Chapter Sixty One

They'd escaped the Dustlands, escaped that barren plain of yellow pollen, brown grass, bruised skies and two suns - one silver and pathetic, the other red and constant. And now the Dustlands was rising up against them. Insulted at the idea that people could escape. Infuriated at how Carza had left an ugly black scar of charred earth across its impeccably vast decay. Or whipped into motion by the Scabrous. The folk over the mountains, in the lands which the Sleepless called home, they had Earthsingers, priests who could read the minute shivers and tremors of the underground rivers of contamination... and could read the future from the gyrations of earth and rot. The Yasa had believed in glass-skinned gods of the mountains, who were quite real. The nomads believed in a demonic culture to their south who slaved under the light of a red, hateful star... and that culture was real, and they did indeed carry red light wherever they walked. Maybe they'd proven another myth right, too. Maybe they sang to the earth and stirred it up. Because a yellow storm was headed their way, yellow as jaundice, yellow as rotten daffodils, yellow as the chickenflesh at the corner of an eye.

Not Kani or Ayat's eyes, obviously. They were blessed to seemingly never suffer from pimples, acne, rashes...

As someone who'd dealt with a series of unpleasant pimpled rashes along her neck and cheek for part of her teenage years, Carza felt envious. Then she focused on that envy, let it swell up to consume her vision, because it was a strong, poisonous emotion - and if these anti-mutagenic pills she was taking taught her anything, it was that sometimes you needed poison to cure poison. And in this case, envy was helping her with fear. Because she knew that roar. An ancestor, had to be. And it explained the reaction from Kani. She was a half-ancestor, metamorphosing before her time, for all she knew an ancestor would think of her as an abomination. On another level, it was coming in the same direction as the red light, which had... bewildering implications. And on a final, more intrinsically frightening level... the ancestors were unpredictable. Meet one - maybe it was kind, maybe it was lucid and understood your speech, maybe it saw you as a cheeky grandchild. Or maybe it was old and gnarled, couldn't understand a word you said and didn't want to learn how, seen so much of the familiar grow old and turn to dust that the new seemed fragile, liable to break. Fun to break, too. Maybe it understood your rituals and respected them. Maybe it was forgotten and backwards, grown strange from years of isolation, willing to howl and hunt like a wild animal.

Carza vo Anka had been a harmless little scholar a few months ago. The deaths of her expedition, of Hull, that'd changed her. The journey in general had changed her. And now she was running from living myths while carrying a living gun, while other living myths (one of whom she'd been willing to fight for at all costs) helped her out.

A few months.

A month from now, who could say?

A year? She'd be unrecognisable.

A century? Probably not even human, just something wearing human skin and human clothes, but with a mind wholly its own. Age could mutate, just as surely as contamination could. And like contamination, it produced strange changes which could be advantageous, could be damaging, could simply be unsightly. It could be treated, but after a point there was no treatment but death. And it would never stop. The rivers under the earth would never dry up, just as wrinkles would inevitably march over her skin and crow's feet would claw her eyes into narrow slits and laughter lines would turn into laughter canyons...

Founder, she was morbid. But it stopped her being afraid.

Mostly.

"How is Little Friend?"

Ayat was bellowing at the top of his lungs - the horses weren't in lockstep, and at the moment Kani had a small lead, and the wind was rushing directly at them - forcing them backwards, just a little. Great, the Scabrous could control the wind as well as the earth. No, no, it was just... bad luck. The plan now was to make for a small river, made shallow by the approach of winter. They'd use that to throw off their scent, travelling up the river, leaving at a random point, then moving slower to disguise their tracks. The wind would make it difficult... blowing right at them, carrying their scent right towards the Scabrous. She could see an idea, though. Maybe... go down the river, south, and do their best to get away from this wind - let it carry their scents to the barren nothingness, not to the Scabrous. Might work. Might not. If the wind shifted again...

"What?!"

"Little Friend!"

Ayat's voice was high, nervous. Almost panicked. Kani grunted.

"He's fine, isn't making any noise."

"Check him, please! He might be scared!"

"I'm scared! It's rational to be scared!"

"But it's bad for a growing cat to be scared, someone told me that when I got him!"

