guess, it’s mountain sickness. We are fourteen thousand feet above sea level.”

“The air’s thin,” Claes said. “We might have come up too fast.”

Talyn said, “We might have?”

Saito opened his pack and produced a handful of dried-out leaves. “Here.”

Talyn asked, “What’s that?”

“Medicine. If he chews the leaves, it may help.” He paused. “Do I have your—”

“Permission?” She waved a hand. “If it works.”

“It should.” Saito gave Eric a wad of green plant matter; the boy put it in his mouth and began to chew it. “Make sure he drinks plenty of water.”

Claes crouched and said to Eric, “We’re stopping in an hour or so. Can you make it that far?”

Eric nodded.

Garet adjusted the brim of his hat. “Altitude can’t always be avoided, but you’ll acclimate in time. The next few miles are downhill, so we’ll sleep lower than we are now.”

#

The next morning, Farisa and Garet leafed through their collection of maps to find a jug-handle trail that, while it would add two days to their journey, would avoid their having to climb the highest mountains. Eric wasn’t the only one feeling altitude’s effects: Mazie’s appetite had withered enough to arouse concern, and Saito’s sleep-talking (“Sayuna, draw white”) had become so frequent, even Claes had made comment on it.

The path of this detour could hardly be called a trail, having grown over with tough shrubs and dark-leaved ferns. They had to beat each yard of progress with their machetes, and their arms tired of the motion quickly. On occasion, one of them would hear a rustling in the understory, halt, and wait. Invariably, harmless animals had caused the sound, but one never knew if orcs were about.

“The boy is better,” Talyn said at dinner. “Thank the gods for you, Saito.”

“It takes time to acclimate, but he will.”

Garet added, “We join up with the main Road in three days at Milepost 463.”

Farisa tried to picture that distance, four hundred and sixty-three miles. A sailor with decent winds could cover that in two days, and a steamship or train could do it in one, but to make a scratch of the same length across the Bezelian continent had taken them six weeks. Out here, one lived and one earned every mile.

Every day’s noon sun swung higher than she’d ever seen a sun go. They passed through a field full of yellow flowers shaped like paintbrushes and she thought of Cait Forest. Had that really been only three months ago? It seemed to Farisa like she had been out here for half her life, because she looked on her prior self as one might a child, having learned so much since she had left that place. She could now set up or tear down a two-tent camp in a blue minute. She could steer an unta on her own through a narrow mountain pass. She approached huskers with no fear. With a pistol, she could hit a target at fifty yards. What would the people of her prior life think if they could see her now?

Not much, she decided. She reasoned that most of them had thought about her very liule at all.

Only a few miles before they joined the Road’s main trail, they spotted a party of seven large men, loud and malodorous enough to be noticed before sight.

Claes bid everyone to halt, then raised his binocular spyglass.

Runar said, “Were those—?”

“Those aren’t men,” Claes said. “They’re orcs, and they’re armed.”

“Guns?”

“Indeed. One of them has a rifle. I have no desire to find out if he knows how to use it.”

They trod quietly, unsure where the orcs were going; over the course of two hours, they moved less than a mile.

“I see them again,” said Garet. “They’re fishing that stream up there.”

“We can take them on,” Kanos said. “We outnumber them.”

“A fight avoided is a fight won,” Garet said.

“Something the winners never say.”

“I’m sixty-three years old, and while there are old fighters and bold fighters, there are no—”

He turned quiet. One of the orcs had looked in their direction, but either had not noticed them or had taken no interest. They also, however, made no hurry in leaving the stream. By the time they were done fishing, the sun, though still an hour from setting, had slipped behind a row of mountains.

“Delays happen sometimes,” said Garet with a long sigh.

