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La Curandera

Volume IV - Children's Crusade

By

Dissident Love

Copyright 2016... 2017.

Whatever. This took a while.

Author's Note:

This story marks the official launch of my Patreon page, which can be found at www.patreon.com/dissidentlove. If you've enjoyed any of my stories over the last nine years and feel the world needs more of that sort of a thing, I urge you to wander on over and leave a couple bucks by Amber's door. Patreon supporters will get access to the Patreon feed, which will have random musings, brief story snippets and short standalone scenes (particularly hyper scenes), sneak previews, and of course a place to give feedback and make requests. I do so love to make my readers happy. From here on out I will be focusing more on serialized short stories, posting 3000-5000 words per week on a regular schedule as opposed to 30000-50000 (or more... oi!) a great deal less frequently as I'd like. There will be PG, R and X rated content coming, and eventually properly published and illustrated eBooks for sale of existing and new content and compilations.

It's been a wild ride, but the time has come for this badger to try and make a LIVING off of this whole puttin-words-on-pages nonsense, and as always, it starts with you, dear reader.

Additionally, I would like to apologize if the fact that this story is longer than Catcher In The Rye in any way turns you off. I mean, seriously, think of the bargain you're getting here!

~

Pueblo adjusted the light strapped to his head, doing his best to ignore the rough metal edges and ancient flecks of grit that were trying to rub his scalp clear of fur. It was warm down in the Hole, but it was a warmth far more unnerving than the considerably hotter temperatures aboveground that he was used to. Half a mile beneath the surface of the Bloody Foot Hills, the darkness drew a sweat out of him that no scorching noonday could match. Down here, the darkness had weight.

The little half-fox hefted the pack strapped to his narrow back and leaned in closer, examining the relics that festooned what had once, in some bygone era, been a kitchen.

"Anything?" Kenyon called from the next tiny abode, what the sign out front of the vast building proclaimed to be an 'apartment'. It made sense, Pueblo supposed; there were so many doors, so many locks, so many walls, that the hundreds of people who had lived here must have felt very apart, indeed. "Nothing good here. Everything's smashed."

"Not really," Pueblo called back, poking through the jagged gaps in the countertop. What must have once been wood was little more than mold and dust, and the metal was more rust than useful. "I think this whole place is a wreck."

"We'll head up to the top floors, then, just to be sure. The best stuff is always on the top floor."

Pueblo winced. "Does that mean-"

"You get to ride in the basket!"

The stairs ended rather abruptly just above the second floor, and the light of their headlamps indicated that they didn't start again until somewhere around the ninth or tenth. It still boggled his mind that there were buildings that tall anywhere, but the ancients had built so many of them that the sheer population involved made him nervous. Bayside had apparently just passed four thousand individuals spread across an area that took an entire day to cross by foot, but this undermountain city had living space for a hundred times that. Maybe more.

Father and son trotted down the slanting central corridor that fed the apartments until they reached the vertical shaft of stairs. Kenyon wore a criss-crossing harness covered in a multitude of sharp, heavy tools, as well as several lengths of rope, and a backpack that could have fit Pueblo alongside both of his sisters. It was the rope that had his attention now, along with the heavy, wiry mesh bag folded up neatly below it.

"I hate the basket."

"But you're so good at it!" Kenyon chuckled, the light from his own head lamp bobbing. "And it's not like you can be on the bottom."

"Yeah."

The huge fox, built out of dense slabs of muscle that Pueblo could only hope to someday match, uncoiled the rope and slid the well-sharpened grapple to the middle, giving it a pensive swing. "The rails up there look pretty intact," he mused, ducking to get his head below the top of the narrow doorway. "Not too far at all, really."

"You've said that before."

"I caught you," Kenyon said reproachfully. "It LOOKED solid that time!"

Pueblo clenched his fists and just leaned against the portal frame. "Just test it good this time."

Kenyon grinned. "Fi-i-ine," he sighed with mock exasperation. "So picky."

The grapple suddenly accelerated and vanished into the gloom above. The experienced prospector's paws loosely gripped the ropes, flexing almost imperceptibly and guiding the grapple as though the hemp were as firm as bone. As expected, the first toss caught nothing and the grapple came rattling and bouncing back down, all the way to the basement level, before Kenyon hauled it back up for the next attempt. It took four more tries before the rope remained firmly vertical, and several strong tugs did not dislodge it.

"Who's ready for some fun?" Kenyon smiled, giving his eldest a little nudge on the shoulder.

"Fun."

"Oh, you used to be more adventurous."

"This used to be less... weird."

"What's weird about it?" Kenyon asked, fastening the wire mesh bag to the rope and holding it open for Pueblo. The half-coati just stared up at his father in mild disbelief before climbing in.

Kenyon pulled with slow, smooth strokes, and Pueblo rose through the middle of the dead, shattered building, larger than he'd ever imagined castles or palaces could be. What's weird? He thought. Hundreds of thousands of people used to call this city home. Weapons that could destroy nations dropped out of the skies, unleashing fires worse than what I'd always imagined Hell would be. He could remember seeing Bayside for the first time as a pup, awed by the concept of four hundred people living in the same region, and there were easily four hundred people living just in this one building!

Well, not living anymore...

The top floor made Pueblo nervous. They always did. Walking through the decaying remnants of this once mighty empire, head lamps stabbing through the stygian void, there were far more monuments frozen mid-collapse than were still largely intact. The building of apartments just to the south of this one had caved in like one of his mother's attempts at soufflé; the exterior walls stood straight and true, but there was nothing within except a vast coffin of debris.

Pueblo climbed out of the basket and up onto the simultaneously dusty and moist floor, relieved to have solid ground beneath him instead of a neck-breaking pit, but also aware that this height was never solid to begin with. He double-checked that the grapple was secure, cast iron tines digging into the strange soft metal that lined the portals, and called down the all clear.

A minute later, father and son were rummaging through the penthouse suites of what, just nine millennia before, had been Luxury Low-Rise Condominiums, The Ultimate In Suburban Comfort And Style, Minutes From Downtown, Starting At Only $319,990.

---

High above, Odella's grove was a patch of blazing rainbow radiance sprouting out of the sickly, off-yellow stones of the Bloody Foot Hills. Greasy oil-slicked water burbled and spurted out of the rocks, sizzling and steaming and a curse to the soft tissues of the eyes and noses of the unprepared, the smoky grey sludge filtering through several small pools and into the spongy marsh that the curandera's power had wrought. Hideous speckled vines, sprawling toadstools of leprous purple and bony white, mosses that seemed to bleed crimson... they were not the sorts of plants, if the slow-moving self-predating abominations could be so called, that one would be pleased to find growing in one's garden.

And yet, at the lowest pool, crystal clear and surprisingly cool water flowed over the bleached white stones and into the first of many tiered vegetable gardens.

"Splortchy seems sad today."

Zora sighed and shook her head, coppery locks bouncing. "You don't even KNOW which one is Splortchy."

Briar extended a tiny finger with the utmost confidence, pointing out a toadstool that crept guiltily around a nearby pool, this one filled with pink, viscous goo. "He's right THERE. He always comes to the slime bath in the afternoons."

"He does not," Zora started, cutting herself off before she could be pulled in deeper. "And it's not a HE, it's an IT. It's a MUSHROOM. Sort of."

"He's a HE, he's a MUSHROOM, and his name is Splortchy."

The older daughter, taking more after her father's foxy coloration, just rolled her eyes. She was used to Briar's peculiarities, but after the storm in the spring it seemed as though shi'd taken it to unnecessary levels. In these waning days of summer, long and hot and full of carefully-scheduled harvesting, there seemed to be no end of arguments that could not possibly be won. "Fine, let's assume you know which one is Splortchy, and you know that Splortchy moves around the same way. HOW can you POSSIBLY begin to even GUESS that it's_sad?!"_

The much smaller grrl, dainty even by coati and foxish standards, stared blankly up at hir sister as though unable to comprehend the question. "How come you can't?"