"Your sister might die today and you're worried about the cat?"

"We might live, I want to make sure the cat lives too!"

Carza hiccuped. Oh, nuts. The pills were... well, she'd taken a few. Most of them were anti-mutagenics, designed to purge the system, strip the throat, boil through the stomach and the digestive tract... side effects including sore throat, sore stomach, sore everything, bloody discharge, vomiting, temporary flights of unconsciousness... and that was why she took another pill that helped suppress the worst parts. Side effects of the combination: mild bursts of drunken euphoria. She was drugged to the gills, and in her defence, she had every reason to be. Hell, if she was this calm, she might aim better! With her fleshy gun! Her corpse-operated fleshy grub-gun with a churning white ammunition sac! The drunken euphoria was even stopping her feeling sick at the very concept of this weapon.

"Hey, Kani!"

"What?!"

"Where's... where's the cat?"

"It's in my robe, you saw it go in there!"

"...issit between your bubbies?"

"What?"

What was she saying. This was vulgar. This was awful. Founder, she wanted to throw up... the drunken euphoria vanished for a moment... and then came back, even stronger. Oh Founder...

"Your bubbies. Is the kitten there?"

She snorted.

"Issit... issit a titten."

Dammit, that pun didn't work in Tralkic. She was indulging in vulgarity, she was becoming a decadent bloodstained savage, and her vulgarity couldn't even be properly appreciated. Ayat poked her in the forehead, easing her away from his back where she'd been clinging like a skinny limpet. His face was aghast.

"Don't be rude, Carza. That was very inappropriate."

The euphoria vanished.

"...yes. You're quite right. I'm sorry. That was very rude of me."

Kani turned over her shoulder.

"What's going on back there?"

Oh thank the Founder she'd heard nothing.

"Oh, Carza made a very rude comment-"

Carza grabbed at whatever felt the most painful. The next thing she knew, she had one hand in his hair, dragging his head downwards, and one hand in the corner of his lip, tugging his mouth into a moronic clown-frown. Kani blinked. Shrugged. Called them both idiots (presumably, wind was very strong). And Ayat gurgled faintly around Carza's fingers... this felt vulgar. She was going to stop doing this now. Wiped her hand on her trouser to get rid of the saliva from performing some invasive dental examinationising. Found that it came away stained red - right, blood, and lots of it. Founder, she was glad she kept her documents in proper envelopes, moisture-protected, laced with chemicals that repelled most common pests... cost a chunk of the budget, but definitely one of the most worthwhile purchases she'd ever bloody made. Ayat hummed in mild annoyance, but the look on his face made him look like a kicked dog, wondering what he'd done wrong but eager not to do it again.

"Sorry."

She muttered, barely loud enough to hear.

"Uh."

Man of few words. Still hard to imagine him as a terrifying raider from the steppes, plundering and conquering and razing cities to the ground. He was just... well, he felt like all his size was soft. For all his skill with sword and spear, he felt soft. The man had a kitten, for crying out loud. Wrapped it up in a plundered tapestry probably worth more than a whole tent out here, and gave it a silly name. Had good common sense and practical knowledge, but also a sense of his own slowness and dependence which made him hesitant to express any of it. Unfailingly loyal to his sister, she'd say that much. Anyone else would've failed, but he just... kept on going against the Scabrous. The man had fought something out of a nightmare, and from his culture's perspective was basically a supernatural demon. And while he hadn't won, he also hadn't shown any hint of fear. Just a polite acceptance. 'This is how the world is, this is how today goes, why bother complaining?'

She barely knew him. But she trusted Ayat. He was a good egg. Definitely the upper echelon of eggs, somewhere high up the ziggurat of the eggly hierarchy. He stood near the apex of the zeggurat.

Ha-he-ha-ho.

Oh, Founder, the pills again...

