Chapter 9

The river wound and curved its way through the grasslands, marked by occasional clumps of trees like beads on a string. The strangers had opted to camp by its bank about a kilometer away from where Ryou and Darius had stopped. Darius led the way through the darkness with such caution that it took them over an hour to creep nearer. For the last twenty minutes, Ryou could hear horses snort, stamp and whicker, and sporadic shouts and laughs. He had grown used to how dark the nights were in this land, and his eyes could lead him without too much stumbling and falling by the light of the quarter moon and stars. By contrast the pinpoint yellow light of a fire looked as alien in the distance as neon.

At one point Darius gestured at Ryou to stop and hunker down in the shadow of a dense thicket, then he crept away. He took nearly an hour to get back, stretching Ryou's nerves at every shout and outburst of laughter from the other camp.

Then Darius appeared at his side like a phantom, making him