Chapter Fifty Six

Day dawned, and they continued to ride. Tobok wouldn't permit anything besides it. They needed to go on, faster and faster, as if he was trying to outrun his own son. Carza was riding too quickly to really get a good look around, she was struggling just to hang on as the landscape rolled by, but... she felt sure that he was out there. Somewhere. Hadn't even learned his name, he was just 'the son' or 'the brother'. Presumably his name was taboo to utter, still. It'd been taboo when she arrived - he could be dead, and naming the dead was an invitation for some very bad luck. And now he was exiled... and presumably naming him would attract the same shame which hovered over his head. She remembered the sight of him in the dark, and tried to move past the instinctual fear that coloured those memories. He'd looked... no, she couldn't really tell anything past those initial flashes. Armour. Weapons. Height. Strength. Ironically, he seemed closer to the ancestors than his father, who was the one actually preparing to metamorphose into one. Maybe it was just his size, or his vitality. Hard to say. And the way he'd sounded, it was... alright, she could pinpoint something there. He'd sounded nervous. Embarrassed. Almost awkward. Instinctually trying to apologise or explain himself, aware that doing so was a violation of some sort of taboo... stuck between two extremes and flailing wildly. He was still out there. Following them.

Presumably trying to find his parents, his sister... but why?

Tobok was saying nothing.

Mrs Cauldron simply kept crying.

Dog was shaken.

And Kani... Kani wasn't shaken. She was shaking. Fire burned behind her eyes, and she gripped the reins of her horse with enough force to press the glass skin over her knuckles into a solid sheet of flat marble. She was furious. And Carza knew why. She'd already bucked against the taboos surrounding her, disliked having to obey a thousand little restrictions for the sake of luck. She clearly believed in the same things they did, but... found it hard to let those beliefs permeate her every waking action.

And now those beliefs were taking her brother away, and that had agitated a simmering irritation into boiling anger.

They rode. And Carza's sense of unease didn't die down now she'd understood the dark figure pursuing them. Not an enemy, just a weary exile trying to accomplish something, maybe feebly trying to override taboo and rejoin his family at all costs. Presumably. Still wasn't sure what he wanted, or what he'd done to deserve exile. Was this a case of someone not bowing to the right person, or annoying the wrong person? Or was this a legitimate crime which he was receiving a just punishment for? He'd been at war, and... well, if the Sleepless had taught her anything, it was that unpleasant things could occur in the context of a war. Maybe he'd mutilated his enemies, tortured innocents, done something unforgivably monstrous. Her unease kept rising. Not just because of the brother following them, who might've done something awful, but... something else. She felt that same rising panic that she felt on the train to Krodaw. The sensation that she might've picked the wrong train, and now she was trapped on the rails until she reached her destination. Locked in, and forced to work with whatever fate dealt her, with no ability to choose, to reconsider, to renegotiate her route through life.

She felt like she was spiralling out of control.

She heard her horse whining beneath her, and wondered if Tobok was driving them too fast. Could she question him? Or was she just being an idiot? None of the others were questioning him, so... so maybe this was fine, maybe it was alright if her horse was struggling to go onwards. He owned these horses, presumably he understood their limits better than most. But then she looked around, and she saw Tobok's furious gaze, locked on the horizon ahead of him. Mrs Cauldron, barely capable of keeping her horse moving in a straight line, face streaked with unashamed tears. Kani, so furious she was struggling not to scream at someone. Dog, caught nervously between his fiance, her parents, a situation he was clearly unsuited for... so stressed that he wasn't even glaring at Carza, which made for quite a change. Were they noticing? Did they see how the horses were straining? And weren't they meant to be resting now, giving the horse some much-needed rest after, again, days of riding? The mountains were close. The valley, presumably, was also close.

And she felt something in the air.

An itching in her stomach. An intensification of the gnawing which she'd felt since she was a child. Unease rising. She remembered the forest, and the stink of a mutant slowly pursuing them, picking them off one by one. The mountains where the ancestors dwelled in their ragged furs. One of maybe a hundred petty kingdoms up there, time making the ancestors alien even to one another. Speaking different languages, revering different gods... she'd been around danger long enough to feel it. But she had no idea where the feeling was coming from. The family? The brother? Something else? Whatever it was, she found herself keeping one hand on her pistol at all times. Just in case.

