Three sections turned out to be three groups of a hundred and seventy, or five hundred and ten total thralls. Or, about a quarter of the whole unit.

And no humans.

“They’re sending us on our own?" Red asked, as they picked up their packs. "What about officers?”

Inka laughed, sounding surprised. “The humans stay together.”

Dally had told them, and Nessie, and Ansel, to stay with the main group. It hadn't worked. Not even a little bit.

The whole pack followed him around, while he collected people that would look for the Brairi. At first the Front thralls looked at him with cold disbelief. Some of them were still binding up wounds or scrubbing gore off their faces. Still, they passed the word. Without Dally actually doing much, the sections formed up with packs and weapons.

Inka had collected Sorrel again, her baby. She was bouncing him in a sling on her back. When Dally had tried hinting she should stay in the main column she laughed in his face. "Brairi don’t kill babies," she’d said, and then shown him the belt Sorrel had on. It was five different lucky snake skulls, strung on a leather cord. ‘Just in case’.

“So,” Dally said, “if there's no humans, who’s in command?”

"You, remember?" Inka grinned. "Random male."

That was about the tenth time he got teased about that in the last hour. Apparently Captain picked random males a lot, but he had never managed to choose someone fresh off a railcar before.

Dally snorted. "Fine, yes, okay. Who's auna?"

The Corps word didn't exactly mean 'officer': only humans were officers. And it wasn't just 'oldest', either. Maybe something more like 'respected, longest-surviving person'.

Inka turned and pointed at a female in the middle of a pack near them. “This one, Nedjel.” There was something fake about her bland tone, like she was actually glad he'd asked.

The auna was very, very old. She wore mismatched parts of a uniform faded to dull grey, covered by a half-cape of balding seal hide. Scars criss-crossed her papery skin like cobweb, and she carried one of the few remaining twitch-guns over her shoulder. It's glossy shell was stained deep reddish-black from hundreds of layers of polish. Squinting, Dally could see ancient cilia fluttered weakly at the end of the barrel. Still, each piece of her worn gear was perfectly clean, and she packed almost as fast as everyone else.

Now that Dally was watching, he could see the people nearby turning to her for advice. They held up bits of gear for approval, and made respectful signs with their hands.

Dally matched Inka's pace, trying not to smile. "She looks like you."

"She is my grandmother."

“Oh. You must be proud."

"Proud?" Inka's pale cheeks were going red. "I'm just born from her daughter. Listen, Sorrel is crying and goodbye-"

Though Dally couldn’t hear anything, Inka turned and strode away in a random direction.

Ansel grinned, watching her go. Then he winced. In the battle one of the Brairi had clawed him across the mouth, and the healing gash still split his top lip unpleasantly deep. "Look at that," he mumbled. "Imagine knowing your whole family, but you still can't even take a compliment about them."

"Mf," Dally agreed. They both thought about that for a second. The Front thralls had lots of ideas like that, about earning respect on your own. That kind of thing mattered if you stayed with your parents the way they did.

"You see how old Auna is, though?" Dally went on. "Maybe she'll keep us alive, when we catch up with the Brairi reinforcements."

“We're still calling them reinforcements, huh?” Ansel asked.

Even Nessie didn't look so sure. “Maybe they really were heading to Provok," they said, "like the Captain thought. To join the main force."

"Or they came to bait us into what we're doing right now."

That was something they all got to think about. The attack had been hard and fast, but it hadn't made a whole lot of sense. The Brairi couldn't have thought they'd beat a whole company with a small force like that.

Somewhere behind them, Sorrel really did let out a wail.

---

After two days, Dally had new blisters from the straps of his new Brairi pack, and another where he leant the harpoon over his shoulder. It was heavy on its own, and he'd slung tent parts and food bags on the end the way Inka showed him.

They'd crossed out of the barren flats into what Inka called 'poison forest'. It was dark, deep and nearly silent. Dally thought not much grew on the Front, but here the plants were thriving. And weird. Defective trees snaked around each other, dappled with vivid green light. It smelled strangely good; sweet and damp.

Inka tried to show them the tracks they were following, but when Dally looked it was just a tiny scuff in the dirt.

"This is from sickle claw, see?" Inka said, digging her own in, then lifting her foot to show the mark. "This way. There's not many." She hesitated."I think they're getting further away."

They didn't find them that day. Or the next.

The trackers spent longer each time they searched for the trail. "I think this is a print...?" Inka said, squatting to stare at what looked like nothing at all.

On the fifth day, it rained. Sheets of water drummed on their backs and shoulders, soaking boots, tents, hair. Everyone stopped singing except Sathia the songwriter, who never stopped, ever. Their high, strong voice cut through the mist alone, tracing the arcs of a wordless new melody.

The auna stopped them all. She stood in a hollow at the base of a massive tree, sheltered in a cave of hardened wood.

"We lost the target," she said, in a voice that whispered like dry leaves. "We should go back and report."