"Girls, grrls, please," Odella muttered, wobbling unsteadily up to them. "It's been a long day, and you two are either going to get dessert for doing a good job in the fields or you're going to get sold to the wandering minstrels just so Mommy can get some peace and quiet. The dice are still rolling as to which."

Briar, in a decidedly age-appropriate gesture (which made it decidedly unlike hir), stuck hir tongue out at hir sister and flounced, actually_flounced_, away, blue and brown striped dress flaring around hir knees. "Yes, Mother," shi said politely, returning to where shi was carefully plucking tiny hot peppers from tiny green bushes.

"Yes, Mother," Zora mimicked sourly, glancing nervously at her mother. Odella, the most respected, most feared, most powerful curandera in this region or any neighbouring ones, stood with sleepy eyes and slippered paws on the edge of hir strange grotto, proof that two wrongs could somehow make a right. In one hand shi clutched a mug of tea, the other paw holding a freshly-knit shawl about hir shoulders. "We've got this. You can go... lay down?"

"I'm fine," Odella barked, snapping hir jaw shut. "Sorry. I'm fine. Thank you, sweetie."

"Are you still cold?"

"No," the coati shivered, staring directly, almost defiantly, at the blazing sun overhead. Heat rose from the rocks in palpable silken waves, both daughters feeling sweat beading at the smalls of their backs. "I just felt like a stroll. Are you done your chores?"

Briar's eyes bounced over to where hir own basket of pickling cucumbers sat, low and heavy and still only half full. "Almost. We were just... admiring the pools."

"And arguing."

"And arguing," Briar agreed. "Shi said-"

Odella clucked hir tongue, silencing the older girl. "It doesn't matter. You remember what I told you."

Zora didn't need to be told again. Briar _sees things that are there, and things that aren't there... and worse, shi sees what is REAL._Despite hir mother's hopes, prayers and best efforts, it looked as though Briar was going to be following in the steps of the Work and the Way, the path of the curandera.

Doesn't mean shi's always right, Zora thought grumpily, patting her mother's belly. "I know. But didn't you also say that true wisdom comes from knowing when to shut your blasted yap?"

A smile tickled the corners of Odella's mouth. "I... am certain I never said that," shi lied, stretching hir sore back awkwardly. "You'll come get me when the boys return?"

"Of course."

"Good. I think I need to go lay down."

Oh thank goodness, Zora thought.

"And you can keep THOSE thoughts to yourself," Odella added, turning slowly and carefully and ambling back down the hill towards the mostly-rebuilt collection of seemingly unrelated walls and roofs that made up their home. Zora could never quite recall her mother ever 'ambling'. Odella could stride with the best of them, head forwards and fists clenched like a boxer facing down a challenger. Shi could lope, shi could stomp, and shi could absolutely march. The curandera never moved unless it was with a purposeful determination, and if you happened to be involved in that purpose you usually turned and ran away.

But now... now shi was definitely ambling.

"Shi'll deliver soon," Briar piped up, once again ignoring hir basket and standing right behind hir big sister. "Then shi'll... well, shi'll start to getting back to hir old self."

"Do we want that?"

"What? The new brother or sister, or Mom back to normal?"

Zora grimaced. "Yes."

The tiny herm just shrugged. "I don't know. I kind of like having hir around. I'm learning so much from hir."

"Like what?"

"Like how to make Splortchy happy again. See?"

Zora turned and, somehow, was not surprised to see that Splortchy-... that the_mushroom_ was wearing a little hat composed of discarded vines from the pickling cucumber patch, and against all possible logic seemed to be somehow taller than before. "Oh, for the love of... just get back to work, ok?"

"Poop."

---

Kenyon's Ticker began to chime when the two boys were nearly done ransacking the topmost floors of the apartment building. There was indeed some better stuff up top, as much as Pueblo hated to admit it, but this particular building must have been located near one of the toxic springs that poisoned the soils of the Bloody Foot Hills high above their heads. Nearly everything that wasn't metal had rotted away.

"Great haul today!" the huge fox grinned, headlamp bobbing as he lowered both himself and his son down the shattered stairwell and back to the ground floor. "Lots of utensils can be scraped back into good use, lots of mirror shards the Circle can do something towards repairing, and I found a stretch of pipes that were mostly intact!"

Pueblo, stuffed into his father's backpack, just grunted in response. He was acutely aware of just how much metal he was sharing a space with. "That'll be a good trade day. They can't ever get enough metal, now."

"The new smithy is doing some amazing things with alloys, apparently. Turning two weak metals into stronger metals. Della says it's just science, though." He sounded a little down, as though he would have preferred if there were some magic involved.

This is as good a time as any, Pueblo thought, and had nearly opened his mouth when he realized that his argument might lack a certain amount of weight if delivered from inside of a backpack full of rusty pipes. "Sounds like quite the catch," he said instead, trying to steer the conversation into profitable territory.

"You betcha! Bayside made him an offer he couldn't refuse."

In many bygone days that might have been considered a threatening turn of phrase, but Bayside prided itself on its generosity. When trying to attract newcomers to its population, it had three major methods of persuasion: the fact that a larger town was more prosperous, the fact that a larger town was more able to resist attacks by raiders, and the fact that the locals were all too happy to provide substantial physical rewards for especially qualified individuals. The new smithy, just one member of a travelling wagontrain heading south, had requested a home with no less than three bedrooms, a full-time housekeeper and a full-time assistant, and with everyone pitching in his demands had been met before sundown.

It didn't hurt that his new housekeeper was one of the more eligible bachelorettes from Odella's Circle, who was more than happy to keep an eye on the new resident and perhaps snag hirself an educated and potentially very wealthy husband.

"They're getting pretty powerful, down there."

"You betcha. Ain't had raiders since... well, before the Storm, I reckon. Except that one batch near the McCulloch's farm, but the Rangers set them straight. You given any thought to joining up with them when you get older?"

Oh, just get to the ground floor and let me out of your bag! Pueblo thought grumpily. "Yeah, I guess I thought about it, but, you know. That's a long ways off. There's plenty of stuff to do between now and... then."

Kenyon's paws thumped and, perhaps with more alacrity than intended, Pueblo sprang out of the backpack and onto solid ground. The much larger fox carefully worked up a wiggle into the rope before cracking it like a whip and dislodging the grapple. They both moved out of the stairwell and waited for the metal hook to slam against the cement floor, ringing in their ears.

"Stuff to do? Like what?"

They were walking out of the apartment building when Pueblo finally swallowed his fear and stumbled over the first few lines of his prepared speech. Two thousand feet underground, in the radioactive bombed-out nightmare graveyard of an ancient megacity, and the only thing he feared was the look in his father's eyes.

"I don't want to join the Rangers," he said finally, nearly balking at a sudden tickle of dust in his throat. "I want to work for Bayside."

Kenyon blinked. "The Rangers do work for Bayside. They protect it! They're the long arm of the law, the clawed fists of justice, the shining protectors of-"

"I want to be the librarian."

The big fox's headlamp whipped around, spearing Pueblo with glaring brilliance and anchoring his feet as though he were a pinned bug under some collector's magnifying glass. "You what?"

Well, Pueblo thought, at least with the stupid headlamp on I can't see the look in his eyes!

---

In the early afternoon, the hottest part of the day, the youngest two members of the homestead staggered through rear kitchen door, dropped their heavily-laden baskets onto the counter, and collapsed gratefully onto the huge living room rug, positioned so they could rest their foreheads against the cool granite floor.

"All done," Zora mumbled, tick-ticking her blunt claws against the solid stone and admiring the way it caused droplets of sweat to jiggle from her padded paws. "Stuff... picked. Baskets full. Organs failing."

"She's just being dramatic," Briar explained helpfully, though shi had a definite rasp as well. "We're hardly dead at all."