The yellow storm was approaching. The river too - they surmounted a small hill, and she could see it, a ragged gleaming ribbon. Like a sky-god had decided to scribble with a crayon, using the entire steppe as a canvas. Clumsy and shivering - and the land surrounding it was a darker shade of green. Watered abundantly, probably flooded a lot. Wide and shallow, shifting constantly over the plain, slithering from place to place and slowly eroding the entire area downwards. Never focusing enough to create a valley, but certainly able to create a depression... unless the depression was already there and the river just exploited it. It led from the mountains to a distant lake which glimmered faintly in the haze created by distance. She imagined that people lived around that lake, fished it, sailed it... maybe they had different rites to the mountain-nomads. Adding water to their rites as well as earth and sky, maybe reconfiguring the 'Iron Halls' of the afterlife as a kind of undersea paradise, something that one sank down to... come to think of it, the idea of the dead sinking through the earth made more sense as a water thing, not an earth thing... maybe the doctrine had started for the lake-dwelling folk who surrendered their dead to the water instead of the ground, and had been clumsily adapted as it spread, legitimised by their success which made all their rites seem lucky...

A very long run of luck. Could happen to any cultural practice out here, if it was validated by enough success.

She wondered what would happen if the Court of Ivory set itself up in a mission out here. Started teaching, doing good works... any clan listening to them would receive the benefits of millennia of learning. Firearms, medicine... wouldn't take much of them to become very successful indeed. And with that success would come proclamations of luck. Maybe she'd come back here to find that there were clans who honoured the Founder and his works, who learned the sacred language and treated scholarship as a noble goal in and of itself. She doubted it'd be total conversion. But she'd be interested in seeing the outcome of it, the ways in which differing strands of belief could intertwine, how foreign religions could be integrated to a nomadic cultural framework, what would be lost, what would be reinterpreted, what would be played up, how things she held dear would be regarded by others.

Maybe when she survived this.

If.

Onwards to the river, over the flood plain, where the ground grew soft and boggy, and no number of long grass brushes would cover their tracks even if they slowed to a human's pace. Dry enough to ride on, though. Dry enough that she wasn't worried about sinking. Mostly. Hopefully. The yellow cloud continued, a billowing vanguard for the Scabrous. And she had a sinking feeling that more of them had come to join the hunt, whispering in their polyphonous way, optics glinting, rifles held at their fleshy shoulders... sounding their hunting horn. And in the depths of the yellow cloud lay that staring red light. A hunting-lamp, maybe. Or the glow of riders, doused in that glowing red fluid which intoxicated them and illuminated them. Broke the night and opened the mind. She still wondered what made it... an eel, a snake, a worm, a grub, or something more esoteric entirely. Mutation took strange shapes. Some cultures brewed liquor in barrels. And some of them brewed their preferred mind-killer from the body of a sculpted mutant in a vat of its own excretions.

What did they know. She was having a wild ride on an exotic combination of medical drugs. They didn't know a damn thing.

She was so completely terrified. So very, very terrified.

The euphoria came and went in a tide - a fortunate era, an unfortunate era. Plenty and calamity. And now she slipped into the retreat - into the lucid era, which let her turn around, narrow her eyes (still slightly scabbed with dry blood) and raised her fleshy rifle. The sac quivered eagerly, the grubs eager to escape. She aimed down the sight, partially to fire, and partially to just focus her vision. A dark splotch at the front of the yellow cloud, invisible if she wasn't focusing. Something huge, riding as its vanguard... the dark blotch, then the cloud, then the Scabrous cavalry. Hunters following their dog. She could imagine it. Six limbs, four arms, two legs, moving in perfect synchronicity. She'd only seen ancestors hunting in the mountains, where they had little distance to go horizontally. Then, they'd clambered like apes, hauling themselves over the rock face. Here, on the plain... maybe they galloped like horses, maybe their mutations let their limbs move more flexibly than a human's. How fast? How close? No point firing at this range. She was just mimicking the motions she'd seen her old colleagues make - gun to her shoulder. Soak up the recoil with her entire body.