They rode. And her horse wheezed... all the horses were struggling, but Tobok drove them on nonetheless. No-one was questioning him. Was this fine, and she was an idiot? Or was she seeing something the rest of them were too distracted to see? The horses were sweating freely, in the middle of a frosty night. They stumbled more than they should, and the herd surrounding them was straggling further and further, needing to be chased along - unwilling to follow on their own. Eyes rolling madly, sweat running down their flanks, manes sticking to their necks... they were nervous. And Carza was too. Her stomach growled. Right, she'd been intending to rest, and eat, and everything. But a chew of the little strips of dried meat they were carrying around did nothing, sitting in her stomach like a mass of lead. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. And she was wondering why no-one else could see it, could feel it. Maybe the snow had already fallen, the valley was blocked up. Maybe the horses were too exhausted and would injure themselves. Maybe the brother was unstable and about to do something regretful. Maybe raiders could find them, given how noisy they were being. Hell, she remembered the stories of the Scabrous, maybe those things would...

She glanced over her shoulder.

And once more, she thought she saw a faint flicker of red light. Like distant coals scattered over the horizon. Clouds were starting to scuttle across the sky in long, thin banks, wispy at the edges like the strokes of a paintbrush. Obscuring the stars, turning the moon from a definite lamp to a vague glow at the corner of her eye. She was sweating almost as much as her horse, now, a cold sweat that clung to the back of her neck. Kani growled under her breath, and Carza realised she was close enough to hear - they were all swaying a little, finding it harder to keep going in a straight line. Like some vital anchor had been lost, and now they were trailing in the wind like an untethered sail. Flapping this way, that way, any way but the correct one. Carza quietly guided her horse to maintain some distance, didn't want a collision... but she could still hear Kani.

"Damn them. He's right behind us, and they won't even..."

She trailed off for a second, growling again.

"Damn them."

Carza had a brief nightmare vision. Kani rebelling against her parents. Going with Carza out of spite, not because she enjoyed Carza's company or Carza's work. Just to get away. It'd be nice having her around, but it wouldn't be nice to have that sort of bitterness hanging over everything. Carza had run away from home... once or twice. Came back both times, of course. But at the time she'd just thought that she couldn't spend another second in her mother's awful little room, surrounded by squalor and with no real prospects ahead of her. Only left for a few days each time... but she'd thought about running away as her mother's situation deteriorated, and her health began to suffer. Just run off. She'd need to run off anyway, so why not... but if she had, she might've missed her mother's death. She'd stayed, in the end. Fetched a doctor. Made sure she was comfortable, kept fetching pillows until her bed was swamped with the things. Remembered standing in the doorway, twisting her hands nervously as she got worse and worse... if she'd been gone, she'd never have forgiven herself. If Kani left out of spite, came back to find her father gone off to become an ancestor, or worse, either of them dead... it didn't bear thinking about.

Carza had remained at her mother's side even to the end. And she'd still had nightmares about leaving and coming back to find her dead, cold, and painfully alone. She wouldn't inflict that on someone else. Couldn't. But Kani sounded... very angry indeed. Maybe she had flashes of that, Carza had only known her for so long... she bit her lip in consternation, then hissed in pain. Damn horse. Moved funny, and her teeth had bit down too damn hard, and when she wiped her lips she found them coming away red. Probably. Hard to tell in the light of the moon, which turned everything to flat silver. Washed out, the world turned to a faded daguerrotype. Nothing to do but ride, and...

And the problems began.

They were going too fast. She saw a horse fall away from the herd, panting wildly, settling down and wheezing into the grass. Faded into the darkness a second later. Time became charted by problems - the first vanished horse. The continuous red flashes on the horizon which made her think the sun was about to come up. The silence between members of the family, unwilling to talk to one another in a situation like this. Another vanished horse. The herd was thinning a little, they were losing animals. The carts were juddering violently, wheels shaking as they struggled to keep going at such high speeds. Probably needed repairs... started small, but she could see splinters, could see mounting issues. Tiny problems piling on top of each other, each one easy to overlook, and as a collective... catastrophic. The mountains were closer. Much closer.