Odella, sprawled out on the often-patched and overstuffed couch, chuckled and shook hir head. "Hardly dead at all? It's like you weren't even_trying_ to do a good job."

The house, and even that word was charitable and sometimes required air-quotes, was a haphazard assortment of posts, beams, slabs, panels, and even the occasional sheet of beaten metal, all built around one of the great stone spires that decorated the little bowl valley. Most of the spires had collapsed or been eroded away during the Storm, an event of which nearly everyone decided it was best to talk about as little as possible, but this one had been large enough to survive mostly intact.

Their original house, of course, had most certainly not survived.

The good people of Bayside, finding their patron saint, exalted protector and glorious emissary to the world suddenly homeless and all but devoid of possessions that weren't burnt, waterlogged or disintegrated, had rallied together instantly after observing the damage the Storm had wrought. Against Odella's protests, which were weak at best, raw materials were trucked up in a caravan that stretched for miles, and every able-bodied townsman who could swing a hammer leapt to work. By the end of the week their home had been rebuilt, larger and sturdier than ever before, and re-furnished with everything that could possibly have been donated. The Mayor insisted that it had been simple repayment for the years of dedicated service and the curandera's stubborn refusal to ever accept payment for anything else, and after much convincing, and whining from hir family, shi finally capitulated.

And now, sprawled out on hir couch, shi was privately glad that shi had. Oh, how did I ever live without this couch...

After a few minutes spent recuperating and confirming that she was not, in fact, actually dying, Zora pulled herself up from the floor and trudged into the kitchen, returning with a small pitcher of lemonade and three porcelain cups. "I think we earned this, right? Mom?"

"Only if I get the biggest cup," Odella grinned, having to tilt hir body sideways to actually see what was happening. Shi wasn't used to actually having to use hir EYES to see, but given hir extremely advanced condition shi was avoiding the use of any of hir powers, anything the least bit eldritch or arcane. Hir True Sight would have let hir see the lemonade, count the droplets of condensation on the pitcher, count the flecks of reddish lava rock embedded in the porcelain and count the number of vegetables that filled the baskets in the kitchen, but for at least a couple more weeks shi was resigned to actually doing things the old-fashioned way. "Is there a biggest cup?"

"Of course, Mother."

"That better not have been sarcasm."

"Of course, Mother."

Odella struggled to sit up, legs splayed out awkwardly and arms pushing stubbornly at the upholstery in grim defiance of hir recently redefined centre of gravity. It had been quite a long summer, being relegated to simple household chores, and soon not even that. Perpetually cold these days, shi wore a pair of Kenyon's longjohns which flapped comically well past hir dainty footpaws, and one of hir husband's old prospecting sweaters which was not nearly as loose as shi would have guessed even the month before. If this goes on much longer, even these won't be big enough!

"You good, Mama?" Briar asked, bouncing on hir heels.

"Yes, just... just one... oof... one moment."

The curandera had only been helpless, truly helpless, a small number of times in hir life, but the last few weeks of hir pregnancies definitely trumped the most dangerous, Hellmouth-yawning, soul-corroding battles of hir long, long life. On a normal day shi wore hir simple white robes over a tremendously full and firm hermness nearly as wide as hir own ample hips, and hir three breasts were even larger and pushed out so far beyond hir arms that shi couldn't even properly hug hirself, let along anyone directly in front of hir.

But now, nearing the due date, shi was also sporting a belly that would have been nearly incapacitating on a normally-proportioned woman. As it was, the underside of hir tummy was cramming hir sheath down awkwardly, sometimes cramping hir inner thighs in the middle of the night, and pushed hir breasts up so high that shi hadn't seen over them since the changing of the seasons.

The collection of terrycloth-clad spheres sprouted an arm, the tiny paw at the end of which hung open, patiently waiting for lemonade.

"Here you go, Mama."

"Thank you. You get dessert tonight."

"HEY!" Zora protested, lemonade jug quivering in her grip. "I was pouring!"

"Did you pour five?"

"Huh? No, they're not-"

The back door, or at least the door situated on the roughly circular structure that had the less scenic view of the Hole and all parts north in the little bowl valley, banged open and Pueblo bounced in, leaving little fox-shaped puffs of dust in his wake. "We're home!"

Zora's jaw dropped and Briar glared at hir mother, tiny hands on tiny hips. "Mother! You know you're not allowed to do that!"

Odella grunted and leaned forwards with an audible creak of straining fabric and slosh of various pressurized substances, and peered just to the side of hir middle breast, which was considerably higher than the other two. "I didn't use my Sight or anything else," shi said tiredly, sipping hir lemonade. "I just happen to actually be very good at telling time."

"You'd better be," the smallest member of the household warned.

Pueblo looked back and forth between his sisters and the quietly amusing shape of his mother. "Should I go back out and come in again? I don't want to get in the middle of anything here."

Kenyon thumped cautiously into the house a few minutes later, after arranging all of their prospecting packs on the huge wooden tables out back where he did his late afternoon sorting. "Hello?" he called, ducking under a beam. When the house had been rebuilt, a few of the doorways hadn't been designed with his height in mind. He wasn't bothered by it; from a young age he'd discovered most of the world wasn't built with his dimensions in mind. He and Odella would always have that in common.

"We're in here!"

"We have lemonade!"

"Did you bring me anything?"

"Dust yourself off!" This last was from Odella hirself, who was well into the deepest, darkest depths of hir nesting instincts. "This isn't a barn!"

"I did! I did!" Kenyon laughed, paws raised defensively as he entered the living room. He was pleased to see his wife out of bed, although perched diagonally on the couch wasn't that much different from being sprawled out on hir private mountain of pillows upstairs. His tail wagged happily when he saw hir, always impressed and secretly downright delighted by hir swollen figure. "And I don't know if I brought you anything yet, I still need to check. Lot of metal this haul."

"Mmmm. Good," Odella nodded drowsily, already nuzzling up to hir shawl-clad bust and stifling a yawn. "Sort later."

Not needing to be told twice, Kenyon very tenderly lifted the love of his life into the air as though shi weighed no more than a feather, sat his own bulk down and cradled hir onto his lap. It wasn't easy to get his arms around hir anymore, and it had never truly been easy to start with, but shi still fit perfectly against him in repose. He slid a spadelike paw across hir belly, slipping his fingers just below the shawl, and felt the taut, faintly vibrating womb beneath. "How're they doing today?"

"Mmmm. Good."

One by one the three kits downed their lemonades and crawled onto the couch, positioning themselves wherever they could find a warm space, and the sun drifted lazily through the sky and down towards the horizon while they slumbered.

---

The wagon train had stayed only long enough to offload heavy goods, take on more dried staples, and give the youngest of the refugees time to run around and splash in the fountain at the centre of town, supervised by the great white marble statue of Odella.

While there had been quite the crowd during the wagon train's arrival, guests and traders always welcome in Bayside, there were only two citizens watching it depart. Bayside didn't have a mayor anymore, at least in anything but name only. When the grizzled old burro had retired after the Storm, the process to elect his replacement had very quickly turned into a pitch by the Circle to replace the entire office with a proper town council. Once Odella hirself had given the idea hir blessing, it had become as good as law. Regardless, every council needed a nominal head, and that task currently fell to Hebert Haymes, chirurgeon's assistant and the closest thing Bayside had to a dentist.

The strikingly orange boar stood with his stubby but still nimble hands jammed into his overcoat, his much shorter and stouter outline in stark contrast to the towering leader of the Ranger's Regiment. Their shadows stretched out before them, though Dirgo's stretched out considerably farther.

"You think it's true?" Hebert asked.

The wolverine shook his head. His great height and carefully tailored black and green uniform sometimes gave the illusion of slenderness, but his stocky legs, barrel chest and powerful shoulders that sloped almost directly into his ears bespoke a man of terrifying physical power. "It can't be. There hasn't been a horde in decades."

"Doesn't mean it can't be true. There hadn't been a great wyrm for decades, right up until there was one."