The next day, they moved slowly, checking every step for signs of orcish presence or threat, because one could not see far in these woods. So, there was a tacit sense of relief among all of them when the trail began to dip—ferns and leaves with red fringes due to heat stress became more common, and the trees were shorter as their elevation dropped. By late afternoon, the mass of vegetation was behind them, a black curtain draped over a mountain.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

On July 21, they joined the original Mountain Road, at least as told by their maps, on a sandy plateau marked by cairns and small monoliths that made the Road easy to follow. Had these landmarks not been put in place, a due-south march by compass-point would have taken them the same way. This easy terrain did not last forever, of course; the next morning, they reached a spot where the ground seemed to have broken in two: at right, a sandstone cliff dropped by hundreds, then thousands, of feet into a chaos of boulders. The trail, which snuck through a rubble of striated yellow rock, offered no easy going, but was at least passible.

As the afternoon heat piled on, the animals seemed tense. The will of the wind felt predatory. Garet spotted a narrow ledge, the trail’s most obvious pinch point, and said that if an ambush were to come, it would happen there. Not more than a hundred yards on, five figures emerged from a small cave, all in plate mail, wielding clubs.

Garet attempted to speak to them, to plead for peaceful passage, but as soon as one swung at him, he shot it in the throat—it yelped in surprise as its neck opened up, pouring blood. Farisa fired at an orc, but missed. Runar’s shot punctured the same one’s head, causing the top of the skull to split open. Saito let fly a crossbow bolt that tore into an orc’s plated chest like the armor had been made of paper. Mazie, who was carrying a rifle at the time, shot the fourth orc below the collarbone, causing an otherwise nonlethal blow that made it grimace, then emit an ear-piercing scream, and then run in a panic until it collided with the fifth orc, causing both to tumble down the cliff.

Garet said, “Is that all of them?”

“I hope so,” Claes said. “I’ll check the cave.”

Farisa, as she stepped over the first fallen body, wass struck by its immensity—this orc was a foot and a half taller than the largest man she’d ever seen. The wooden club in its dead hand probably weighed fifty pounds.

Claes screamed. The orc shot down by Saito had been playing dead. It grabbed the man’s leg and yanked, causing him to fall forward. When he rolled over, reaching for his gun, the orc had come up into a kneeling position and raised its own cudgel. The man’s face whitened. Farisa raised her gun hand, but did not have time to shoot. Saito, who had snuck behind the assailant, stabbed the orc in its kidney, then slit its throat, with a long dagger.

This body had fallen directly across their way. Brown-red blood trickled down the trail, ending at a tiny waterfall over the cliff. The suit of armor made the body so heavy the efforts of five—Runar, Claes, Garet, Saito, and Mazie—were required to remove it from the way.

That evening, Garet announced that, henceforth, there would be three shifts of nighttime watch and that each would require two people. With eight adults and three shifts to fill, this would mean only one night off in four, but it was better than to risk an ambush.

Farisa drew the morning shift; Runar awakened her around two thirty. She had slept poorly in any case—they were back down in the six-flag heat.

Kanos, finishing up the midnight shift, stood by the fire with flask in hand.

Farisa said, “You’re drinking?”

“Night’s boring. Now, how about you mind your own business?” Kanos walked into the tent.

“Good night!”

He said nothing.

Few insects were buzzing, and the lack of tree cover meant one could see far, far into the lightless furrows of the landscape. Saito, the other one on watch, didn’t say much, so she was left to ruminate. I did not score a single shot. Combat comes on so fast and I am not built for it. We are surviving because we keep getting lucky, but orcs kill for sport and we don’t, so it’s only a matter of time before....

Why didn’t I make a single shot? Why can’t I be more useful?

She dreaded every rustle, even though these were usually produced by harmless creatures like geckos or desert hedgehogs.

In time, morning light bled into the sky. They ate breakfast, all exhausted and silent. Their bodily aches demanded a rest day, but their minds understood the value of putting miles between themselves and yesterday’s skirmish as quickly as possible, and the untas were strong enough to be ridden for a few hours now.

Mazie, readying herself for the day’s travel, put a biscuit and nuts into her canvas trail satchel. “Do any of you feel bad about killing orcs?”