And then it happened.

It had to happen.

Tobok's horse stumbled.

A stumble that worsened.

Carza heard a snap. Pothole, burrow, something. Easy for the horse to avoid in any other circumstance, but not when it was pushed like this, not when it was exhausted beyond belief and focused just on accomplishing one step after another.

The horse fell with an ear-piercing squeal of pain.

Tobok fell.

He was huge. Powerful. The ground parted for him, and Carza heard him bellow in shock and anger as he crashed to the ground, the horse flailing wildly behind him. Incapable of just sitting and resting, overwhelmed by panic and pain, had to keep putting stress on a leg which was utterly, utterly broken - exposed bone gleaming in the moonlight.

The family slowed to a halt, going so fast that they ended up scattered over the steppe as their horses slowed down at different rates. Took a minute just to reassemble. Carza trotted closer... and flinched. The horse was dead. Tobok had been merciful to the thing. Cut its throat with a long knife, and after a second of struggle the thing had simply fallen still and quiet. Good move, no way it was going to heal from a break like that. Any discomfort from it dying was reduced by the fact that she'd seen much, much worse. The part which hurt came from how unnecessary it had been. Tobok seemed to realise that, in his own way... his face definitely had a tinge of regret to it. The family stared at him in silence, and he glared.

"Another horse."

Kani spoke in a low, furious voice.

"Father, I-"

"Daughter, politely, shut up. And get me another horse. We're pushing on."

"And Ay-"

"Do not say his name to me."

He never yelled. His voice simply became angrier, while remaining absolutely quiet and controlled. But his eyes... his eyes were boiling, his jaw was clenched, his entire frame stiffened. Kani fell silent for a second. And renewed.

"Father. He's behind us, and... and you're insisting on running away from him, like-"

"Shut. Up. We're not discussing this. Get me another horse. The rest of you, change up your mounts. We're not stopping for long."

The herd staggered to a halt around them, panting heavily, eyes rolling madly. They were struggling to go on, changing mounts didn't mean much when all the mounts concerned were equally broken by days and days of constant riding, and an interrupted rest period. Tobok stomped away from his daughter... and Kani hissed like a feral cat, clenching her fists and narrowing her eyes. Dog backed away from her slightly. Carza looked away. Uncomfortable. On the horizon, the red light... it was constant, now. No more flashes. Mrs Cauldron looked over, and something broke through her tears. Something powerful enough to overwhelm even the intense feelings rushing through her.

Panic.

"...Tobok..."

Tobok glanced over, angry. He followed his wife's gaze... and froze himself.

"Mount up. Now."

Carza was confused.

"What's-"

"Red star. The Scabrous."

Oh.

Crumbs.

No time to re-saddle their horses. Even Tobok didn't have time for it, he just grabbed the reins and hooped them loosely over a nearby horse who was struggling to get some grass into itself. He'd be riding bareback, and he winced in discomfort as he hopped up, clinging tightly with his legs to make up for the lack of stirrups. Carza's horse moaned slightly. Panic was overwhelming her. The Scabrous. Mutants, most likely, but with an air of mystery that thoroughly disconcerted her. It'd be bad enough if they were just mutants. But being mutants that had... had some kind of intelligence, some kind of organisation... she knew that if Anthan was here, he'd be even more panicked than her. He'd seen intelligent mutants once. And he'd seen them almost eradicate all forms of human life on the continent. If this was anything like that... time to move. She was very panicked, too panicked even to notice how much her horse was straining under her weight, under the constant riding... it wanted to rest, needed to rest, but training was compelling it to go onwards and ignore the discomfort. They'd stopped for less than a minute before they were off again, Tobok's face locked into a furious scowl that barely concealed a twitch of fear in his features. They were close to the mountains, they were close to the valley, and it felt like everything had simultaneously fallen apart.