It certainly felt more stable than the revolver ever had. Which wouldn't be so bad, but this was an abomination of a weapon which ought to be destroyed, which ought to never have been invented to begin with. Being comfortable with it... she'd blame it on the pills. A cough - a gobbet of blood and anonymous matter. Well, better out than in. She thought quickly. Plans, schemes, ponderings and ponderations... too many Scabrous to fight, and trying would just get her and the others killed. But worth keeping in mind that they'd treat her as the priority target, or whoever held the rifle. Dark, but... she'd already had to familiarise her thoughts with suicide, with putting Kani down, with dying for a pointless cause because she lacked any alternatives. In the end, sacrificing herself to delay the Scabrous was... not quite so awful a thing. Not quite, at least... she'd rather not have to do it, in the end. But it was an option. It was on the table. So... right, they were being led by this ancestor, no doubt about it. It had their scent and was following it doggedly. Get in the stream, lose the scent, trust that the wind remained constant. Simple.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

What if the wind changed again? Then damn every god that existed for giving them such awful luck, and keep running. Maybe... try and kill the ancestor. Throw them off for good. It'd be risky, require them getting close... be cathartic as all hell, that much was true. Carza turned back to the river. Just keep going, it looked shallow enough... they crashed through the thin reeds marking the border of the river, splashing into the shallows. Water frothed up around the hooves of the horses, running swift despite the onset of winter. Flecks of spray lashed her arm, sending shocks of cold through her... and the horses startled. Been heating themselves up for a while now, and suddenly they were diving into ice-cold water, the final residue of a snow melt. Close to the mountains, so there wasn't much time for the land to make the water any kinder. A moment of struggling, Ayat expertly handling the reins, Kani relying more on brutish strength now that her body was made unfamiliar and strange. Carza hanging on for dear life and hoping for the best.

The water foamed, the river flowed, tiny dark fish scattered before their approach... and the yellow dust crept closer and closer. The dark shape was closer than ever too, resolving into a flurry of limbs, into something vast and dreadful with its purpose. The horses were still stopping and starting, uncertain with the cold water, startled by the sudden change. The river was wide - plenty of time to get used to it. Ayat kept shooting uncertain glances over his shoulder... and Carza raised her rifle again. Sighting down it. Hoping for the best. There was a peculiar device on the side she hadn't noticed before, a tube on a rail... she quietly pushed it upwards, where it clicked softly. A dull, liquid sound echoed from the thing, and the tube suddenly opened one of its ends. Glass... no, more than glass, thicker and organic, a smooth, perfect membrane that seemed solid yet also gelatinous and liquid and liable to slip out of its casing. The same material the Scabrous used on their optics. She cautiously rose it up, struggling to account for the nervous bucking of the animal beneath her...

A telescope!

The entire land became plain to her, she could pick out blades of grass a great distance away... oh, it was eerie using it, yes, but she could see. And most importantly, she could see through the cloud. The cavalry was coming, more than the three who'd gone to guard their precious geoglyph. Ten, at minimum. Maybe more, the dust became too thick behind the front row, and even this wonderful telescope couldn't quite penetrate it. She doubted anything could. Long, thin, fleshy, with faces concealed by metal and glass, with rifles in their hands and whips around their arms, and more weapons besides - hooks and chains, bulky metal implements, all the weapons of sport and war. Maybe they were furious, but she couldn't tell - their horses were placid in their gallop. They were machines, or close enough - no weariness, no stopping. Just kept going and going and going, with the same air of bored hunger. She'd seen them moving to consume their own master, she knew how this game went. Still nothing but mutants, even if they were smarter and keener than most. Still eager to consume one another if they had the chance.

And in front of them, the ancestor.

...Founder.

So that was what they'd wanted to do to Kani.

More than six limbs. Closer to ten. And everything reshaped, deformed, reduced in refinement and amplified in brutality. She doubted it could even stand upright now, with its limbs so twisted and altered. Six tusks, and a whole suite of goring horns, shadowing the eyes and turning them to vacant pits, all four of them. And she could see... decorations. No carvings around the tusks, not like she'd seen in the mountains. No clothes either. But there was gold. Gold bands wrapped around tusks and horns, gold rings dangling from gums - no lips, removed so the fineness of the teeth would be more evident. And of course, she could see the glinting jewels embedded in the teeth, the rings hanging from the tongue, so many that it resembled an ornate slug more than anything. It was a prize pony. A dog with its fur trimmed, tail clipped, all manner of little ornaments which made it look... pitiable. They'd wanted another dog for their kennel. Another hunter with a keen nose, another glittering hound that could give them a few scraps of fun. Maybe they showed them off to each other. Maybe they talked about the grace of the horns, the quality of the teeth, the sculpted smoothness of the limbs... lobotomising the ancestor so it couldn't think of anything but adoration for its masters. And fury for their enemies.