Kanos chuckled. “Feel bad? Why would I?”

“They’re disgusting and cruel,” Runar said. “They eat people.”

“That, I don’t take issue with,” Kanos said as he put one arm around Mazie and one around Runar, “We would eat them, if we could.”

“I wouldn’t,” Mazie said.

Farisa remembered Cait Forest. “Me neither. Their blood is poisonous.”

Kanos said, “Sure you’d eat them, if you were hungry enough.”

“No,” Mazie insisted. “In a way, it would be cannibalism.”

“We aren’t orcs.”

“We aren’t, but they eat us, so to eat one of them would be—”

“Come off it, Mazie. Everything eats. Orcs are our only predators. You’re telling us you’re not curious to taste one of them?”

“Not in the least.”

Kanos crossed his arms and cocked his head. “Have you ever been truly hungry, though? I’m talking about clay-eating, eat-your-best-friend hunger.”

“I’ve been hungry,” she said, hardening the H to use the more standard Ettasi accent. “Steal food? I did it all the time. Kill? Yes, I have, in self-defense. Cannibalism? No.”

Kanos shook his head. “Then you haven’t been truly hungry.”

Mazie pivoted to face him. “Really, Kanos?”

“You don’t have the look of it.”

Farisa pulled her shoulders back. “If you’re saying—”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” Kanos cocked his head. “A certain kind of hunger stays with you forever.”

“It does,” Mazie said. “I agree.”

“Splotched skin, sunken eyes,” Kanos said. “I know the marks. You don’t have them.”

“Speak for yourself,” Mazie said.

“If orc flesh wasn’t poisonous, it’d be a delicacy.”

“Kanos,” Claes said, “this isn’t a worthwhile conversation.”

#

By the time they crossed the thirtieth parallel, the heat had reached a level beyond discomfort; at seven-and-a-half flags, it forced them to slow down. At eight, which they only experienced once, there was nothing to do but take shade and wait. Muscle cramps became a perennial pain. The animals’ urine took on the color of tea. They hurried, each morning, to get moving as early as possible, knowing that by midday it would be too hot to progress. They drank as much water as their stomachs could hold.

Farisa had noticed Kanos’s habit of riding ahead of the others, sometimes by hundreds of yards, often pulling Runar along with him. Claes would ride up and ask them to pull back, since it did no one any good to split up, especially in orcish territory, but within an hour, the two brothers would drift ahead, far out front again.

She wondered what they might be talking about. This kind of heat wasn’t conducive to casual conversation—thirst and cramps and grit were predominant in everyone’s mind, and there was no use in talking about it—so she thought it must be something important or, at least, interesting.

Pretenses had eroded by now. These people relied on each other’s eyes and ears and firearms to survive, because orcs were everywhere—they’d see a scout, at least, once per day—but they no longer felt a need to act as if they all liked each other. Mazie considered Talyn an irresponsible mother, whereas Talyn considered Mazie to be uncouth. Claes considered Kanos a reckless idiot, useful for his quick reaction time and excellent aim, but to be restrained like an ill-behaved dog. Eric was the only one who seemed to like everyone, a fact that made Talyn grimace, because she could not stand Mazie, did not seem to enjoy Farisa’s company either, and resented Runar for the division of Kanos’s attention. Garet seemed above the fray, but only because he’d been here before.

Farisa did not want to overtax herself in this heat, but she felt it would be dangerous if this group had too many secrets, so she entered the blue, just a little, to heighten her own senses. As bad as the heat was—she hadn’t slept well in days—it did seem that magic flowed more easily down here; separating herself from bodily limitations did not require a much struggle she was used to, and she was able to make herself hear the underground burrowing of worms, the flapping of distant vultures’ wings, and the conversation between the two brothers who had wandered up front.

“I don’t favor any of them,” Kanos said.

“My moods change.” Runar seemed to be brushing something off his leg. “They’re competent.”

Kanos scoffed. “We have three girls and a child with us.”