"Wyrms come and go. Hordes aren't just one creature."

"So you think they're lying."

Dirgo was silent on that last point, watching the wagon train disappear into a wedge of dust on the northern horizon. "I'm just saying, they didn't need to go scaring everyone with talk like that. Not without proof."

No-one on the caravan had exactly said that they'd seen the supposed horde that they were fleeing, not exactly. The lands to the south were dry and sparse, rough living for anyone willing to give it a go, but there were towns and cities not unlike Bayside wherever reliable sources of water and shelter could be had. More than a few of those were built directly upon the still-standing ruins of the Old Age. One had to travel for weeks to reach the highways heading East, where it was rumoured that great advancements were being made in knowledge, both looking forwards and looking back.

"Whose job is it to get proof?" Hebert asked, scratching a tusk.

Dirgo's jaw clenched, which caused most of his upper torso to flex. "You're only chairing the Council for two weeks, tooth-puller," he growled. "Don't get ideas."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Commander," the boar replied, turning to walk back to the Gossamer Scarf, feeling he had earned a drink. "I just feel you'll need some reliable first-hand data when the Council summons you next week to assess the rumours that have been spreading since... today. Oh, that reminds me, the Council will be summoning you next week."

---

Many miles to the south, as the vulture flew, the setting sun provided the optimal hunting conditions. Elongated, exaggerated shadows amplified even the tiniest movement, and it was considerably easier to separate the peculiar curves of the organic from the jagged, predictable rock.

The bird might have been an eagle at one point, or perhaps a hawk. Hundreds of generations of rough living, interbreeding, accidental poisonings and periodic doses of radiation had turned a once large, sleek, even majestic creature into something that could best be described as a collection of worm-eaten and threadbare rugs held together with razor sharp talons. It flapped once, great wings like sails despite their tattered fringes, and banked on the last of the day's thermals, scanning the desert scree for anything edible.

And it better be fresh this time, it thought grumpily. Five days is absolutely my LIMIT for carrion, I don't CARE what my stomach says!

The takaoka had been criss-crossing the desert for days, and any ornithologist suicidal enough to have been tracking it would have been amazed at the regular, almost grid-like flight path. It was hunting, it knew that much, but it didn't know precisely for what. The mountains to the east were now little more than lumpy foothills, but the soil there was even worse than the aching dustbowl below. What caves and natural shelters that were there held nothing of value or intelligence, as they would be traditionally measured. The Dust to the west was even worse, rocky scrub terminating in a sheer dropoff that marked the edge of a virtually infinite plain of flour-like silt.

I used to have a boat somewhere around here, the bird thought. Big boat. Back when there was water. What did I call it? Boat, boat, boat. There's a word I bet no-one nowadays even KNOWS! Boat, boat, boat. Boaty McBoatf-... what's that?

The bird's vision was superlative, despite the ragged scar looping down from the back of its head, across one eyelid and to the corner of its beak. Further to the... oh, blast, was that south? South-eastish... I must've gotten turned around. OK, yeah, there's the foothills way off thataway, so THAT must be south, so THAT'S south-and-a-little-east. That'll be good enough for Odella, right?

It drifted lower, building up some speed. It was late, and it planned to make one quick ground-scanning run before retiring in the safe crook of a toxic cactus for the night. Whatever was there couldn't be that far away by morning, not in THIS part of the world. The only real sign of civilization was the straggling ruts of the highway, marked every few hundred yards by milestones and every few miles by desiccated driftwood signposts where travellers could leave messages, or warnings.

The bird was almost swooping now, lining itself up with the highway as though it were a landing strip. HAH! Landing strip! I used to own a JET, too! Maybe it was a jet instead of a boat. Man, that jet was awesome. Did I own it, or did I just, like, rent it? I only used it like four-... uh oh.

Avian eyes designed for tracking carrion, corpses, and the winners and losers of ground-based battles, weren't particularly adept at working out complex shapes, artificial colors or self-determined formations. It was this unfortunate lack of evolutionary forethought that allowed the bird to drift close enough for the small, well-organized regiment of soldiers to call alerts, form ranks, take aim and fire. The bullet entered just below the bird's left lung, skin like parchment and bones hardly sturdier, and exit out the back in a gout of black bile and shattered feathers.

Shrieking in agony, the apex predator of the wastes folded up like a birthday card and dropped to the hardpan with a dry, pathetic thump.

The bird's one good eye stared balefully as the group passed, marching against the setting of the sun and not even stopping when night fell. As with most such injuries, despite the theories and suppositions put forth by the great storytellers of the age, it took the better part of the night for the bird to die.

Just before the last sad, furious spark of life fled its eye, a hare shrew that wouldn't have even made half a snack for it crawled out from beneath a flat, sheltering rock. The stars spun overhead, a hundred thousand crystal-clear points of light against a saturated indigo universe, but neither creature had ever really considered them before, not without Johnny's help. It walked purposefully up to the bird, placed a minuscule paw against its beak, and stroked its cheek once.

"Sorry," the shrew squeaked. "That... that wasn't supposed to happen."

---

Dinner at the homestead was a quiet affair, especially lately. The kits scurried around the kitchen, stirring and mixing and measuring and, above all, tasting. Kenyon sat on the back porch sorting the day's finds, and was periodically called upon to be the Official Taster, in order to settle disputes that invariably arose as to the spiciness or lack thereof of a particular dish.

All of this was handled with hushed whispers as Odella sat on hir couch, propped up here and there by layers of load-bearing throw-pillows. Shi couldn't Work, and shi was blessedly hardly visited by the will of the Way; the strange force that had granted hir supernatural abilities also apparently knew that a pregnant curandera, that mythic creature, was something best left alone. Shi couldn't hunt in this condition, and shi certainly didn't want to get in Kenyon's way with the sorting. Without hir Sight, shi couldn't tell a poisoned pipe from a safe one, and hir strength wasn't up to much challenge beyond transporting hirself from bed to chair to couch, with the occasional ambling stroll around the gardens just to make sure the world hadn't fallen apart in hir absence.

But shi could read, and it was for this reason shi was positioned near the roaring hearthfire with several mirrors positioned around hir to direct the light. Laid out on hir side, as much as was possible with hir wildly inflated front, shi'd carefully balanced a heavy tome on one of hir pillows and was turning the pages with a single claw, reading the way everyone else around hir seemed to... one word at a time.

"How do they do_this?" shi muttered to hirself, going back to read the same sentence a third time. "How do they just... go from line to line to line, page after page? Book after BOOK? This is _stupid!"

Shi felt bad thinking that way. Shi was more than three hundred years older than hir husband, and still looked like the young, dangerously virile coati that had fled hir parents' mudbrick hut after accusations of witchcraft had spread. It hadn't taken long for hir to understand hir nature, and hir place, but even with the decades spent wandering, learning, loving, drinking and fighting (sometimes all five in a single hour), shi knew shi'd lived longer than any five average folk could hope for.

And how many more years? shi thought for the millionth time, trying to figure out a paragraph explaining how axial tilt caused the changing of the seasons, but shi couldn't see anything about sloping wagons anywhere. I look the same as I did when Pueblo was born, and he's almost fourteen. I look the same as I did when I met Kenyon, and he's got some grey in his ears now. How... how old...

Shi fought those thoughts down and buried them, a common ritual for hir these days. The book was held together as much by hope as by glue and paper, the ink faded and the paper yellowed to the point where it took a keen eye to tell them apart. Still, one of Bayside's new hires was a young woman who claimed to be able to preserve paper, even such incredibly ancient volumes as the ones Kenyon pulled out of the ground. Sometimes it was just enough to allow the lean okapi to transcribe the texts, which shi could reportedly do two at a time, one with each hand.

Such short lives, and shi wants to spend it turning old books into new books, when they'll just become old books again eventually. Pueblo said shi wants to read every book there is, and would die happy if shi could! What is WRONG with hir?!