The brother had made them stupid, and made them ride faster and longer than they should've. And now the Scabrous were appearing to exploit that weakness, turn it from an innocent emotional outburst into a fatal mistake. No, no, no, not fatal, not fatal yet. If she had anything to say about... Founder, she wasn't a strapping swashbuckling hero, she was a scholar who could barely aim her gun. She'd killed two things with her gun, two. Not counting the Sleepless member she'd bludgeoned nearly to death before someone else finished him off. And both of her successful and fatal hits had been at ludicrously close range, usually with the element of surprise or someone throwing themselves...

She gripped her horse, and urged it onwards. Faster. Faster. If they ran quickly, they'd be alright... the Scabrous here, that was... uh... well, they were patrolling, right? That implied this wasn't some sort of massive infestation which permeated every molecule of air, it was like an army, and armies could only cover so much ground. Maybe they'd be fine, if they weren't, then she imagined Tobok would turn around and run. Maybe they wouldn't come to the valley, and... and... oh, Founder, this was the mountains all over again, the same fear, the same slow dread, the same everything. She couldn't lose any of these people, not if... if...

Her detector was whining softly. A low, almost mocking keening at the edge of her hearing.

They were here.

They were coming.

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They were breathing down her neck.

Memories of a grey silent shape in the undergrowth snatching Egg away. Memories of bodies twisting and reshaping as contamination flowed through them. Memories of Lirana losing her own, mucus running down her face as she became a dedicated vector of disease. The thing in the well in the village. The body by the train tracks, severed and broken, struggling to survive despite losing almost everything necessary for survival. The feeling of clipping her skin over and over and over, taking silvery pills which made her vomit up the growths down her throat. She needed a gas mask. She needed her heavy protective coat. She needed... needed... her breath was hitching, she could taste contamination in the air, she could feel the underground rivers slowly pulsing, a vascular system in tune to the beating of a monstrous deep-heart. Panic was boiling in her. The gnawing was louder than ever. Run, it said. Run. You've been here before. You know how this goes. They'll be killed, each and every one, and either you die with them or you escape. It happened last time. It'll happen this time. You lived with the guilt of Hull dying in your arms, you can deal with losing Kani. Merciful, maybe. All of them at once, instead of losing them one by one and letting them be torn apart. A single exile has them deeply wounded. A death would cripple them.

Put them out of their misery. You know what's going to happen.

Carza tried to force the gnawing to shut up. To little avail. The red glow on the horizon, the knowledge that someone was following them, the tensions within the group... after so many weeks of silence, catastrophe had emerged in a matter of seconds. Damn it. It felt like a nightmare, even down to their movement - the horses strained, sweated, did everything in their power to move over land that was boundless and flat, easy for them... but they were slow. And slower with each passing moment. Like trying to run from a monster while the air turned to treacle. Still faster than running, and if they were forced to do that, Carza could only go for so long - she was exhausted. Maybe that would be for the best, the gnawing subtly told her. Convince them to run. Then, convince them to leave her behind - they were faster than her, stronger than her, could resist the cold with significantly more ease. Then she could hide, and let them soak up the attention - no, damn coward. But the horses were tired, their movement was slowing. Maybe if they'd stayed still tonight they'd have avoided this, maybe they'd just exhausted themselves before the inevitable rather than facing it a little more rested. Maybe moving had made no difference, maybe it had condemned them to a painful death.

Maybe.

It was pointless dwelling on hypotheticals, but she did so anyway. Because it was easy. And she was weak.

The red light was rising.

Something was moving. She could hear them. The pounding of hooves, too heavy, far too heavy, with a timbre that made her think of metal. Slowly advancing on their position, meandering over the landscape... was that their own herd? Or were they coming? Was it all coming to an end? She kept staring at the light, blood running from where she'd bitten her lip. She'd stopped wiping it away, stopped caring. Too much adrenaline even to feel it. Red light like coals, like she was being dragged into the bowels of hell... to the Court of Ivory, hell was a place for scholars who burned books, who erased ideas, who refused to behave in a constructive manner. 'Poisoners of the pools of knowledge'. Those who obstructed the holy mission, not merely through incompetence, but through malicious incompetence, or misguided zealotry. She wouldn't go there, she'd done good work, she'd contributed...