She'd wanted to hate this thing and to kill it with calm detachment. Maybe even vicious satisfaction at the death of one of the creatures which had killed her closest friend.

But she just felt sad. This wasn't an ancestor, this was a joke. A sick, sick joke without any punchline. And exactly the sort of thing the Scabrous would make.

Too far to shoot.

And a second later, she almost lost the rifle when the horse bucked violently, startling at the touch of a winding bottom-feeding fish, thin and dark and oozing with sludge. Horrified of it. Made sense. But irritating. She clung around Ayat's waist as he brought the thing back under control... and she realised something. Blame it on her brain being rattled, but it stirred all her ideas up and arranged them in new, interesting combinations with odd conclusions. That ancestor was rabid. She'd seen pools of spit oozing from clenched teeth, saw it looking as furious as humanly possible. It was truly, truly enraged... and she remembered that howl. Maybe it knew the scent of its own kind. Mourned what it had lost. Enraged at what it could never have. Or simply hateful of competition for the love of its masters. Eager to prove itself. Either way, it was racing ahead of them, leading them onwards... and she bellowed over the churning river.

"Kani! Scents!"

Kani glanced back, and shivered uncomfortably. Not a pleasant topic for her. But the point remained. The three of them had smells, of course, but the scents in the mountains had been downright potent. The scent she'd anointed herself with had been damn near overwhelming, stronger than any amount of blood, sweat, and horse. Couldn't believe she hadn't... anyway. Kani reached the other side, and as her horse calmed down, she reached underneath her robe-coat. Gave the kitten a quick scratch. And then... then unclipped the front. Peeled it down a little, showing her thick underclothes, and... and something stirring underneath. A vestigial third arm, twitching feebly with muscles that weren't meant to be moving for years. Decades, even. Half-grown and barely covered in skin, a twitching, feeble red mass that Carza blissfully only saw for a second before Kani turned away, and...

The scent.

Her plan was to let the scent apply itself to a rock, an animal, something. Then let it run for the hills, lead the Scabrous away while they hid in some of the long grass out there. Move on when the cavalry had been led astray - the grass was very long, swollen by the constant shifting and flooding of the river, accustomed to having to gain sunlight only by peeping above the waters. Plenty of spaces to hide. But... the scent was too liberal. There was nothing to apply to - and she doubted Kani knew how. The air was filled with a scent that in any other context would be beautiful. But to her... it was nightmarish. She remembered how the night had stunk of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, star anise, carraway, and a thousand thousand other spices had accompanied Hull dying. Anthan too. Lirana saving them from most of the ancestors. Being trapped in that cave, waiting to be eaten. It was a smell that accompanied some of her worst memories, and now it was flowing. Made her want to curl up and hide, made her want to run, made her snap out of any traces of grey relief the pills had provided, and the cold of the river just as quickly became the cold of the mountains...

As strong as an effect it had on her, the effect on the ancestor was significantly worse.

It screamed, a trace of humanity piercing through all the garish modifications.

And it raced across the ground, faster than ever, tearing away at the soil. The Scabrous actually slowed down behind it, startled - and the creature showed just how fast it could go. Faster than the horses, even. Much faster, and much better at accelerating. As terrifying as those horses were, they were huge, and the time it took to get something that large moving at high speeds was... considerable, to say the least. The ancestor? By comparison, it was small. And unlike them, it had no obligations of cargo. It raced across the plain, howling madly, and Ayat drove the horse to the other side of the river, faster, faster... the creature had doubled its pace. The scent driving it to madness. Pushing itself beyond any natural limits, leaving a trench in the earth where its many limbs dug deep and tore everything up. Kani hissed in fear, riding away quickly, glancing back and yelling for the others to hurry, to move.

Carza raised her rifle.

A strange, detached calm had swept over her. Just like at the camp. If she died here, she died here. She'd expected that anyway. And the gnawing in her stomach was absolutely silent - it knew that survival wasn't guaranteed, and at this point she was so burned out by the fighting and the stress that... that she found it hard to care. Almost.