Odella's belly shook with tiny internal kicks in two locations, and shi was almost positive shi was being chastised by hir as-yet unborn kits. Shi sighed and rolled hir eyes, stroking the side of hir belly. "I'm sorry," shi whispered, aiming hir muzzle down between hir breasts. "Before you met your Mommy, shi was a... bad girl. And to keep the bad thoughts quiet, shi did... bad things. Good things, too! LOTS of good things! But... also bad things. Things that I can't do right now, because they'd be bad for YOU. So you'll just have to get used to me being grumpy until I can smite things again. I promise I'll be the best Mommy you'll ever have. Deal?"

Another round of kicks, much gentler this time, seemed to be the answer. "And don't you dare let me catch you using magic!" shi added with a hiss, lips turned up in a wry smirk. "Your older sister got into that, and that's one kit too many!"

"I'm too many, Mama?" Briar asked, bouncing on hir heels.

Odella twitched. "Briar, honey sweetie, light of my life... what have I told you about sneaking up on me?"

The tiny half-coati thought about it, and Odella could only imagine what hir expression might be; the youngest child (for the time being) was still completely hidden beyond the enormity of the curandera's belly. "Uhm... well, before, you told us we were taking our lives into our own hands if we tried it, but I didn't think that applied-"

"I meant what I told you yesterday about sneaking up on me."

"OH, THAT! You said not to do it because it made you feel like a blump."

"A blimp, honey, a blimp, and... was there something you wanted?"

"What's a blinp?"

"Something else!"

"Oh, right! Supper is ready. Would you like it served out here?"

Odella glared at the book that was stubbornly refusing to give up the secrets to the universe and nudged it aside with hir nose. "Yes, please. Thank you. Call your father in?"

"But he's already 'taste tested' a gallon of it already!" Briar complained, making tiny quotes in the air.

"How many gallons did you make?"

Odella felt a delicately manicured claw poke hir belly button. "About this much," Briar said innocently.

The curandera could feel hir expression darkening, but at the same time hir exceptionally long, striped tail was twitching with amusement. "You don't plan to live especially long, do you?" shi growled.

"Daddy said you'll have to catch me first."

"OH, HE DID, DID HE?!"

"LEAVE ME OUT OF THIS!" Kenyon called from the back porch. "I JUST LIVE HERE!"

With a few notable exceptions, dinner at the homestead was a quiet affair. Once Odella had been carefully lifted into a position suitably upright such that shi wouldn't be in danger of drowning if shi lost control of hir soup bowl, the huge low table was filled with all manner of foods. Zora was generally in charge of the salads, Briar enjoyed baking and this was evidenced by three different kinds of cornbread, and Pueblo was proud of what he called 'mostly grey things but also a lot of brown things chowder, with potatoes'. Kenyon fetched a pitcher of cider from the cold room, and small clay cups were passed around.

Normally able to far exceed even hir supersized husband's appetite, Odella spooned only dainty amounts into hir muzzle. Shi knew shi was hungry, and shi SHOULD eat, but shi also knew that shi'd put on a rather... hefty amount of weight already, and no doubt there was enough padding around the middle to keep the young'uns happy for a single meal. While everyone else ate with gusto, bread and buns mopping up the literal gallons of chowder and somehow making room for more, Odella simply smiled to hirself and gazed at them, taking the idyllic family scene in. Fire crackled in the hearth, shadows danced on the walls, and there was joking and laughing and even a few half-hearted attempts at singing simple songs. Kenyon brought out the stringed instrument he'd been carefully reconstructing, apparently called a banjo, and plinked along with a few of the more well-known tunes.

Curandera never have children, Cambiado's voice echoed in hir head. Could you imagine? All that power, just to watch them grow old and die? There's a reason curandera never have children, never have families. The world couldn't endure any more of that, not again.

Shi blinked and glanced down at the heavy spoon shi held, bent fully around one finger, and frowned. Shi tucked it into hir neckline before anyone could notice, and lifted the bowl to hir lips. "Mmmm, good chowder," shi said softly, licking hir whiskers. "Thank you. Thank you, everyone."

---

Commander Dirgo stared at the huge map that took up an entire wall of the Bayside Ranger's Station. The spreading brown stain roughly at the midpoint represented the urban centre of town, numerous spidery white lines spreading out from it and representing the dozens of roads, lanes, paths and even game trails that connected it to the hundreds of farms that made up the rural population. One heavy line ran straight through town from left to right, each branching off into two and then three major roads that would eventually reach some other town, or village, or sometimes just ruins.

Slicing right across the bottom of the map was a wriggling black line that represented the boundary of the Dust; there was obviously no need to show anything below that.

Near the top of the map was a huge, troublesome feature rendered in a mixture of brown and reds, the previous label having been scrawled out with charcoal pencils and replaced with the carefully, respectfully lettered word 'Odella'. The Bloody Foot Hills had, before Dirgo's time, been a region to avoid at all costs lest you find yourself slowly and quite literally falling apart, but now there was a slender road winding right to the centre of it. Pinned to the road was note explaining the proper procedures for passing safely through the toxic, blasted wasteland, ending with "... and just get to hir house before the sun sets and shi'll fix you right up. Hair and fur loss rarely permanent. Bring cookies."

His jaw clenched, starting a tidal wave of knotting muscle that spread to his shoulders.

"Sir?"

"I heard you," the wolverine grunted, adjusting his tunic; wrinkles were the enemy of preparedness. "Can we bring them in for questioning?"

The corporal, a young hoss with twin sabres hanging from his belt and a real, genuine six-shot revolver strapped almost reverentially across his breast, tilted his head. "The... bandits, sir? They're gone-"

"The farmers," Dirgo snapped. "I want to talk to the witnesses first-hand."

"Oh. Uh... well, I suppose? They're not technically part of Bayside, sir, their farmstead is situated right... well, actually, it's off the edge of this map, but it's a solid day's run south, over here," the corporal stated, poking a stubby finger just to the right of the map, which happened to be a small brass hook where Dirgo had planned to hang his hat, if he ever started wearing a hat. "They might not want to make the trip here, if it's going to be a day to get here, a day for discussions, a day to get back. It's a bad growing season, they wouldn't want to-"

"I don't believe I asked if they would accept an invitation. I asked if we could bring them in."

The hoss blinked again, gears turning. He was a good Ranger, a good soldier, and a good shot, but he was not, as a general rule, one for ordering people around. "Perhaps the patriarch, he was the one who actually talked to the, er, bandits, sir. It might go a great deal smoother if we dispatched a recruit to help with the farm in his absence?"

Dirgo continued to stare at the map, at the great oblong shape of the Bloody Foot Hills. The hoss had only seen the curandera's homestead once, during the reconstruction after the Storm, and he'd been struck by how normal hir family seemed. He hadn't met Odella hirself, not directly, but it had still been an honor just to shake the hand of the man who had by all regards tamed the most fearsome warrior this part of the world had ever known.

"Sir?"

"Send two," the commander nodded crisply. "No sense making a poor impression. Send two, but I want to see him standing in front of me at this time tomorrow night."

"Uh... well, sir, even if we left now, that would be a hard-"

"Then you'd better leave now, before it gets harder."

The hoss opened his mouth, prepared to calmly and rationally explain why this was a poor idea, but the slightly swifter part of his mind halted him and he simply nodded. By the time he reached the door, he was already going through a list in his mind of supplies he'd need, and the two fastest recruits he could possibly grab on their way to the barracks. Who knows, maybe they'd appreciate a few days of farm labor, away from Dirgo's rigorous training schedule?

---

Kenyon and Pueblo went down the Hole the next morning after a bracing breakfast of oats. The younger girls spent a little time in the shade of the front porch, doing their studies, which lately consisted of seeing who could draw the more lifelike insects. After that, before the sun really got going, they would head out into the various gardens and take care of the weeding, trimming, tie-backs and fertilizing.

