“We’ll sleep off here,” called Ashes, from a grove some distance away. “Away from the road.”
“Looks like a good place here,” offered Dyre.
“Not far enough from the road,” barked his father. “Down where I said.”
Grumbling, Dyre picked up the saddle and the pack and took them farther down the hill. They made camp, warmed their food, ate it in silence, and rolled into their blankets. Three moons came up, almost in a line, with two more close behind. The world was bathed in half-light. Bane and Dyre fell exhaustedly asleep.
Away along the road something roared. The ground trembled. Bane sat up. Ashes was snoring. Bane poked Dyre, who sat up as well, clutching the blanket around his shoulders. The earth trembled again, and again, and constantly as the roaring grew louder. In the moonlight they saw something galloping toward them, huge and many-legged, rumbling like a string of freight carts on a cobbled street, continuing this horrid thumping as it rushed past and off into the west, toward the chasm.
“What was that?” cried Dyre, trembling.
“Legger,” mumbled Ashes from under his blankets. “Sort of like the kind that carried us off, that time before. They go by here all the time. Go to sleep.”
They lay back down. After a time they slept, to be roused again and again by the sound of leggers going past, in both directions, to and from the chasm, and once by the sound of something more ponderous than leggers, rolling. That time Ashes awoke and, telling them not to move from where they were, went up to the road. They heard him shouting, then the heavy rolling stopped.
“Ashes,” said a thick, gurgling voice, like rocks rolling around in thick syrup.
“Where you going, Hughy Huge?” Ashes asked.
“Roll ‘em over,” gargled the voice. “Roll ‘em over.”
“Who told you?”
“Wings.” The thing breathed, like a wind, heaving. “Wings said it was time to roll ‘em over. Wings, he’s comin’ along. The rest of ‘em, they’re comin’ along. S’long Ash.”
The rolling started again, at first slowly, then faster.
“Who was that?” asked Bane, when Ashes returned.
“Hughy Huge,” mumbled Ashes.
Bane judged it a good time for a sensitive question. “I thought Web said he was going back to camp.”
“Oh, that’s just Web,” said Ashes. “Just Web. He’s here. Of course he is. We have to … we have to be here.”
“Why?” whispered Bane. “Why do we have to be here?”
Ashes sat down by the fire, stirred up some glowing coals and put a few sticks on them, blowing into the embers until they burst into flame, talking sleepily, half to himself.
“Some of us … we didn’t like what that pond done to us. Some of us didn’t know what to think. Web, one day he’s mad, the next day he likes being able to fly, next day he’s mad again. Lately, he’s been mad more of the time. It’s like he’s bored. Web was always smart, like Bunny. Him and Bunny was close. Since Bunny’s been gone, Web’s kinda … like I said, bored. I think he just wants to make something happen.”
Bane said offhandedly, making little of it, “How come nobody knows about you all? Back there, in town, they think Wilderneers are just a story.”
Ashes ruminated a long time on this. “Well, we hid. One here, one there. After that time when they killed us, we hid. This whole world it’s just full of places to hide … “
“But the camp’s right out in the open.”
“Lately,” Ashes agreed. “Haven’t been there but a little while. A couple years. Most of us’re still hid. Me ‘n Mooly, we started the camp. It’s a place to get together. Him and me, we go around, talk to this one and that one, bring ‘em into camp, so we’ll be ready, when the time comes … “
“Look, you Wilderneers got a plan about the cities, right?”
Ashes nodded, like a man in a trance, not taking his eyes from the fire.
Still distantly, as though it were unimportant: “So, if you’re here when the cities fall, the plan won’t work, right? So why’re you here?”