The telescope opened before her. And she saw the frothing creature coming closer, closer, closer... leaving the Scabrous far behind. Pushing itself until its own muscles tore and contamination was needed to heal it over. Tusks dripping with gold and jewels, stained now with mud...

Carza aimed into its face.

It didn't react.

Close.

Closer.

Too close.

No. Close enough.

The dead man's hand squeezed the trigger at her command... and a pale grub was ejected with startling speed. Contained in a little hard capsule, one that disintegrated as it flew. She shuddered at how the sac contracted, pulsing out a little maggot that shot through the air...

And hit the ancestor directly.

The calm snapped when she saw the breeding begin.

Ayat drove the horse onwards, and Carza buried her head in the back of his armour with a small sob. She'd seen it up close, she didn't want to see it again. It made her skin crawl, made her stomach burn, made her feel... wrong. But she heard how the pants of eager hunting subsided... and were replaced by mad squeals, before the throat was choked with off-white bodies, spilling upwards, filling the lungs, the mouth, spilling from those lipless jaws and splattering dead into the mud. They'd crossed the lake now. And she could see Kani staring in horror at the thing that could've been an ancestor, but had been condemned to this instead. Why wasn't...

The grub hadn't killed it.

The ancestor was still moving. Too huge. Biology too aberrant. Capable of moving even as its innards were pulverised, moaning from a jaw broken off its hinge by the pressure of expanding bodies, shambling onwards with impossibly functional limbs. Mad and mutated... and it was what they'd wanted to do to Kani. Start when the demigod was young, when there was more room to shape them. Create a slimmer, more delicate hound, more refined in some respects... the Scabrous could've butchered everyone in the family when they attacked that first time, and in the back of her mind Carza had been wondering why they hadn't, why they'd chosen otherwise. Now... now she understood why the rest had been left alone. They hadn't wanted them. They wanted Kani for her aesthetics. They wanted a new specimen - already had a male, they wanted a female, and a young one who could be sculpted in interesting ways. A human? Boring. Males, young and old? Passé. Out of season.

If she'd been delayed... maybe the ancestor chasing them would've looked much more familiar.

Kani stared at it with a mixture of pity and disgust.

"Hand me the rifle, please."

"I-"

"It deserves to be put out of its misery. No ancestor should live like that. None."

Her breath hitched a little, and she instinctually scratched at the kitten again, bringing it up to nestle her neck and cheek.

"...please."

Carza silently handed it over.

The ancestor moaned, struggling onwards, desperate for something that its biology demanded it follow and respect and recognise... but had been taken. Maybe it couldn't even produce scents on its own. Carza never thought she'd feel sorry for an ancestor, legitimately pitying towards one, but... here she was. Mutilated and decorated for the pleasure of creatures that she still didn't understand. In the mountains they grew strong, large, wild... here, this thing was just... just weak. All that muscle looked fake, grown on the same way they made those horses so large. It was false. And with a crack from the gun... a white grub slitered into its face, easing under the glass skin.

And when the maggots consumed its head from the inside out, mounting more and more until the braincase split and the entire body came apart...

Carza almost thought she heard it sighing in relief.

* * *

The rifle entered her hands once again, dead hand still attached... and in silence, the three rode off. The Scabrous could still follow them, of course. But the grass rose high here - very high indeed - and the ancestor had broken through its discipline, the commands to keep pace with its masters. To stop it escaping, to stop it from leaving them behind. Making the hunt a failure. Well... they rode quickly. The horses were wheezing, eager to stop, and as they crested a hill they kept on going. The brushes still worked, and once the ground became drier and cracked, they covered up their tracks quite well indeed. Carza felt... drained. The last time she'd killed an ancestor, it'd been... desperate. A struggle, a mad struggle which had ended with Hull dead. But the sense of victory at the time had been palpable. Now? Now, she felt nothing at all. Just a vague melancholy. The last ancestor had towered over her, and this one had died at her feet. It'd barely been an ancestor, honestly, but it could've killed them even so. So much had changed. She'd gone out to save a friend, and actually managed it. She'd fought an ancestor, and won with only it dying, and with a bitter taste in her mouth. In all respects this was an improvement. But it made her wonder how close she could've been to sharing this moment with Hull or the others. If she'd improved.