Report?

Dally went cold, feeling eyes on the back of his neck. If anyone was getting punished for this it would be him, right? The random male.

Inka frowned. "It would be better if we found them."

"We won't," Auna said. "Each wasted day just makes it worse. But, at least we can go through Small Creek on the way back."

There was a murmur, as the Front thralls looked around at each other. Then someone whistled part of a song, and there a scattered, bitter laugh. They all turned back the way they just came.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Gentle rain ticked down on Dally's shoulders, trickled down his face. The faded pen scars on his chest felt wrong, like they were crawling across his skin.

Red's hand fell on his shoulder, and he actually twitched. He'd been frozen and staring blankly into the rain. He forced a smile for her, and hitched his harpoon back up on his shoulder.

Inka didn't say anything about reporting, and Dally didn't ask.

“Seems like a long detour,” he said, instead, as they veered deeper into the forest.

“Our farm is near here," Inka said. "If we go we will have food.”

“Farm?”

She wasn’t kidding. The next day they skittered over the top of a shale ridge in the woods, and a valley came into view on the other side.

It a small dish, almost like a crater nestled between the mountains. At the bottom were clearings cut in the trees, with the edges of rooftops peeking out. They were stained green from rain, and the edges were crumbling, but the buildings themselves were mostly still standing. They weren't like any Dally had seen before. The walls were rounded, like river-smoothed stone, but the roofs had sharp, steep peaks to shed snow.

The scrub was thicker here, and sheltered from the wind the air was hot and smelled of honeysuckle. Under Dally’s feet the shale turned to deep, soft grass. Between the trees was an actual field, full of cattle with tails flicking. There was wheat too, growing in weedy patches scattered through the scrub. In the distance he could even see the massive, glossy shell of a crawling plow. Its dozen legs strained as it dragged its blades through the dirt.

“Where'd you even get a live machine?” he asked, impressed.

Inka stopped, looking where he was.

“This is not ours,” she whispered, and unslung her harpoon from her shoulder.

Some of the others had seen it as well. They made quick signs with their hands. When they moved again it was slower, with guns leveled. Out of the corner of his eye Dally watched Inka shove her baby in Nessie's arms, and then push Nessie behind a tree.

When the company moved forward again it was only about thirty of them, with the rest hanging back in the woods. An ambush for the ambush, if there was one.

Cicadas buzzed, dry grass crackled under their feet. They passed the plow. It lifted it's feelers, nosing blindly in the sun.

Dally's fingers tightened on his stolen harpoon. A slow trickle of sweat was crawling down his back. He had never thrown a harpoon before. He couldn't feel what it would be like to throw it, with his arms stiffly jutting out in front of him. What should he do?

Inside, Inka signed, glancing at the closer farmhouse. Its sagging roof leaned out over the courtyard, shading a narrow door. Dally nodded, and crouched in the shadow to change form. The others spread out around the other buildings.

Once Inka and was standing on the other side, Dally took a deep breath and nudged the door open.

Inside was a small kitchen, warm and glowing with firelight. Empty.

Dally had to resist a dumb urge to wipe his feet on the threshold. He slunk inside, heart pounding. A pot bubbled on top of a black iron stove, letting off steam that curled in the light. The scent of spice and onions was overpowering, and despite everything his stomach growled.

They crept forward, leaning to look into the next rooms.

Feet scuffed in the doorway behind him. Dally turned, and threw the harpoon, and watched it fly through the air and stick into the chest of a woman. The woman had freckles and huge, watery blue eyes. When the harpoon hit her she screamed once, a short confused sound. Then she stopped, and fell over. Blood bloomed red across the front of her tunic.

"Human," Dally said, stupidly.

Inka stared at the woman as she died, eyes huge. She looked like she was about to say something, when an anguished howl cut through the silence. A man had come in from the side rooms. He scrambled towards them, snatching up a kitchen knife from the bench.

Inka caught the man's wrist with clawed fingers. In one easy motion she swung him around, and snapped him against the door frame. It was like shaking a rat, Dally thought, to break its neck. Bone cracked, and the man slid down, limp to lie in the growing pool of blood.

He lay there, wheezing, with fingertips vibrating against the floorboards. "T-tole," he said, and then mumbled something Dally didn't understand. Slowly he got quieter and quieter, until his eyelids fluttered closed.

"We can eat the soup," Inka said, after a long time.

"He said 'tole," Dally said, "'please'. He speaks Corps--"

"Not Corps. Brairi."

Why the hell was it the same word in both languages?

Dally shook it off. "You ever killed a human before?" he asked, hopeful. Maybe this was normal.

"No." Inka turned stiffly away, already rifling through the cupboards. "Check upstairs, we need to go."

A choked sound behind them made them both turn. Ansel was standing in the doorway, staring at the two bodies. His skin rippled, spines breaking through.

"You too," Inka said. "Look for food."