A mad part of her wondered if she'd be sent to hell until her works were found and published. And if they were never found, then she was a failure for the rest of time - doomed to be boiled by the scorn of the Founder until there was nothing left of her. Nothing at all.

The red light grew...

The whining from her detector was rising, and she didn't dare to turn it off, not for a second, not if they were coming so close...

The figure behind them was visible. Moving quickly.

Catastrophe, sometimes, was slow. Rumbling. Like an avalanche. There was time to see the inevitability and to come to terms with it, maybe even to prepare for it, to counter it.

And sometimes it was fast, like a bullet. So fast it was impossible to detect - one second you were alive, the next you were sprawled like a dead rat.

This lay somewhere between the two extremes.

It was too fast to react to.

But slow enough to watch.

First, Kani shrieked something at her father. Something unpleasant. Something about wanting to turn back for a moment, let the brother catch up, don't let him trail like a kicked dog. He needed their help, and if they insisted on abandoning him to the Scabrous... she was already moving before Tobok could reply.

Wheeled her horse around, the creature whinnying in desperate exhaustion. Dog turned as well. Carza was stuck, barely able to get her steed to move in any direction that wasn't forwards, her lack of experience showing itself at the worst moment.

Kani rode out for a moment, faster than the rest. Intending to meet her brother and drag him to the rest of the family, not willing to let him remain invisible and silent when the stakes were this high. If she was going to die, she'd die with her entire family by her side. Weeks, months, maybe years of quiet resentment boiling over - damn the raiders, damn the peace banners, damn the taboos, damn luck, damn the spiteful ancestors, and damn this entire situation. Stress turning a rolling simmer into a furious boil.

Carza saw her riding back, leaving the group behind.

And the red light on the hill flashed.

Figures were highlighted in it. Monstrously large. Mounted on horses the size of barns. The detector rose to a furious howl, giving a voice to the silent watchers.

They moved quickly. Not so quickly to be unstoppable. But quickly enough that Carza couldn't stop them. The right person could, with the right tools, the right experience, the right allies. Anthan would've calmly raised his rifle and started shooting. She struggled to get her gun out. Too many memories piling on top of each other, making her slower. She raised her weapon... fired... complete miss. Too far away, much too far. And the sound startled the horse, sending it into a frenzy of shuffles and near-rears, enough to send her aim comically off. She'd had her chance, and she'd lost it.

And all she could do was watch as Kani realised what was happening.

All she could do was watch as Dog trotted forwards... then backwards, even faster. Eyes wide with terror. Coward.

The Scabrous were invisible in the night, just... shadows, really. Living shadows. No features she could really see, nothing definable. But then the light flashed... and she could see. She could see. She saw a trio of riders, each one far too tall, mounted on horses the size of barns. Only a few snapshots of them, starkly illuminated by the hellish red light which continued to pulse behind the hill. They were... their skin was crawling. Moving. Shifting. Never still for long, always clinging tightly to limbs that dangled loosely yet remained corded with muscle. Faces cast into deep shadows. The riders were barely visible at all, but the horses... she saw metal and muscle, she saw a conjoining of mutated flesh and sculpted steel, she saw horses with eight legs, ten legs, more, shifting from mammalian to insectile depending on how she looked. Faces bristling with teeth, bodies bristling with silk-like antennae, wafting in the wind like strands of cobweb. No eyes. Only additional mouths, ringing with fangs like lampreys, twisting with sensory apparatus. Flashes of gold and black, of steel and brass, of twisting, spiralling horns. The figures laughed, high, gurgling voices, somewhere between a frog's croak and a pig's squeal.

And then one of them lashed out. A long whip-like thing, closer to a tongue, extending smoothly from a perforated forearm. She could see more holes bristling along the crawling skin, opening and closing like baby mouths, some of them bristling with more antennae, twitching legs, glistening eyes or simply raw, pulsating muscle.