Redemption always carried a hint of guilt with it.

Why not do it earlier? What stopped you? What prevented you from making amends at the start? What kind of pathetic, selfish narcissist would sit around self-pitying... why was redemption necessary to begin with. Weakness. If she'd rectified those weaknesses long ago, she'd have her friends with her now. Hull would be palling around with Ayat, Lirana would be making a coarse joke that Kani would find unbearably funny, Anthan would be hunting big game and seducing all the local girls, Egg and Cam would be... well, doing their thing. Existing. Incarnating new gods. Maybe even starting a cult of Fidelizh in this place, if they were very lucky. By a given definition.

They rode on. Into the grass, and in every direction but the one they wanted to take. Where would they go next, eh? North, to the salt marshes and safety in the opposite direction to Scabrous territory? West, to places where Ayat was known and could find refuge, even as an exile. Where he knew the paths and the people. East, back home. Or south, in a daring gambit that might well pay off if they were mad enough. In reality, they went in all those directions, and several others besides. Worked rather wonderfully in turning their tracks to madness. Ayat was good at this. Surprise was a vital tool for the nomads. He told quiet stories about the war, which Kani listened to with appalled interest at what her silly little brother had been up to for all these years. Move fast. Use lots of horses, keep up a quick pace. Disguise tracks by moving madly and brushing away anything in their wake, move on surfaces which left little trail to begin with. They were used to scarcity - eat little, and keep it mobile. No stopping for villages, nothing. Stay quiet... and then start the chaos. Poison wells. Set fires in the fields randomly, skip three, do two, skip five, do one, skip seven and then do a flurry of chaotic blazes which made no damn sense at all from above. Spark panic. Lurk in the countryside for days and then strike randomly. The nomads could be anywhere, could strike from any angle, and there was nothing to do but lock the cheese in the cellar and hope they didn't feel peckish. Prepare to sweep up the ashes and bury the dead.

Carza was actually a little alarmed when he got his sword out. Showed what he used to do. Charging right at an enemy was no good, no good at all. Horse would just stop, take its own survival as paramount, not the silly little bastard riding around on top. But by the side... he whirled his sword, round, round, round, faster, faster, building up momentum, swoop by to the side, and snap. The cutting motion cracked the air like a whip.

Side-on. No lances, just a whirling sabre.

Could kill a man in armour. All the force of a horse charging into you, but with more concentration, a sharper edge, and a living, intact horse. No need for long training or massed units.

Chaos and sabotage. Terror on a massive scale. Refugees fleeing to cities, hiding nomad informants who knew where the wind was blowing and would give them any amount of information if it bought safety.

He spoke with bleary innocence. He knew what he'd done was... unpleasant, and he regretted almost all of it. But it was done. It was finished. He regretted it, and he was going to move on. What he really regretted was exile, something he still refused to explain. Carza secretly believed it was some act of resistance, refusing to obey an order of monstrous proportions. Put children on spikes, douse orphanages in contamination, something like that. Torture and mutilation. And he politely declined, leading to exile. Maybe. Hard to say. But she wanted to believe the best of him, he'd been... shockingly decent so far. Downright courageous. And he was keeping her mind away from the ancestor. From the mercy kill. And from the fact that if the Scabrous got them in their line of sights, had their trail, there wasn't anything they could do to escape. Their horses were fast. Their weapons were deadly. All that was keeping them alive at this moment was the fact that their little tracker had been killed in the river, their trail had been soaked up, and they had at their disposal someone who'd spent... several years, she gathered, hiding from people who were a damn side more numerous than these Scabrous were.

As good as they were, the steppe was a vast, vast place. They couldn't cover every inch of it. And Ayat's tactics were forcing them to try their damnedest. Kani, though, was... shaken. Realised what was her fate if she hadn't been rescued. Kept looking at her hands... kept nursing the kitten. Bringing him out, curling him close, feeding him little bits of meat, doting on him with obsessive regularity. The kitten didn't seem to mind the attention all that much - it kept nuzzling her face, golden eyes staring up with mild adoration. The moment its head tilted up, all smugness vanished and it looked like a particularly gormless baby. Good that Kani had it - she was resisting other offers of conversation. They rode and rode, broadly angling north and east... away from the valley, but this ought to work. Cutting it close, though, for getting in... but snow or no snow, they couldn't get in if they were dead at Scabrous hands. No sights of yellow dust, no sound of thundering hooves, no cracks of rifles. Nothing. And no howls from ancestors, not one. Kani was careful to keep her scent glands suppressed as they rode, to avoid any attention.

