“The only ones the Wilderneers ever had,” said Ashes.
“But … if all that happened hundreds of years ago. How come … how come you’re still here?”
“We don’t die,” said Ashes, staring at the sky. “Way we figure it, critters that come from that pond, we can get killed—like that trader ship killed some of us, but we don’t just die.”
“We? You mean us, too?”
Ashes shrugged. “I don’t know. You had a regular woman as a mother. Maybe it only works if you’ve been in the pond. Maybe it doesn’t work for sons, or daughters. We don’t know. We want to find out.”
Bane raised his voice. ‘.’So what are we, huh? Some kinda experiment? You gonna see if you can kill us?”
Ashes shrugged again. “You’re my sons. For now. And when you go down there, you’re their kinfolk. For now. So long as you don’t do anything or say anything stupid.”
“Like what?” demanded Bane
“Like anything but ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir’ and ‘kind of you to say so sir,’ “ Ashes growled.
The boys got wordlessly back on their horses and rode along the edge of the caldera until they reached a break in the rimwall, a path leading down. Ashes’s lead horse took to the trail as though he knew it well, and after a moment’s hesitation, the others followed. Clouds settled and they rode for a time in glowing, clinging mist. Clouds rose and they found themselves almost at the bottom, the lakes away to their right, glittering with moon trails.
Something tall, massive, and darker than the sky reared into being at the edge of the trail. Though the horses took no notice at first, both Bane and Dyre started in fright, pulling up on the reins, causing their mounts to rear. At this, there came a titter from between the stones at the side of the path where something poured out of one declivity into another.
“Hush,” said Ashes, “it’s only Bone and Boneless.” He glanced upward toward the slow clap, clap of leathern wings. In a moment the winged one dropped onto the trail beside him, eyes glowing, sharp fangs glittering. A lean, gray-furred body leaned toward the boys, almost hungrily.
“Ashes and Thunder,” the thing said from a fanged mouth. “Welcome home. You brought me dinner?”
“They’re not for your dinner, Webwings.” Ashes nodded. “These’re my boys. This here’s Bane, that’s Dyre.”
Barely able to speak, the brothers managed jerky nods in the newcomer’s direction. He stared at them for a time with glowing eyes, then grasped Ashes’s arm and swung himself onto the horse behind him, wings falling to either side of the mount, the ragged tips trailing along the ground. When Ashes clucked the horse into a trot, Bane and Dyre did likewise, though reluctantly. Having seen this little, they were not eager to see more. The trail led toward cook fires that burned on hearths of stone in what seemed to be a permanent encampment, a sprawling community of stone-and-wattle shacks, of roofless enclosures, of pits and holes, all set well apart, with firewood piled nearby, and everything concealed from above by copses of large trees.
Ashes drew up at the edge of the encampment. His winged acquaintance slipped off the horse and walked away behind a high earthen wall. Bane and Dyre shared a glance between themselves and at their father who watched the wall, waiting. From behind that concealment a huge, bony hook slashed down, flailing in a forceful arc that slammed it into the shivering soil, fragments of sod flying. Then came another hook at the end of a stout cable or a thick rope, flailing down, piercing deep. The cables tightened; there was a sound like a gasp or grunt, not quite organic, and a monstrous mound of flesh tugged itself into view, something like an elephantine caterpillar, a thing the size of a large carriage or small river boat, though longer than that, for it kept coming as the huge grapples at its front were set again and again so the body could heave itself forward. The immense, immobile weight hauling along the ground, accompanied by a barrage of grunts and gargles, thrust up the earth at either side, leaving a groove like a ditch.