Kani barely had a moment to scream before the tongue wrapped around her arm, dragging her from her horse. The horse was panicking, running away immediately... and something cracked through the air. A weapon, a rifle, raised to the shoulder of one of the riders. The horse fell, screams choking off as something burrowed through it. Carza felt sick, she felt terrified, she felt paralysed. Kani was still screaming as her captor reeled her backwards like a caught fish, the tongue digging into her arm like a leech. A second later... she was too close. Kani was hauled up, and the last thing Carza saw before the red light faded again was Kani being lashed to the side of the monstrous horse, strung up like a fresh kill. Still moving. Groaning, unwilling to scream while so close to the thing. Carza stared.

The red light pulsed warningly.

And they were gone.

Laughing in their croaking squeals.

And all that remained was a struggling horse, dying slowly as a bullet ate through it like a living thing. Carza blinked.

The ordeal had lasted a few seconds. A few terrifying seconds... and the three Scabrous were gone. Vanished into the dark. Even the warning red light was fading a little, and her detector had declined to a low, mournful moaning, no shrieks, no howls. They were gone.

Kani was gone with them.

A few seconds, and everything had gone to hell. The family was stunned. Mrs Cauldron was staring with wide eyes, opening and closing her mouth, but no sound came out. Dog was shaking like a leaf. Tobok seemed to have lost something, his core hollowed out... on the verge of complete and utter collapse, crushed under the pressure surrounding him on all sides. Silence reigned. The Scabrous were gone. Carza's hand was shaking uncontrollably, barely able to hold onto her gun. For a long few seconds, they were utterly still. No-one was chasing them. The Scabrous had taken someone, maybe they'd be back for more, but for now... they were seemingly satisfied. Reminded her of that mutant in the forest who'd taken Egg, then just... disappeared. Content with its meal for the time being. Tobok looked out sightlessly into the dark, not even the light of the red star blessing them. Their horses sighed, bending low to chew at the grass with desperate hunger. Not sure if they were allowed to stop. Unaware of the terror which had just transpired.

Carza's voice was low.

She couldn't say where this certainty had come from. A boiling conviction, almost pure and plain zealotry, but... no, it was zealotry. She could feel cold lips pressed against her own, she could feel a gnawing in her gut... there had been a shift. Usually, the gnawing was self-centred. Now, it was focused on everything but herself. The definitions of survival had changed, and entailed more people living than herself. And soft and low as her voice was, it cut through the darkness easily.

"There are three of them. I have a gun. Tobok, Dog, you're strong. If we fetch your son, then there'll be four of us. We can track them, find Kani, get her back. If they're alone, then we should be fine. But we'll need to find them before they gather in larger numbers."

Dog slowly turned to stare at her. Carza glared back at him. This was simple, right? Kani had been taken. And now Kani needed to be retrieved. That was it. And Dog... Dog said something. She remembered him hesitating, turning back... if he'd stayed the course, maybe Kani would be alright, maybe he could've created enough of a delay for her to get back to the others. Maybe if he wasn't a coward...

"This is your fault."

Carza blinked.

"What?"

Tobok's voice descended to a growl.

"Dog..."

"It's her fault. I heard her, days ago. Talking to Kani. Convincing her to leave, to abandon everything, to go with her back over the mountains."

Tobok's head turned with agonising slowness.

"...what."

"If she hadn't done that, Kani wouldn't have turned around here. She'd have stayed. If she hadn't been convincing her to violate every bloody taboo there is, maybe she wouldn't have tried to turn back to find a damn-"

Carza was close to him. Close enough. Her hand lashed out, smacking him soundly across the face. His low, cunning voice cut off a second later... but his eyes were boiling with something, something that only became brighter. For a moment, Carza understood. He was terrified. He knew he'd been a coward, that he'd turned back instead of going onwards. He could've gone out to save his fiance, could've done what he was meant to do, and instead he'd held back. He was terrified of being pinned with the blame of this, and his first response was to try and pin it on Carza. And worse... he was right. Carza found it easy to blame herself. Maybe she'd helped do this, maybe... no, no, it didn't matter if she'd caused this, what mattered was fixing it. Find Kani. Get her back. Simple. She wasn't losing someone else. Not after Hull, not after her entire damn expedition. She couldn't lose all of them.

"Shut up. We're moving. Right?"

Tobok and Mrs Cauldron were staring at her. What?