The ground changed. Grey, now. The hills rolled in a strange way, like they were dunes rather than dirt mounds, shoved very slightly by the movement of great waves. A frozen beach, anchored with grass. The shoreline of an ancient ocean... and she could see the studded remnants of ancient trees, like cigarillo butts in an ashtray. Coated fully in dark moss, and soaking up the dampness in the sky like sponges. They rode, rode... and saw lights. A camp lay ahead, a small, neat place where nomads would live. Ayat glanced sharply at the others.

"Carza, Kani, go on. I'll stay here, keep an eye. Can I have my horse?"

Kani shot him a look... and quietly nodded.

"Stay safe, you hear. And you're coming closer to the camp for a meal, I don't care what they say."

Ah. Exile. No hospitality for him.

"Will you get enough sleep?"

"Used to sleeping in the saddle, or against my horse. Nice old girl, plenty warm on cold nights."

He smiled good-naturedly.

"Better than getting out of my armour, out of my boots, getting all defenceless, having to do conversations I don't like... I like this way a lot more."

He seemed genuine. Kani's eyes narrowed, including, presumably, her rudimentary ones.

"How long's it been since you changed your armour?"

"...well, I soaked in some fumes a few..."

He coughed, masking the next word.

"But did you take your armour off."

"We were on campaign, so-"

"By every ancestor that lives - Carza, does your bloody home have baths?"

"Uh."

"You, brother of mine, are going to soak yourself for a week straight."

Carza blinked.

"...is he going with me?"

"Of course he's going with you. I can't look after him, and you seem to have done an alright job. Mostly. Don't lead him towards any other monsters, alright?"

Ayat nodded solemnly.

"I will stop her from leading me at any other monsters. I promise."

Carza blinked again. More rapidly this time.

"And you're alright with that? Ayat, are you alright with going-"

"Oh, yes. Better than here."

He rubbed his hands together for warmth, and a smile lit up his face. Founder, he looked like a stray dog, the sort which still knew how to be domesticated and liked it that way.

"I'd like to see your 'Court of Horn'. Wonder if they're as silly as you made them out to be."

"Please don't call them silly."

"But what if they are silly."

"Still don't."

"But what if they're very, very, very silly, and it's impossible not to-"

"Don't."

His smile faded to a pout. Kani grunted.

"Alright. Come on. Let's change horses. And... uh, I suppose we'll need a signal for you to come closer... hm. I'll just bellow. Really loudly."

The process was completed in seconds, and as Carza and Kani walked off together, leading a horse that was exceedingly grateful for being unburdened for once... Kani started to shake. Shiver. Uncontrollably, really. Like a leaf in the wind. And Carza found herself acting as a makeshift support as they came closer to the merry fires and boiling cauldrons of a family of nomads coming out to greet them. Hands were raised - and hands raised in return. All safe. No war. No raiding. Nothing to be alarmed about, beyond the demigod turning into an ancestor. And Carza realised just how much Kani had been holding in for her brother. Tears were flowing from her eyes, trailing down to the ends of her tusks and dripping away. She wiped them with a filthy sleeve, hiccuping unpleasantly, keeping her emotions in chest. Hadn't wanted Ayat to see his older sister crying, to lose that impression of untouchability that older siblings generated, according to some of her novels. They paused a little way outside the camp...

And the two silently hugged one another, Kani turning her head to avoid grazing Carza with her tusks.

And for the first time since she was released... Kani seemed to realise that she was free. That she was going to live. And as the realisation hit...

She wept loudly into Carza's shoulder. All Carza could do was pat her on the back softly, and make quiet, reassuring noises while a small grey kitten pawed curiously around, and flinched whenever a stray tear struck it in its haughty, golden-eyed face.

"Thank you. Really."

Carza hummed. No response. Couldn't think of one.

Unnecessary.