There was a rustling in the far corner as Ceravanne came awake, and sat up and looked over toward them, as did Gallen. “Do not be too hasty to grieve for Tallea,” Ceravanne said from across the room. “Death is but a temporary state for many. She lived her life to the benefit of others, and she died to save us. The Immortals will be loath to let her perish.”
“But she feels dead to me,” Orick grumbled.
“Think of her as a friend who sleeps, but who will waken again.”
“Aye, but when she wakes again, she wants to be a Roamer. She’ll be different.”
“I should think you wouldn’t mind the differences,” Ceravanne said. “She’ll have fur, and she’ll look more like you. You were becoming close friends. I should think that when she is a Roamer, you will be closer still.”
“Och, she may resemble me,” Orick said, “but I have to wonder what thoughts will lodge in her head. Certainly not human thoughts. And what will her heart feel? No, Tallea is gone forever.”
Maggie patted his head. “By her own will she is gone,” she whispered. “She died well, as she wanted. We should be happy for her in that. But I think she lived a sad life. She wanted others to depend on her, to own them and be owned-too much. It was a burden for her.”
“So it’s love you’re accusing her of?” Orick said. “And I should be happy that she’ll feel it no more?”
No one spoke for a long moment, and at last Gallen said softly, “I lived as a Roamer once. You are right to mourn for her, Orick. Roamers feel a certain closeness, but it is not love, and so Tallea now loses some of her humanity. Still, they can be happy. They revel in their own freedom, and their days pass quickly because they are unencumbered. She will learn to hunt for grass seeds on the plain, and squat beneath wide trees in a fireless camp, where she will have no care while she sings at the stars.
“And so, while you mourn her, take care not to mourn too long. This is the reward she has chosen, and if you had ever suffered under the emotional encumbrances of a Caldurian, perhaps you would feel that she has chosen wisely.”
Orick thought for a long time, and his spirits seemed to lift a little. Maggie quickly kissed him on the snout, and when Orick said, “You know, I’m at least as hungry as those Derrits,” she knew that he was feeling better, but he was also reminding her of her duty.
She went back and watched the road, letting the others sleep through the long night. And as she waited, she clasped her hands and twisted, exercising her wrists as she often saw Gallen do, and she whispered of her need to Gallen’s mantle, saying, “Teach me!”
And so during that night, she moved in the darkness, exercising her body in new ways, swinging Gallen’s sword as best she could while the mantle sent her visions of foes.
Only once that night did she spot a Derrit-a great brute of a male walking down a ridge on the far side of the canyon, carrying a greatsword in one hand, with a war hammer in the other.
* * *
Chapter 27
Two hours before dawn, Gallen woke Orick with a kick. And Orick lay on the floor while Ceravanne packed, listening to the others talk in the main room of the guard shack. Maggie had chanced a small fire in the guard house and made a quick breakfast of cooked oats with cinnamon. It was their first hot meal in days, and to tell the truth, they would not have risked the smoke from a fire except that they had eaten all else. The cheeses were gone, as were the wine and corn, the plums and peaches. They were down to apples and oats, and they couldn’t tell when they’d eat a cooked meal again. So it was the oats.
Orick had been living off his store of winter fat for days now, and he was beginning to feel a gnawing hunger that the others would soon share. Yet bears are tough, and Orick knew that the hunger that was a mere annoyance for him would quickly become dangerous for the others.
He was lying on the floor, thinking of these things, when Gallen came back and kicked him again. “Wake up, sleepy,” Gallen said, laughing. Orick felt as if he’d hardly slept at all, and he grumbled to Gallen, “Why must you rouse me so early? I’m dead tired.”
“Better dead tired than merely dead,” Gallen said, squatting beside Orick’s ear. “We ran a good bit last night, but the next few kilometers of road are well exposed. Once dawn comes it won’t be safe to travel that road for the wingmen, and we must make good time today. I fear the Derrits will be hunting us tonight.”
“Och, I thought we left them all behind?” Orick grumbled.
“The Derrits and the wingmen own these mountains. The wingmen flocks are everywhere, and as for the Derrits, you saw how big they are. You saw their stride,” Gallen warned. “They can run a hundred kilometers in a night without breaking a sweat, and they can track by scent as well as any wolf. We ran for six hours last night, but if a Derrit hunting pack gathers, they’ll reach this spot in less than two.”
“Do you think they’ll come after us?”
“I think they’d have come for us last night, except that you and I made a good accounting against some of their number. But they won’t be satisfied to eat the dead we left behind.” Gallen leaned closer and whispered so that Maggie and Ceravanne wouldn’t hear. “I told you once that this road is a place of terror for the Inhuman. They would not likely brave it this time of year. In the fall, Derrits do their hunting for the winter. They kill men and animals, and bury them in a cache to eat later. In one of my former lives, I was a soldier who hunted Derrits here. Thirty-two men were in my command, and a dozen Derrits fell upon us in an ambush, slaughtering them. They buried my men in a huge pit, piling the dirt upon them all. I was sorely wounded, and I was buried with them. I dug myself out of the grave after four days, and for the next week I dragged myself across this rocky road; trying to escape, until the Derrits came for me again. It was only by chance that they lost my scent, passed me as I hid in the night. The next day I was able to make it down into the river, float for hours in the icy water until the Derrits had no opportunity to catch my scent again. A fear of this place must bum in the memory of every Inhuman.”
“So you think the Derrits will come for us? We only heard one other Derrit back there.”
Gallen leaned close, watching through the open door as Ceravanne and Maggie hunched over the cooking fire. “I did not want to tell you, but twice I had Ceravanne turn aside into smaller hallways because my mantle smelled Derrits ahead. We heard one, but I smelled dozens. Believe me, we’ll not get away from them this easily.”
“Are you going to tell the women?” Orick asked.
“I think Ceravanne already knows the risk, but I do not want to frighten Maggie. What will come, will come, and perhaps our best efforts will avail us nothing. So now, my friend, if you will pick your shaggy carcass up off the floor, I think we should eat quickly, and then be running.”
Orick obliged him, and in moments they were off, jogging on nearly empty stomachs through a maze of gray canyons, over the barren road. Their only light came from stars and moon, and just as the sky began to lighten, the road dipped precipitously, leading them deep into the gorge.
Before they could take the road down, Gallen stopped, and they stood panting while Gallen gazed far behind along the mountain slopes. A light snow dusted the tops of the peaks silver in the moonlight, and down near the bottoms were dark clots of pine forest running the slopes. But Gallen watched the gray middle slopes, almost featureless in the night, where the ancient road was bordered on one side by a precipice, on the other by walls of dark stone. The mountain chain here formed a huge S, so that though they had run perhaps forty kilometers since sunset, they were only fifteen kilometers as the wingman flies from the gates of the city, and with his mantle Gallen was able to see much of that road from this last bluff.
He stood for a long minute, then his breath caught in his chest, and his face became hard, impassive. Orick knew that look.