The road through the moorlands went on and on. Ryou was nodding on his horse and at real risk of falling both asleep and off the animal altogether. They hadn't seen a tree since the way station three hours ago. The sun was sinking towards the horizon, sending shadows to wash around the far side of the highland's hillocks like an ever-frozen sea full of billows.The stone marker on the side of a road was sheer relief, not least because its upright angles were a welcome break in all these soft, flowing lines."Finally," Darius muttered, touching his heels to the flanks of his horse to spur it on.Whatever he read on the milestone made him smile when Ryou and his dispirited horse had caught up. "Hang in there, my friend. We're nearly at the crossing. Another five minutes and we'll be at the Paths of Everywhere."With such a grandiose name, the primitive stone-and-wattle building was a letdown. Crushed by the vastness of the moors, it skulked at the center of

The first leg of the journey past Kegsum was made in silence. The shock of what they'd witnessed - and likely caused, Ryou reminded himself grimly - had cast a pall. But he didn't have the leisure to think back on the episode extensively; a somber Darius pushed them on hard, pressing both Ryou and the horses down small rutted roads, occasionally cutting across fields, fording streams and skirting hills amidst a countryside vibrant with heat and sunshine. There was something a little exaggerated about the hurry. Later that evening, when an exhausted Ryou had finished currying an equally exhausted horse that only half-heartedly tried to nip him, it occurred to him that maybe Darius had been trying to distract him and get his mind off of what had happened to the Passer this morning. Their rapid trek had taken them into the middle of an olive grove, with only a deserted stone shack nearby, empty until laborers would come later that year to collect their crop. The two of them stayed there

Ryou galloped past three armored men trying to haul a wagon out of a rut. Weapons had been propped up against a nearby stumpy olive tree. The symbol adorning their shields was a crudely painted moon, the same as the one Darius had on his bracers. Assyrian soldiers. But Ryou did not stop. These men didn't have horses, they couldn't help. One of them shouted after him. He couldn't make out if it was a question, an order or a threat over the sound of hooves. As he pushed his horse onward, Ryou methodically analyzed everything he could see. He'd paralleled the river at first, but then the waterway and the path had split, and he'd followed the latter. It led him through a muddy valley surrounded by gentle green hills. The path was getting wider and wider, trampled to three times its previous size by a lot of feet. He spotted more soldiers, two dozen camped near a pond; still no riders. Then a larger gaggle of tents, women among them- no, not what he needed, but he

Ryou woke in an actual bed, or what passed for one here. No larger than a couch, the carved wooden frame had ropes strung across it supporting a cloth pallet, but it was comfortable enough. Rand had informed him in passing that he could make free use of the bed, the tent and everything in it; they'd belonged to some officer of the Assyrian army who died during the first part of the siege. Despite that somewhat morbid provenance, it was much better than sleeping on a bed of bracken wrapped in a blanket. Rand had not taken him right back to the camp on the hill the preceding afternoon. He’d detoured to a small encampment in a copse of olive trees where wagons and tents had been set up in a clearing by a stream. Injured or sick soldiers occupied the pallets under the trees and in every tent . Ryou counted approximately two hundred. Young men and women, sometimes barely children, cared for them. All the attendants wore the same knee-length undyed linen tunics and a serious air a

In the split second during which reality changed, Ryou remembered the Honda falling a considerable distance through the air last time he'd tried to move through space by cheating his way past the usual three dimensions. And horses did not come equipped with airbags. Oh shit- His horse screamed in panic- but its hooves hit solid surface an instant later. The animal skidded and slid to its rump, legs splaying out until it was almost flat on the ground, at which point Ryou lost whatever support his stirrups gave him and tumbled off. He picked himself up dazedly. Nothing broken this time, though his right side was now as bruised as his left. He panicked for a moment when he realized he'd lost his glasses - but they'd only skidded a little away before fetching up against a fallen tapestry, and were intact when he picked them up. His hand was shaking when he fit them onto his nose, but he immediately felt more centered once the world lost its blurriness. The surface onto which he'd falle