Dies the Fire

They'd seen that before, rigged up like an Asian pedicab. His eyes sca

"Went off upslope there. Blood trail-big splotch of blood by the side of the road, and then splashes of it; someone got cut badly."

He frowned. "Probably fatally. The splashes get smaller up the hill here, like a body bleeding out. You can track 'em by the way the ants and flies are swarming on it."

"Should we follow?" Eric said, reining his horse half around.

"Patience," Pamela said.

Havel noticed that her eyes went skyward, like his. She hadn't been a hunter until the Change, but she had spent a lot of time before that watching wildlife.

"Patience, my ass. Let's go kill something, as the vulture said," Eric began brashly, but fell silent as the others pointed upward.

"Oh. Shit."

The buzzards were circling, but as they watched one slanted downward.

"I think the killing's been taken care of," Havel said. "I also don't think the locals were looking very hard for the reason people were disappearing. Or maybe whoever did it was rushed this time. Slow and careful, people. If I was one of this bunch, I'd leave an ambush on my back trail. I don't expect them to, but it could happen."

He dropped the knotted reins on the saddle horn and slipped an arrow through the cutout in the riser of his bow-Waters's first really successful model. The horse picked its way obediently upslope with rocks clattering under its hooves; he kept balance without much thought, his gaze on the great bare slopes about them.

What they sought was in a narrow ravine that dead-ended not far ahead. The carrion birds hopped about, a flapping squawking carpet over flesh roughly covered with' piled rocks. The long ski

Havel grimaced, and murmured words from an old song he'd heard once:

"Loud and cruel were the ravens' cries

As they feasted on the field."

If anyone was watching who really knew what they were doing, the buzzards and crows taking to the air would be a giveaway; he'd just have to hope they didn't know. The pedicab lay on its side, a wheel smashed into a bent tangle; getting it over these slopes had taken a lot of effort. A few meagre bundles of clothing and possessions lay opened and scattered about, looters' leavings.

Then: "There's things we'd better check. Let's get them uncovered."

The corpses hadn't had time to stink much, but the work was grim as they tumbled rocks aside. Eric made a retching sound; for real, this time.

"Butchered" was a term you heard a lot in talk about killing people; he'd seen casualties from shellfire who really looked that way, back in the Corps.

This was the first time it had been literally true. There were four bodies in the ravine; they'd all been gutted, and had the major cuts-thighs, upper arms, ribs-roughly hacked free and removed. He forced himself to note details; whoever did it hadn't dressed out many carcasses.

"Yeah," Havel said, feeling a little queasy himself. "I think we can see why people would be disappearing."

"Why?" Eric burst out. "This is ranching country- there's food!"

Havel shook his head. "Not right around here this time of year. Not if you don't know how to find it; I'd have a tough time living off the country within easy walking distance of the road, and someone from a town, someone who thinks half a mile is too far to walk… "

Pamela nodded. "I'd have problems living off the land here myself, and I do-did-a lot of wilderness hiking."

"So the only animal that's big and easy to catch right after the Change would be… guess what? Once you'd started, you wouldn't want to be found."

Eric was piling the rocks back on. "Because people would kill you," he said fiercely.

Havel nodded, face and voice calm: "Which is exactly what we're going to do," he said. "This bunch have read themselves out of the human race. There are things you're just not entitled to do, even to survive."

Eric reached for his reins. Havel put out a hand to stop him.

"This area's too steep and rocky for horses. They'd make us slow, and give us away, and pin us down if we got into a fight. I hate leaving them, but the A-list can pick them up- we'll be leaving plenty of sign."

The horses were nervous at the smell of blood, snorting and stamping; they ran a rope between two rocks for a picket line, and spilled the oats and alfalfa pellets from their saddlebags on the ground. Then Havel did a slow three-sixty scan of their surroundings, ending with his finger pointing northwest.

"Everyone take a long drink of water before we start," he said. "They're heading that way, and it's not misdirection; that's their base."

He suited action to words and then slung his quiver over his back, stooping to make the first of a series of arrow-signs with small rocks to show their direction.

"Eric, you're point." Because you rustle and clank less than either of us. It's not stealth armor. "Follow the blood trail. Remember what I told you."

"Yeah, look ahead at the tracks, not at your toes," Eric said, with a flicker of a smile. "Look up and around every three paces. Careful where you put your feet."

"And take it slow; remember, we're watching for your signal. Pam, cover my left. I think they're"-he pointed again-"somewhere under that rimrock on the edge of the higher ground. They have to have water, and that's where it would be; and not more than a mile or two away, I think. Let's go."

Eric went ahead, moving surprisingly lightly over the broken ground for a young man over six feet tall and currently carrying forty pounds of gear and weapons. Havel let him get twenty feet forward and then followed, placing his feet with care on the slope of dry sparse grass, low prickly bushes and scattered gravel, careful also not to let the skirts of the armor brush stone. The metallic chinking sound of that carried a

The sun baked down; once they were past the dead-meat smell of the ravine, all he could smell was warm rock, sage, and his own sweat. That flowed until he felt everything inside the armor was oozing lukewarm diluted tallow, and his eyes stung fiercely as driblets squeezed out of the lining of his helmet; all the tighter spots chafed. It all seemed distant, beneath the crystalline awareness of the hunt… a hunt where both sides were prey as well.

Eric flung up a hand, fist clenched. They all froze, and sank quietly to the ground; they were on the upslope of a steep ridge ru

Havel sca

He pulled the scabbarded sword from the sling on his belt and ran it through loops beside his quiver, leaving the hilt above his left shoulder; that was less awkward when you were doing the creep-crawl-and-run thing.

Then he went forward himself, from one cover to the next, and at the last mostly crawling, holding his bow across the crook of his elbows-it was a lot lighter than an assault rifle, but more cumbersome, and the string was delicate. More sweat ran into his face, and sharp rocks clawed at his elbows and knees. He had to move a lot more slowly, because there was no other way to make chain mail reasonably quiet.

Well, there's one good thing about this damned iron shirt, he thought. Stuff doesn't gouge into you as hard while you're wearing it.

He leopard-crawled into the slight depression where Eric lay and followed his eyes. There was a sentry on the ridgeline ahead of them. A useless sentry, standing right on the ridge out in plain sight of God and radar and leaning on a spear; that was reassuring, since it proved that the killers they sought really were amateurs.