Odella sat on hir couch, which shi'd shifted slightly so shi could look out the high living windows, and watched hir family set out. The boys would work hard all day, prospecting and scavenging in the dead city a half mile below them, and Pueblo was learning many valuable, if somewhat specialized, skills. The girls would maintain the homestead, handle all the chores and repairs, and do their best to learn the ways of the world from the tiny safe pocket amidst the radioactive wasteland that was their home.

More specifically, Pueblo was not learning how to shoot a gun, Briar was _not_learning to summon hir magic, and Zora was... was... well, Zora was just doing what was asked of her. She seemed perfectly happy being the nominal head of the homestead, for Odella was typically more often than not off on a mission for the will of the Way.

The couch creaked and shi sighed. Or I'm just trying to waddle around under my own strength, shi grumbled. Hir paws stroked lovingly at hir belly, for shi truly did love all of the sensations that now inundated hir too-sharp senses. Shi loved the way Kenyon's huge arms cradled hir at night, one curled beneath hir body to lay across all three breasts, the other stretched across hir belly to hold hir close. Shi loved how warm and snug shi always felt, how full and firm hir body had become, and how every inhalation pushed hir bust higher and forced hir belly against hir loins, in turn pushing hir thighs apart and-

Dammit! shi cursed, chewing hir lip and struggling to keep hirself under control. Spending all day and all night sprawled out and virtually motionless was a very foreign experience for the restless, adventurous night-owl, and hir traitorous body was using all of that unaccustomed down time to catch up on missed carnality. Shi was amazed that Kenyon was able to get up for work in the mornings, given how much energy he put into pleasing hir at night! He just left, damn you. Relax!

All of that time spent curled up on hir side or flat on hir back was also giving hir mind far, far too much time with nothing constructive to do. With Pueblo pregnancy shi'd been too lost in the impossibility of it all, of actually bearing children at such an age. With Zora shi'd been a little nervous, feeling the Way tugging at hir. With Briar shi'd been forced to intervene with a rogue Witch's Circle from Cavalera, a city-state far to the south, and deep down shi just KNEW that experiences had tainted hir youngest daughter with the meddling stains of magic.

Shi wasn't taking any chances with these ones. Shi was going to keep hir family safe. No matter what.

For how long?

"What?" shi asked, responding to hir own second thoughts.

How long can you keep them safe for? Ten years? Twenty?

"As long as I can!"

Fifty years. A safe life in the homestead.

"Well, no, not... fifty..."

Maybe a hundred! Who knows how long they could thrive under your benevolent protection?

"They will live their own lives, of course!"

Zora can meet a nice man from Bayside and get married.

"Of course!"

Pueblo will probably join up with the Rangers and head off to fight, and Briar will hear the will of the Way eventually.

"No-" shi protested, catching hirself snarling at an empty room.

Of course not. Pueblo isn't allowed near weapons, and you won't teach Briar magic. I'm sure they'll be just fine.

Odella's whiskers trembled and shi struggled awkwardly to hir feet, any thought of having Kenyon ravishing hir high atop hir mountain of pillows utterly gone. "I don't have time for this," shi muttered, marching towards the kitchen with an angry and purposeful metronome swing to hir belly. "I need to make some tea. Some nice, hot tea."

"Make it two!" came a tiny, pixie-like voice from the kitchen table, where a dusty, ragged brown hare shrew was chewing furiously on a sundried tomato plucked from one of the strings hanging by the stovepipe. "Baby, I am parched!"

---

Dirgo sat by candle light, flipping through the sheaf of paper over and over again. The farmer, an aging burro more skin and bones than teeth and sense, had trundled in to town long past sundown, the sole passenger in a chariot pulled by two of the Ranger's fastest recruits. While still being handed a cup of water, his first in hours, he'd been ushered into a meeting room and immediately interrogated by the General, as well as two of his corporals.

'Interrogated' would hardly have been the word he'd have used, of course, or at least used in public. He would have called it a 'simple round of questioning one of the good law-abiding folk living under the protective watch of our forces', but fortunately no-one was around to bother asking him about it. It saved him having to call up the personable, friendly facade required of him when dealing with the public; it was tiresome.

In particular, one paragraph scrawled by Corporal Betsy kept catching his eye.

They'ms was all's carrying guns, she'd written, dutifully wrapping her pencil around the farmer's patois. Every lasts one o' thems. Walked right through the market square, not kickin' nothin' or startin' shit, just kinda staring around. Then they'ms stucked a big ol' stick in the ground, then they'ms sticked a body, a real live dead'un body, up on the stick and then they'ms nailed a gosh damned thingie, what's it, proclamation, right to the dead'un's chest. Spose'ns it was most of us couldn't reads they yelled out all the good bits to us in the market, but mostly it was 'take yer shit and run and die' or 'leave your shit and join up and live', and ended it with them's being back in a week, and if'n we didn't join up it's be one o' us up on the stick in the next town.

That was... succinct, in its own particular sort of fashion, he supposed. It was also a little too vibrant and dramatic to be prevarication or fabrication by an old man who seemed to have left permanent half-moons of dust and turnip-powder on his interrogation chair.

So focused was he on the next entry, recounting in slightly more specific detail the demands on the proclamation, that he didn't notice the rather heated discussion being carried on just outside his door. It should have caught him sooner, he knew. It was well after midnight, and the burro was sleeping in one of the detention cells until he could be escorted back to his farmstead in the morning. This business had Dirgo feeling as though his head was packed with cotton.

Underneath that paragraph, he'd written FIVE DAYS AGO...? in his blocky, thick-leaded script.

"Sir, you can't-"

"I'm actually pretty sure that I can. See? The handle turns this way. Easy."

"Sir!"

Councilperson Hebert moved briskly for something pushing four hundred pounds and covered with bristles and tusks, and on this particular evening also wearing a smock absolutely covered in blood stains. Most of the stains were old and faded, some of them from patients before even Hebert's time, but there were a couple noticeably darker than the rest near his waist. "Evening," he said cordially, somehow managing to politely slam the door on the face of the corporal that had so recently tried to block his way. "I understand that you have-"

"GET OUT!" Dirgo roared, rising to his feet and looming over the smaller, thicker boar. He loomed over everyone, so this was nothing new, but the look of utterly bland indifference that the dentist aimed his way was quite... unexpected.

Hebert pulled out the interrogation chair and sat. "In a moment. It's quite late, and I wouldn't want to keep you, but I understand you've already spoken to one of the witnesses from down south."

The wolverine quivered, but only for a moment. He wasn't about to let some soft-bellied politician intimidate him, in his office, in his building, in his army. "You understand that, do you? Have my troops been talking?"

"General, your 'troops' may be disciplined and fit soldiers, ready to lay down their lives to protect truth, justice and the Bayside way, but they're also my nurses' sons, they're my neighbors' brothers, and they're more often than they'd like my patients. If they've been talking, it's only because there's a fine line between friends and family these days. You would do well to remember that."

"Are you_threatening_ me?"

Hebert's lips moved, replaying the last few sentences slowly in his mind and, honestly, the tiniest bit confused and concerned. He decided it was best not to address that topic at this particular juncture, and pressed on to the more urgent issue. "What did Mr. Snowding have to say?"

"Mister...?" Dirgo started, before glancing at the first page of his transcript. "Ah, yes. It shouldn't surprise me you know his name."

"His youngest daughter had some prematurely long wisdom teeth last autumn. Traded some fine turnips for dental work."

"Favors," Dirgo muttered, somehow managing to make a curse word out of it.

"That is certainly one way to describe it, much as I would describe our current conversation as a series of blunt evasions. On your part," the boar added helpfully, revising the odds that he would leave this office with a black eye. "What did he have to say?"

"That is not council business until I have something more formal to report," Dirgo snapped smartly, tugging his already crease-free tunic even straighter and tighter. "My investigation will continue, and I will address the rest of the council this Sunday."