"Come on, we-"

Mrs Cauldron hissed under her breath.

"You were trying to get her to leave?"

"I-"

"She's been acting strange for days. And you were trying to get her to abandon us, to abandon her home?"

"I wasn't trying to... she turned me down, so-"

Tobok growled.

"So you did."

They were terrified as well. Trying to blame anyone. Her horse took a few hesitant steps backwards, feeling something in the air. Carza's breath hitched. She knew these people, they were normal, they were rational - within their own system of rationality, at least, one defined by luck and taboo. She liked them, even. But... but there was something in their eyes. Too much at once. A son, exiled. A daughter, lost. And Tobok was the same as Dog - he knew he could blame himself. He'd driven them onwards, he'd exhausted their horses and made them vulnerable, maybe attracting the attention of the Scabrous. And Mrs Cauldron... there was simmering guilt in her own eyes. Why hadn't she stopped him? She was a voice of reason for the family, the cool-headed one who made sure things went well. She'd been cool in the face of the raiders, calm even when an ancestor was barking at them in a language barely anyone spoke any more... and then she'd let it slip. Lost herself to emotion, and had promptly lost her daughter because she couldn't tell her husband to stop and consider things for longer than a second. Everyone here was blaming themselves.

And Dog had moved first, but making Carza a scapegoat. Carza, who wasn't even from round here. Carza, the foreigner they'd been caring for out of the goodness of their own hearts. Carza, who'd saved Kani and had promptly lost that goodwill. They didn't despise her, she thought they didn't, but... but they weren't thinking straight. None of them were. Carza gritted her teeth.

"Come on, if we go now, we should-"

She trailed off. Silence on all sides. Dog was glaring at her with furious satisfaction. He'd never liked her. Maybe it was because she was foreign, maybe because she'd monopolised Kani's attention, maybe because she was friends with her. Maybe a long period of indentured servitude had made him resentful and bitter, or maybe he was always that way. He had an excuse to make her leave, and at the same time distract everyone from the fact that he was at fault here.

Her horse moved backwards instinctually, and Carza could understand why. The entire family was on the verge of a breakdown. And... and... of course they believed him. Of course they did. He was giving them a way out.

But she had to try.

"Come on, they can't have gotten far, and-"

Dog growled at her.

"She's gone. The Scabrous can't be chased. They can't be beaten. She's gone, it's your fault she ran to begin with, and now you want the rest of us to die?"

Carza stared at him. Aghast.

"She's your fiance, why aren't you trying to-"

Tobok sighed.

"They can't be chased. They can't be beaten. And they're fast. If we go, we'll all die."

That... that... it was the same thing as the raiders. Conflict avoidance. Don't fight, because it gets people killed, and when people die, the family suffers. Accept the losses, accept the apologies, and move on. Forgive. Forget. Even when Kani was attacked in her tent by a disgraced member of another clan, even when Kani was kidnapped, go ahead, forgive it all. He didn't look happy, but he looked... resigned. Maybe this had happened before. Mrs Cauldron was silent, staring blankly at the ground in front of her horse. The two of them looked barely alive, just moving on instinct, speaking mechanically. The fury had drained. All that remained was a distant sadness. This morning, they had two children. Now, one was exiled, and one was without a doubt dead.

Carza should accept that.

...and yet, she couldn't. Not for a second. Kani was her friend, Kani had become someone she cared about, and now she was gone? She'd hauled Hull through the mountains even when it was obvious he was dying, she'd just ignored the wound, ignored the way he grew colder, and kept on going. It almost killed her, walking for hours through the cold, weighed down with another body, but she'd kept going regardless. Because she was a person obsessed with survival, with living as long as possible, and she'd decided that without Hull she wasn't going to live a life worth living. His life became her life. And now... now he was gone, her expedition was dead, she was a stranger in a strange land, and the one person she'd found herself opening up to, working with extensively, treating as a friend... had been taken away.

The last time this had happened, she'd lost two fingers and three toes to frostbite, almost died of exhaustion, and had done all of that to drag her friend through the mountains. Because that was what she did.

And now... now she was here again.

And she wouldn't let it happen twice.