Runar paused, as his unta examined something on the ground. “Mazie's as good as you and I, and Farisa is, well... she’s smart enough to pick things up quickly. As for Talyn, I do question her decision to bring a kid here.”

“She has reasons.”

“Why are you here? You never did explain it.”

“Don’t be silly.” Kanos laughed. “Nothing but money. I’m a simple man. What’s the bearded guy giving you?”

“Claes? Ten percent.”

“Loser. I’m getting fifteen.”

“Good for you, but I’m not sure percentages matter.”

“Of course they matter.”

“They matter if we’re headed back to the world we left, but I think Claes intends to go far beyond Switch Cave. I think he thinks we can make it all the way.”

Kanos scoffed. “All the way what?”

It was hard to tell from this distance, but Runar appeared to shrug. “We could.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Garet said it’s half a flag cooler than when he came here before, due to the Alma Winter.”

“Some winter. I take a piss and it steams right off the ground.”

“If anyone’s going to make it across the Ashes, it’ll be us, in this group, on this trip.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Runar. As I said, we’re traveling with three snatches and a child, and there’s no reason the Ivory Ashes can’t go on for two thousand more miles. What kind of person looks at hell and expects there to be a better world on the other side of it? You know what’s beyond hell? More hell. That’s it.”

Runar responded, but Farisa—she would have to give up her hold on the blue soon—couldn’t hear what he said.

"We will be fine, Runar. We’ll get what's of-the-getting in Switch Cave. The rest of them? Leave ‘em to die. They're a mess of a group. As I said, three snatches and a kid. Garet’s over sixty, and Claes is also past his prime, and our doctor’s a viv.”

Farisa had failed to realize that her unta had hastened and was closing the distance. “No. Hold back.”

On the other hand, the unta’s faster pace meant she could hear them plainly, without the blue.

“Viv? You’re sounding like a Globbo.”

“Ha! I miss the camaraderie. Saying words like tarsha, nyrrit, it’s not about hate. It’s about... it’s about having a place where you can say them.” Kanos laughed.

“You haven’t outgrown that?”

“It’s fun. When I was young, I was really into that Globbo shit. What they call Hampus Youth now—obviously it wasn’t called that back then, because Hampus was nobody—was—”

“I know. Firmenjugend. I can’t picture you taking orders.”

“They tone that bit down. It’s all bravery and glory, till you’re old enough to actually fight. That’s when they take you apart and you either put yourself back together as someone who will take orders, or lay about in pieces.”

“And you...?”

“I never got that far. I could see that it was stupid. H’vast this, h’vast that. Still, the Company Youth years taught me a lot of survival skills. In that sense, it served me well.”

“Don’t mention it to Claes.”

“It’s not like I had a choice,” Kanos said. “I was pulled into it when I was six. You only escaped it because of your—”

Farisa tasted metal in her mouth. She had been in the blue too long.

“Where is Portal?” Kanos asked.

Runar said, “Twenty-nine and a half degrees north, I believe.”

“Twenty-eight and a half,” Farisa said. “We’d be closer if it were twenty-nine, as we’re already at twenty-nine four."

“Do you hear the wind picking up, Runar?”

“I check our latitude every three hours.”

“This wind!” Kanos smacked his unta on the side of her head. “As I was saying, Runar, this Mountain Road is a long con. There’s still a lot of gold in Switch Cave, but that’s it. The rest of it? Someone just wanted a bunch of idiots to die in the Ashes, so he concocted a legend about ‘one world, split in two.’ No, this south is as south as it gets. Vehu used to own much of the land in Portal—they probably still do—which is why they put out this idea that the Road once went farther. The Yitano Papers—”

“Yitano Papers?” Farisa said as she rode up between the two men. “None of the prophecies came true. Wasn’t the world supposed to end in 9990? Four years later, we’re all still here. There are Mountain Road maps in the Papers that don’t even include Obbela and Terapic. I’d call those big details to miss.”

“Runar, can you tell this broad that it’s rude to jump in when men are talking?”

