“Any idea who it was?”
Gentle shook his head. “I just felt his stare. Then I got a glimpse of somebody on the ridge. Who knows? It sounds absurd now I say it.”
“There was nothing absurd about the noises I heard. The best thing we can do is get out of this region as fast as possible.”
“Agreed.”
“Tasko said there was a place to the northeast of here, where the border of the Third reaches into this Dominion a good distance—maybe a thousand miles. We could shorten our journey if we made for it.”
“That sounds good.”
“But it means taking the High Pass.”
“That sounds bad.”
“It’ll be faster.”
“It’ll be fatal,” Gentle said. “I want to see Yzordderrex. I don’t want to die frozen stiff in the Jokalaylau.”
“Then we go the long way?”
“That’s my vote.”
“It’ll add two or three weeks to the journey.”
“And years to our lives,” Gentle replied.
“As if we haven’t lived long enough,” Pie remarked.
“I’ve always held to the belief,” Gentle said, “that you can never live too long or love too many women.”
The doeki were obedient and surefooted mounts, negotiating the track whether it was churned mud or dust and pebbles, seemingly indifferent to the ravines that gaped inches from their hooves at one moment and the white waters that wound beside them the next. All this in the dark, for although the hours passed, and it seemed dawn should have crept up over the hills, the peacock sky hid its glory in a starless gloom.
“Is it possible the nights are longer up here than they were down on the highway?” Gentle wondered.
“It seems so,” Pie said. “My bowels tell me the sun should have been up hours ago.”
“Do you always calculate the passage of time by your bowels?”
“They’re more reliable than your beard,” Pie replied.
“Which direction is the light going to come from when it comes?” Gentle asked, turning in his saddle to scan the horizon. As he craned around to look back the way they’d come, a murmur of distress escaped his lips.
“What is it?” the mystif said, bringing its beast to a halt and following Gentle’s gaze.
It didn’t need telling. A column of black smoke was rising from the cradle of the hills, its lower plumes tinged with fire. Gentle was already slipping from his saddle, and now he scrambled up the rock face at their side to get a better sense of the fire’s location. He lingered only seconds at the top before scrambling down, sweating and panting.
“We have to turn back,” he said.
“Why?”
“Beatrix is burning.”
“How can you tell from this distance?” Pie said.
“I know, damn it! Beatrix is burning! We have to go back.” He climbed onto his doeki and started to haul it around on the narrow path.
“Wait,” said Pie. “Wait, for God’s sake!”
“We have to help them,” Gentle said, against the rock face. “They were good to us.”
“Only because they wanted us out!” Pie replied.
“Well, now the worst’s happened, and we have to do what we can.”
“You used to be more rational than this.”
“What do you mean, used to be? You don’t know anything about me, so don’t start making judgments. If you won’t come with me, fuck you!”
The doeki was fully turned now, and Gentle dug his heels into its flanks to make it pick up speed. There had only been three or four places along the route where the road had divided. He was certain he could retrace their steps back to Beatrix without much problem. And if he was right, and it was the town that was burning up ahead, he would have the column of smoke as a grim marker.
The mystif followed, after a time, as Gentle knew it must. It was happy to be called a friend, but somewhere in its soul it was a slave.
They didn’t speak as they traveled, which was not surprising given their last exchange. Only once, as they mounted a ridge that laid the vista of foothills before them, with the valley in which Beatrix nestled still out of sight but unequivocally the source of the smoke, did Pie ‘oh’ pah murmur, “Why is it always fire?” and Gentle realized how insensitive he’d been to his companion’s reluctance to return. The devastation that undoubtedly lay before them was an echo of the fire in which its adopted family had perished—a matter that had gone undiscussed between them since.