They went; what else could they do? Dally swept aside a curtain with the bloody end of his harpoon, his knuckles pale on the haft.

It was almost empty. One room was stacked with broken pieces of furniture, and the crystal in the windows had spiderweb cracks. But there was no dust anywhere, and under their feet the boards were glossy from polishing. Summer sun streamed through a lace-edged curtain, making patterns on the walls.

Dally nudged open a door, while Ansel kept on down the hall. The room inside was tiny, and piled high around the edges with torn-up boards, new shingles for the roof. There was a bed nestled in the corner; a bare wood frame with a straw mattress. The room was silent, so he wasn't sure how he knew but there was definitely something alive underneath.

Maybe it was a dog. They could eat a dog. Right?

Dally bent, and put his cheek to the floor.

A pair of huge pale eyes stared back at him, set in a small round face. A human child. She was maybe six, with tangled yellow hair. In the dark under the bed Dally could just make out the sticky shine of snot and tears on the kid's upper lip. A hare lip, with a notch in the middle.

The girl looked from him to the bloody harpoon blade, where Dally had set it down on the floor.

"What are you doing?" Ansel asked.

Dally jumped, and looked up to find him in the door. "There's a kid."

They stared at each other. Ansel looked about as bad as Dally felt, like he might throw up.

"Leave it," Ansel said.

That was the rule, right? Everyone knew that. If you found an enemy kid, you just forgot you ever saw it. Their unit must be close; they would come pick it up. It would be fine. All you had to do was leave it.

"She's human," Dally said. "She'll starve out here."

Ansel growled, and swayed in place, but he didn't say anything else. Eventually he thumped down down beside Dally, and joine him in lying to look under the bed. The kid hadn't flinched too bad before, but she did from Ansel's face. Her eyes flickered between them.

Slowly Dally held out a hand to her, palm up. "Shh, it's okay. Come on out."

"Don't," Ansel hissed.

It didn't look like the girl understood, anyway. Dally bit his lip, remembering the human's - father's - last words. He switched to Corps.

"Come out please?"

Silence. The girl clutched something closer to her chest, and in the dark it took a while to figure out what it was. A lumpy person-shaped thing sewn out of sack cloth, with narrow eyes drawn on. Straw stuck out of the head for spines. A thrall doll.

"Who is this?" Dally pointed at it.

At first the girl looked like she hadn't even heard him, but then she slowly looked down at the toy. "Tilly," she whispered.

"Dally." He pointed at himself, then at her.

"Ozana."

"Ozana." Dally gave her a close-lipped smile. "Don't worry, okay? We're good thralls. If you come out we can help you."

Ansel's shoulder went stiff against Dally's side.

"Please," Dally repeated, holding out his hand again.

The girl stared, for a long time. Then she slowly reached, and put her small hand in his. Her hand weighed almost nothing, but was sticky from clamping on the doll's arm. It was like one of baby Sorrel's fists. Weaker, even.

On the way down the stairs Dally swung the human girl up to carry her, and though she squeaked in surprise she didn't flail around too much. She whispered something in the Brairi, it sounded a little like 'where?'.

"Close your eyes, little sister," Dally whispered back. She didn't, so Dally reached up to clamp a hand over them.

Inka was throwing jars in a sack on the floor. She barely glanced up, at first, then froze as she saw the girl. "Dally."

He gave her a hard look, and stepped over Ozana's mother on his way towards the door.

"Dally, no-" Inka lunged after him, following him into the open air.

The stink of blood faded. Outside was still bright and warm, afternoon sun glowing on the fields. Confusing.

As Dally set the girl down Inka caught his arm. "Are you crazy?"

"We can't leave her." He switched to Savic. "We just - I - she's alone."

"Someone will come," Inka said, like she was trying to convince herself.

Ozana had taken shelter behind Dally's leg, staring with huge eyes at Inka's defective jaw.

Dally forced a smile. "This is Inka," he told Ozana.

"Fool." Inka bared another row of sharp teeth at him. She dragged both hands back through her hair. "Saf na kolje-"

Dally didn’t know all the Corps slang yet, but he knew cursing when he heard it. While Inka swore at his back he led Ozana away, squeezing her small hand as he tugged her along through the fields.

The main force had advanced, and the front runners were passing them now. A group had gathered around Ozana's family's plow, and were walking around it, gesturing skeptically. The conversation was in fast Corps, and Dally hoped Ozana couldn't guess much of it. From what he could catch, the thralls didn't think the plow would survive without human liveworkers. But they could eat it.

As Dally passed a young female was already driving a harpoon blade through the nerve column in the machine’s undercarriage. Another grabbed hold of one of its forelegs and wrenched it off. Ozana flinched from the crack, and Dally hurried her along.

"It's okay," he muttered, "plows aren't people."

By both gods, he hoped that was true. Behind them the plow’s glossy bulk sagged into the dirt.