“I wouldn’t mind hearing what she has to say,” Runar said. “Apologies for my half-brother.”

“No one knows for sure, but there’s a lot of evidence that, a couple thousand years ago, perhaps in a cooler climate—”

Talyn screamed.

Garet yelled, “On alert! All, on alert!”

Kanos said, “Orcs again?”

“No,” Garet said as he pointed across the dusty plain. “Squibbani.”

The eight massive animals moved in the formation of a perfect octagon, their bodies shaped like fungal bobs, seeming to sail over the desert in motion perfectly smooth from a top view, though a turbulent rumble was caused by their tentacles slamming against the ground. Terror spread through Farisa’s spine and lungs as they realized they were twice Runar’s height. She looked at Claes, then Garet. Her hand had already gripped her gun, but she doubted it would be any use against creatures so massive, now less than a hundred yards away.

#

For a moment, she had forgot to breathe. The squibbani’s motion was hypnotic—even beautiful for the way that random tentacle movement enabled their white-capped heads to glide on a flawless linear path, despite uneven ground. Two of them, dark brown and smaller than the other six, seemed to be their young.

“They don’t seem to be interested in us,” said Garet.

In fact, Farisa deduced, their chosen trajectory would miss them by about forty yards. Her shoulders relaxed. The creatures had clearly noticed the human travelers, but taken no issue with their presence.

She looked at Garet, who seemed to agree with her when she said, “We can probably just—”

Wait. She heard a bang. Though she hoped it was a spot of blue-sky lightning, the smallest of the squibbani, as if tripping over a stone, fell and rolled over its head, tentacles flaring as if in a grapple with its final angel.

“It was ugly,” said Kanos.

The other seven closed its gap, forming a heptagon that now swirled around its center on a changing path.

You reckless fucking sack of shit. Farisa considered shooting Kanos in the leg to make amends, but she was unsure if it would appease the squibbani.

Claes fired a warning shot into the sky; it was not heeded.

“Fuck!”

Saito fired his crossbow. Garet fired a rifle. Two bodies tumbled out of formation, leaving the others to form a pentagon.

“The eye is the weak spot,” Garet yelled. “It’s useless to hit anything else.”

Mazie and Claes opened fire on the same assailant; at least one bullet hit the target, as its gelatinous head ruptured. A tentacle slammed against the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust that shut Farisa’s eyes. Something else scratched her blinded face. Her unta buckled and she rolled off. When she landed on her back, a tentacle had encircled the animal’s forelegs. Saito’s crossbow bolt entered the squibbani’s eye. Saito, having now dismounted as well, hacked the tentacles away, freeing her unta.

She heard Garet scream. The old man’s face was bleeding and his legs had been ensnared by the tentacles of a squibbani with fluorescent purple rings of rage on its cap. Mazie ran toward him, crouched to get the best angle, and fired her pistol, piercing its eye. Its body collapsed, but the spastic contractions of its tentacles caused Garet to fall.

Two squibbani remained; a shrill chittering between them suggested they were discussing a change of tactics as they swung away from the group, seeming to retreat in opposite directions before hitting both flanks in a full-speed pincer attack. The untas panicked. Talyn, the only one who hadn’t dismounted by now, fell off her mount and did not rise.

The towering beasts’ heads sported violet rings that glowed visibly, even in sunlight.

“One’s going for Eric!” Mazie yelled.

Farisa, gun ready, stepped in its way, but the creature swung its tentacle so fast the weapon seemed to have flown out of her hand. The beast’s fiery eyes fixated on her, as if deciding whether it was even worth it to kill such a small creature, and she flinched in fear of a lashing she would not survive but, as if the squibbani had angered itself to death, the body swelled up, growing distended and spherical, then exploded with a loud, fleshy pop, covering her arms and face in a stringy gray snot that smelled like burning rubber mixed with vomit.

Eric! He really is a mage! She had believed none of Talyn’s story, but nothing else explained this. “Thank you, Eric.”