Hebert stared up at the towering wolverine, fully aware that he wouldn't even last three seconds in a physical altercation with the Commander. The boar was a pacifist, inasmuch as that was possible in the modern world, but he had to admit there was a place in a successful Bayside for the Rangers and their watchful protection. What there was not room for, in his opinion, were personal agendas and power plays. "You don't feel the council is capable of understanding what you have there?" he asked, voice still calm and level. "Don't think we can maybe start working towards-"

"Towards what?" Dirgo interrupted. "What would you be doing? Whatever the situation, you would be relying on me and my men."

"Your men are citizens of Bayside first."

"Which is why they are such dutiful protectors, and why none of us would endanger the lives of civilians by spreading rumors, misinformation and panic!" the wolverine thundered. "The word of one man is just that, I don't care how many turnips he gave you. We are investigating, and in the name of not working the civilians into a frenzy, patrols will continue at current regular intervals until further notice or conditions change, is that clear?"

Hebert steepled his fingers, took several slow breaths, and nodded. "I can see you have the situation well in hand," he said softly, rising and knuckling his back. It had been a very long day, and tomorrow was shaping up to be worse. A half dozen responses and retorts died in his throat when he realized there might not be anything he could say that the Ranger would truly listen to. "We await your report with baited breath, of course."

"Of course," Dirgo nodded with satisfaction, watching the portly boar trundle out of his office, the corporal outside hastily shutting the door.

Outside the Ranger station, a building that seemed to be perpetually building onto itself with armor-like slabs of stone, expanding outwards and upwards as more and more recruits required more and more space, Hebert twisted his neck from side to side and sighed. The stars spun overhead, slashed through with streaks of cloud far too sparse to result in rain, and he allowed himself a moment of reverential appreciation for their beauty before turning his attentions to the sturdy shape smoking a tiny cigar.

"Went well?"

Hebert snorted, pulling a small kerchief out of his pocket and idly polishing his tusks. "It... went. I walked out with my own legs, though, so that's something."

The okapi straightened from where shi'd been leaning against the massive stone walls, kicking a little dirt over the two cigar stubs left behind. Hebert hadn't been inside for long, most of it spent dealing with the obstructive corporal, but shi tended to imbibe a little more when shi was stressed. As it was, at hir current rate shi figured shi had ten days of tobacco left and close to three weeks before the smoke wagon came through town again. "Did you get anything?"

"I should have sent you. I can't read upside down very well... not words, at any rate."

"But you got something."

He recounted as best he could, catching snippets of the topmost page of the interrogation while Dirgo raged at him. "It does sound like they gave them an ultimatum. That market is hardly a hundred miles south of us, and even with how fast news travels... that can't give us much time. And there was... a picture. A sketch, of something. Two of them, so I think the homesteader did one drawing and one of the Rangers did up a better one. Maybe you can make some sense of it."

The two walked side by side, the well-worn path curving around a large patch of scrub and shattered granite and back to Bayside itself. The new librarian had hoped for some sort of a quiet life, perhaps where shi could become quietly regarded as a brilliant woman and maybe even acquire a little bit of power on the council. Nothing excessive, and certainly nothing selfish, but the knowledge of the ancient world wasn't going to preserve itself; hir task was often derided as a fool's errand, and shi needed all the help shi could get. "A real horde," shi mused, shivering. "I've got a few books that mention the Years of Chaos, and the hordes. They can't be back! It... it just wouldn't WORK! It's not a sustainable economic model even without defensible city-states! It's insanity!"

Hebert nodded, patting the taller okapi's shoulder. "I know... most of those words, but you hit the tooth on the head with that last one. Never underestimate furre's capacity for self-destruction."

Shi took an angry drag on the last pinkie-width of hir slender cigar, snorted smoke, and tossed the stub aside. It took all of hir self control not to immediately light another. "Can the Rangers protect us?"

"From a horde that we know nothing of, that may very well just be rumors? That may just be a dozen raiders with stolen rifles and delusions of grandeur? Who can say."

"You're not making me feel better."

"I'm trying to make you feel worse."

"What?!" shi gasped. "Why?"

"Because I think it's about time you met the curandera."

---

Usually it was an upbeat, joyous event when Johnny visited the homestead. The spirit jumped from body to body, using animals as transportation and to interact with the physical world, but he was always careful to treat them respectfully and, where possible, leave presents and food when he was done. As such, there were several creatures in the area around the Bloody Foot Hills that would willingly loan their bodies to the strange entity.

None of them were hare shrews, which was why Odella really started to get worried.

When the girls came in from the fields they found their mother sitting awkwardly at the kitchen table, hir rump perched on just the very edge of hir heavy oak seat so shi could see over hir overburdened swells. Johnny, two inches tall and nibbling furiously amidst a small pile of shed hairs, was chattering as fast as his cumbersome cheeks would allow, shrews not being generally designed for complex speech.

"John-...!" Briar managed before a sharp, wild-eyed look from their mother silenced hir.

"Go to the living room," Odella said in brisk, clipped tones. "Enjoy the shade. Relax. I will prepare drinks. Go now."

The girls were drenched with sweat and didn't need to be told twice. They dropped their baskets on the kitchen table, and in a flash Johnny mounted one of them and crammed a tiny red berry into his mouth. Briar and Zora exchanged worried glances, knowing that this was Curandera Business, as their father would say, but all such Business had been put on hold for the pregnancy.

"I guess something couldn't wait," Zora whispered.

"When does anything?"

When they were gone, Odella leaned in as close as hir overfilled physique would allow. Shi knew a dozen, a hundred tricks to get the information out of Johnny faster, to borrow his thoughts, to connect their dreams, but shi was loathe to risk it at this late stage. Shi had to settle for doing it the way everyone else did... talking, and listening, and waiting, and it was driving hir crazy. "And then what happened?"

"Shlrrk fnrrfrn hrrrsh tnur derhh!" the shrew squeaked, a tiny mist of berry juice spraying.

"Chew, swallow, DEEP BREATH, then try again! Why couldn't you get a better body for this?!"

"THHNNSSHH HINDRNNG!"

"I know they're hiding, but you're a spirit! When has that ever stopped you?"

The shrew swallowed and frantically groomed itself with minuscule paws. "I WA' IN A HURRY! YOU WAN' ME 'O REPO', I REPO'! ALL 'Y FRIE'DS HIDIN'!"

"Next time, get a body where the tongue can form all the consonants, ok?"

"'UCK ME, YOU 'ICKY!"

"Language."

Communication was slow, particularly since the shrew Johnny currently occupied had nearly killed itself getting to the homestead, and was half-starved and well into the middle stages of radiation poisoning. The foods grown in the gardens fed by the converted spring would slowly restore the shrew's fur and vitality, but at the moment it was all Johnny could do to keep the poor creature from panicking itself into a heart attack by stuffing it full of produce.

Bit by bit, Odella was getting the story of a square squad of marching troops. The takaoka's vision could pick out a droplet of blood a quarter mile away, but the best it could render regarding species, patterns or coloration was 'lots of colors, lots of lines, and lots of footpaws landing at the same time'.

"Organized troops," Odella muttered, sketching on the table's surface with a blunt claw and some flecks of berry juice. "And they all had rifles?"

"RE'OGNI'ED 'IFLES! 'AD 'EWS!"

"But they ALL did?"

"'ES!"

That was worse. Guns were rare. Working guns were precious relics. Odella's rifle had been a lucky find ages ago, kept as a good luck symbol, and hir revolvers had been an anniversary present from Kenyon. They'd been unearthed beneath the Hills and he'd spent a small fortune getting the Bayside smiths to restore it. Ammunition was even trickier, and the curanderae as a loose-knit collective guarded those who could recreate the weapons of the ancients from scratch.

Over the years shi'd stocked the Bayside Rangers with more than a hundred weapons, and in exchange for their protection shi carefully parcelled out belts of ammunition for them, under orders that a certain amount of them be used for training. Shi would not put weapons of such lethality into the hands of anyone less than exquisitely qualified to handle them.

