And so we rode those tireless beasts, hard, hour after hour, after the sun went down, all the night long, into the next day, heading toward the sea, till we were far ahead of our quarry. The breaks were few and far between. I ached everywhere. It was too soon after my venture with the Lady for this.
We halted where the road hugged the foot of a wooded hill. Silent indicated a bald spot that made a good watchpoint. I nodded. We turned off and climbed.
I took care of the horses, then collapsed. “Getting too old for this,” I said, and fell asleep immediately.
Silent wakened me at dusk. “They coming?” I asked.
He shook his head, signed that he did not expect them before tomorrow. But I should keep an eye out anyway, in case Raven was travelling by night.
So I sat under the pallid light of the comet, wrapped in a blanket, shivering in the winter wind, for hour upon hour, alone with thoughts I did not want to think. I saw nothing but a brace of roebuck crossing from woods to farmland in hopes of finding better forage.
Silent relieved me a couple hours before dawn. Oh joy, oh joy. Now I could lie down and shiver and think thoughts I did not want to think. But I did fall asleep sometime, because it was light when Silent squeezed my shoulder...
“They coming?”
He nodded.
I rose, rubbed my eyes with the backs of my hands, stared up the road. Sure enough, two figures were coming south, one taller than the other. But at that distance they could have been any adult and child. We packed and readied the horses hurriedly, descended the hill. Silent wanted to wait down the road, around the bend. He told me to get on the road behind them, just in case. You never knew about Raven.
He left. I waited, shivering still, feeling very lonely. The travelers breasted a rise. Yes. Raven and Darling. They walked briskly, but Raven seemed unafraid, certain no one was after him. They passed me. I waited a minute, eased out of the woods, followed them around the toe of the hill.
Silent sat his mount in the middle of the road, leaning forward slightly, looking lean and mean and dark. Raven had stopped fifty feet away, exposed his steel. He held Darling behind him.
She noticed me coming, grinned and waved. I grinned back, despite the tension of the moment.
Raven whirled. A snarl stretched his lips. Anger, possibly even hatred, smoldered in his eyes. I stopped beyond the reach of his knives. He did not look willing to talk.
We all remained motionless for several minutes. Nobody wanted to speak first. I looked at Silent. He shrugged. He had come to the end of his plan.
Curiosity had brought me here. I had satisfied part of it. They were alive, and were running. Only the why remained shadowy.
To my amazement Raven yielded first. “What’re you doing here, Croaker?” I’d thought him able to outstubborn a stone.
“Looking for you.”
“Why?”
“Curiosity. Me and Silent, we got an interest in Darling. We were worried.”
He frowned. He was not hearing what he had expected.
“You can see she’s all right.”
“Yeah. Looks like. How about you?”
“I look like I’m not?”
I glanced at Silent. He had nothing to contribute. “One wonders, Raven. One wonders.”
He was on the defensive. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Fellow freezes out his buddies. Treats them like shit. Then he deserts. Makes people wonder enough to go find out what’s happening.”
“The Captain know you’re here?”
I glanced at Silent again. He nodded. “Yeah. Want to let us in on it, old buddy? Me, Silent, the Captain, Pickles, Elmo, Goblin, we all maybe got an idea...”
“Don’t try to stop me, Croaker.”
“Why are you always looking for a fight? Who said anything about stopping you? They wanted you stopped, you wouldn’t be out here now. You’d never have gotten away from the Tower.”
He was startled.
“They saw it coming, Pickles and the Old Man. They let you go. Some of the rest of us, we’d like to know why. I mean, like, we think we know, and if it’s what we think, then at least you have my blessing. And Silent’s. And I guess everybodys who didn’t hold you back.”
Raven frowned. He knew what I was hinting, but couldn’t make sense of it. His not being old line Company left a communications gap.
“Put it this way,” I said. “Me and Silent figure you’re going down as killed in action. Both of you. Nobody needs to know any different. But, you know, it’s like you’re running away from home. Even if we wish you well, we maybe feel a little hurt an account of the way you do it. You were voted into the Company. You went through hell with us. You... Look what you and me went through together. And you treat us like shit. That don’t go down too well.”
It sank in. He said, “Sometimes something comes up
that’s so important you can’t tell your best friends. Could get you all killed.”
“Figured that was it. Hey! Take it easy.”
Silent had dismounted and begun an exchange with Darling. She seemed oblivious to the strain between her friends. She was telling Silent what they had done and where they were headed.