The boy cleverly feigned ignorance. “For what?”

Ouragan, who had been sitting atop her unta, fell off. Farisa caught the cat in her arms. Sometimes, she forgot the animal, as dextrous and healthy as if she were young, was over twenty years old.

The final squibbani, knowing these creatures had superior weapons and numbers, put its head down in submissive posture. The violet rings of anger turned to spots identical in shape and color to its eye, making it impossible to discern the real target. It seemed to be dancing; its tentacles lashed out, but harmlessly at the air.

Farisa tried to aim her weapon, but the creature was moving too fast.

It’s playing with us.

Saito’s unta emitted a squeal that would harden the blood of a deep ocean god as a tentacle, flung from a distance of at least ten yards, bloodied its belly. Farisa fired her pistol—one, two, three, four, five, six—to no effect. Saito’s crossbow bolt entered its gelatinous head but missed the eye—she could see now which spot was the correct one—by half a foot.

“Shit!” Claes yelled. “My gun’s jammed.”

The squibbani had, in its dance, moved to the spot where it was least vulnerable. It had somehow known that Claes’s gun was jammed, and that Runar would be unable to hit it from where he stood without a certainty of enraging the huskers. Mazie had no direct aim at its eye; Talyn had fallen unconscious; Garet had risen, but lost his weapon. Whatever Eric had done, he’d be in no shape to do it again. It would take Claes a second or two to unholster another pistol, and that was time they didn’t have.

The world slowed down, as if Farisa had entered the blue, though she had made no decision to do so; rather, the blue had taken her in. She could spot the adversary’s eye, and she did have a second gun on her person, but her hands were too slow in this viscous air to draw. Kanos, only Kanos, was positioned to make the shot and she watched as his rifle’s barrel flared, as gas erupted from the weapons rear, as the bullet glided out, spinning under sunshine, inconstantly flashing.

The projectile was on course to miss the eye by three inches, scoring no effect at all, so she put herself fully into the blue, just enough to throw a tiny bolt of her own mind at the bullet, making it change course and enter the beast’s eye, severing the strings of nerve that held together its brain, and turning off the lights of its world for good.

The blue dissolved like a dream in the first minute of morning. What breath she could draw failed to color her vision. She tucked her head and swung out her arm to break her fall—

#

She opened her eyes to a sky-colored blur. The side of her face that had hit the ground stung. Spittle had leaked from her mouth and dried.

“We don’t have much time,” Garet said.

She sat up. “Did we win?”

Claes clicked his mouth. “Eight of them dead, none of us. Still, I wouldn’t call it winning.”

“There’ll be a hundred here in an hour,” Garet said. “Whitecaps defend their clan. We’ve got to get to a town as fast as we can.”

Claes shook his head. “Terapic’s ten miles away.”

“The untas can run that in an hour. Huskers, too, if we relieve them of half their weight.”

“Half?”

“Half.”

“We’ll ditch our water,” Claes said. “We’ll need most of it to wash off this gunk.”

“Indeed,” said Farisa as she looked around. The gray slime of ruptured squibbani bodies—much of it had landed on her—had flown everywhere and was drying out, giving off heat as it hardened. Its odor had evolved to one mixing the smells of cat urine and rotting fruit. The dab that had landed on her lower lip had caused numbness.

Claes looked back. “Saito, how are you doing back there?”

The man shook his head. His unta, with the last of her strength, had walked away from the other animals. The squibbani had torn her belly open, and red ropes of entrails had fallen out. Confusion and horror darkened her eyes.

Farisa wanted to hug Saito in sympathy, but she was far away and they were both covered in squibbani gunk, so she nodded and raised her gun hand.

“Thank you for the offer, but I will do it.” Saito put a hand on his brow to block the too-high alien sun, and drew a mournful breath. “She deserves a decent burial. It’s a shame we don’t have time to give her one.”

Farisa plugged her ears.

Saito did not avert his gaze. “Goodbye, friend.”