She wouldn't let her last memory of Kani be her groaning in pain as she was dragged away by tall, thin things which croaked and squealed in happiness while their monstrous horses made the ground shake.

"I need to get her back."

Dog said nothing. The others said nothing. They'd made their position clear. And Carza exploded.

"If you won't, then I will. If I don't come back, assume I'm dead, observe all the taboos you want. Keep on going to that damn valley, but I'm going after Kani. And for what it's worth - Kani was angry with a lot. She was angry that she was almost kidnapped twice, and you had to forgive the people that did it. She was angry that her brother was exiled and you refused to even speak about him. She was angry that the ancestor came along, bullied you, stole your sheep, and vanished without showing any concern for your family."

Her voice cracked towards the end.

"And I'm leaving. I'm not letting her go."

Tobok couldn't meet her eyes. But she could see his hands shaking as they clutched his horse's reins. He was frightened, he was ashamed... and he was resigned. Lost two children. Dog would leave soon, go back to his own family. Tobok's own life was coming to an end, and soon enough he'd be climbing up the mountains to become an ancestor himself. He'd lost both children, and now the one thing he had left to preserve was his wife - find her a new family to live with, a new way of sustaining herself. She'd seen them go from hopeful and relaxed to broken and poor. The gold and treasure their son was meant to bring back... gone. Their son, too, gone. Their daughter, vanished. Their herd, plundered. Everything they'd once had was lost, and everything they'd hoped for had been destroyed. There was nothing left for them.

After a point, loss like that stopped making you angry, and just broke you.

They'd reached the latter stage.

Carza turned her horse around and rode into the dark before she could be stopped. Before she could regret this decision, think through the consequences. She rode, and felt... nothing in her eyes. No tears. All out. Right now, she was going to lose her one friend again, and she couldn't let it happen. Damn everything else. Scholarship mattered to her, but survival mattered more. And right now, she didn't want to survive if it meant she kept losing the people she cared about, over and over and over again, never holding on for long. Damn it all. She wasn't letting Kani go. Already killed a man to keep her safe, and she had no moral qualms about killing mutants. She rode... and the family vanished behind her. The last thing she saw were ashamed faces, broken by loss, terrified by guilt, made impotent by defeat after defeat. Her gun was heavy in her hand, and she refused to put it away. Just in case. No warning red lights, but... but... she could barely see the ground, barely see tracks - and those horses had been huge, they should've left tracks, but she... the dark was too all-encompassing. Fear bloomed in her. Had she made a mistake? Was this pointless? Couldn't she...

An idea.

If she was leaving the family... screw it.

Screw it.

She rode into the dark, following the path Kani had been taking before the Scabrous came... and her voice rose to a yell.

"I know you're out here!"

She paused, gathering her strength again.

"I know you can hear me! Get over here!"

Her voice rose higher, becoming more piercing.

"We're going to rescue your sister!"

Silence.

Silence that dragged out for far too long.

Maybe they'd found him already. Maybe the Scabrous had killed him, or kidnapped him, or maybe he'd fallen too far behind, or he'd just run off in fright some time ago. He was one person, one person riding in the dark with a single horse, maybe one or two others, maybe he'd had an accident. Maybe he was lying dead on the steppe, horse's legs splintered by a pothole and rider flung head over heels to snap his neck on a jagged rock. Life here was precarious, especially for a lonesome rider pushing himself to the limits of exhaustion. Fear was rising. She'd made a mistake. She couldn't do this alone. She was riding to her death, then. Leaving, running... no, no, she couldn't go through losing her friend again. Done it once. Never again. So, then, she was going to ride off, was going to die because she wasn't strong enough. Maybe she'd get one or two. Maybe she'd put Kani out of her misery, if they were trying to change her into one of them, or were torturing her... maybe that was the best she could do. A mercy kill, before she herself died at the hands of those things. Hopefully she'd have time to blow her own brains out, like that local girl had recommended all that time ago.

Silence...

A shift.

She heard hoof beats in the distance. A low panting. Panic. Fear. Someone coming closer and closer. Someone she vaguely recognised.

And her mouth broke out into a desperate grin.

And now they were two.