And this band can waste bullets on taking down a single bird, and apparently with just one shot.

"This is bad."

"'AT' WHA' I 'EEN 'AYING!"

"Oh, eat your berries. And get yourself a better body once you're sure that one is going to survive! Will it be able to find its way back?"

Johnny the shrew chewed thoughtfully, conversing with the terrified but slowly acclimating mind of the tiny mammal. "EVE'UALLY!" he replied at last. "'UT 'Y 'OYO'E FRIE'DS ARE 'ONE!"

"Your what... Oh, your coyote friends. Well... think of something."

"THA' YOUR 'OB!"

Odella rose gingerly to hir feet, thighs twinging from the effort. Hir strength had suffered over the last few months, and the last time shi'd even tried to hold hir rifle hir belly had barely been a bump.

This was bad.

The old Odella wouldn't have had problems dealing with a simple horde, shi thought. A little thunder, a little lightning, a few brutes set on fire to punctuate the request... done.

Shi shivered, sloshing for several seconds and drawing a guffaw from the shrew.

---

Far to the south and a further day's travel to the east, the fortified township of Rockrose sat low and dark and huddled atop a crumbling mesa. From that elevated position it could see more than a dozen miles in any direction, spotters stretched out beneath canvas tarps on loosely-mortared towers. The walls were twenty feet high and twenty feet thick, hardly more than boulders rolled and stacked over the years, until the only way in and out was through the huge southern gate.

The gate was unable to close any further, and no-one was bothering to push anymore regardless. Two broad, crimson stripes painted the weathered stones, the occasional sliver of bone white sticking up like nettles, marking where two spotters had been unceremoniously jammed beneath the granite slabs of the gate in order to halt their progress.

Farmers and homesteaders for miles around came to Rockrose to sell their goods and produce. Wagon trains stopped there regularly, as the mesa marked a pure and clean and exceedingly precious underground spring. When dust storms sprang up or marauders were spotted in the countryside or improbable and voracious beasts descended from the sky, the ramshackle fortress could safely house more than a thousand citizens until the troubles passed.

Those citizens were now trapped, the only exit blocked by an army so vast they doubted Rockrose was big enough to contain it. Someone joked that was a silver lining, but no-one noticed.

Buildings of stone and wood and plaster were crammed together, shops and stalls and stables and meeting halls all designed for public use, with wide boulevards allowing brisk and easy travel. The town's leadership had already fled beneath the mesa, down the steep carved staircase and into the tiny chamber where the spring dribbled out of the wall, sealing the only access point behind them.

A lone figure walked through the streets now, a tall and rangy shape dressed in flowing white, and criss-crossed with leather bandoliers bristling with brass shell casings. His forces might all be outside the town's gates, but he moved unafraid, casting an appraising glance at the architecture and the huddled, terrified citizens trying hard to escape notice.

The spotters had seen the horde approaching. They had been well-prepared. The corpse, nailed through with the list of proclamations, still stood in the great oval courtyard at the heart of the Rose, where it had been erected seven days previous, where the white-robed figure now stood. He reached up and ripped the proclamation free, scanning the list and giving a short nod of approval.

"You stayed!" he called dramatically, turning to take in the whole of the courtyard. He couldn't see anyone's eyes, not directly, but he knew they were there, as palpable as flies after a rain. "I applaud your faith in destiny."

Twin revolvers hung at his waist, gleaming, polished like mirrors. He was proud of them; keeping them clean was no mean feat in the desert. "Your forces did not resist... much. I will overlook that little skirmish at the gates as no more than excitability, and perhaps a point needing to be proved. And it was proved, yes?"

The silence stretched out. He knew that, somewhere below the Rose, there were men of power and influence cowering in a watering hole, but he wasn't concerned by that. Men of power and influence came and went, and held neither over his head. There were spotters, likely with bows, possibly with rifles, training him in their sights, but that was of even less interest. The horde, his horde just outside the gates could reduce this so-called fortress to a sundered graveyard with the slightest provocation.

"You will find more safety, more security, more... permanence amongst me and my people, than you would in this fleeting mockup of bricks and mortar. My mere presence here should be enough to prove that, no?"

"You kill!" someone shouted from the huddled, terrified audience. "You slaughter!"

Thank goodness someone spoke up! I hate having to do these speeches with no feedback. "_Maybe," he agreed, giving a rueful little nod. "Those young men at the gates... that didn't need to happen. The fellow standing behind me, nailed to the post, that didn't need to happen. I would have much rather preferred he joined us of his own free will, but, alas... he opted to become an example for the next group. _You all. And in that way, he has attempted to _preserve_life, providing concrete, tactile arguments in favor of joining our crusade."

He punctuated his final statement by pounding his fist against the corpse standing milky-eyed watch over the proceedings, sending up several disturbed swirls of flies . There were cries and moans of dismay from the audience, but it was a simple enough matter to help them identify with one another. Now they were no longer huddled masses awaiting their imminent execution, but huddled masses hanging off of his every word and, in a way, seeing a path to survival.

"My army, my horde as you call it... my people are not savages. They're not axe-crazy psychopaths just waiting for their moment to rape, pillage and slaughter, or slaughter, pillage and rape, as they case may be. They're men and women seeking a future composed of more than just living on the edge of disease and starvation They're children hoping for more than trying to coax a few withered vegetables out of the ground so they can live long enough to squeeze out a new generation."

As he spoke, a small detachment from the vast sea of marauders outside made their way through the front gates. At the front, keeping a watchful and protective watch, were a pair of large, well-dressed and obviously-lethal gilas, rifles slung across their backs but each wielding rough-hammered sledges.

Behind them, and much more interesting to the onlookers, were twin rows of small, confident figures, children marching two by two. Some held paws, the younger couplings most likely siblings but some of the older ones clearly mated. A few even waved at the terrified inhabitants of Rockrose, their smiles belying the implied threat of the firearms they to a one carried.

At the centre of the plaza, the grandiose man in white raised his arms, gesturing to the sudden influx of, by all accounts, healthy and happy offspring. "We are not scouring the world of life and love!" he cried out, throwing his head back exultantly. "We are gathering into an unstoppable force the best and the brightest that have managed to survive this dying, poisoned wasteland. We are collecting the anxiously stockpiled food and water, medicines and valuables, and we are striking out for the land of plenty that you all know is out there! No more will you have to work your fingers to the bone just to see another brutal, searing sunrise!"

Mutters and murmurs rippled through the buildings closest to him, and he smiled. They were in the palm of his hand now, and he knew he'd be leaving the pathetic little fortress with at least seventy-five percent of them. They'd figure out some way to get at the water beneath the Rose (there was always another way) and they would camp out for a day or two while they replenished their supplies. The rest of his speech was a matter of course and humbling rhetoric, but the seeds had been planted.

All that remained was that pesky annoyance a villager a few days out had mentioned.

"But first... before we discuss the issue of destiny, the issue of miracles... where can I find the Curandera known as Timura?"

"Right here," purred a voice that was a little too close for comfort.

The hairs on the back of his neck rose as he spun, and he only just managed to yank his guns free from their holsters when a peal of thunder filled the Rose and a bolt of icy blue lightning lanced down from the cloudless sky.

---

Another night in the homestead, and Odella lay in bed, a dozen pillows carefully stacked and braced against hir to allow a mostly-comfortable repose. Behind hir and acting as a warm, rumbling retaining wall, Kenyon's bulk rose and fell as he snored. One arm reached around Odella's hips, snuggled in between the underside of hir belly and the constantly-twitching mound of hir sheath, while the other slipped beneath the coati's head and helped brace hir trio of breasts.

Shi couldn't figure out how he managed to sleep all night in that position, while hir own arms went numb just from trying to scratch hirself.

"Am I terrible for making you all live here with me?" shi managed at last. The moonlight filtered through the permanently dusty window that had been cunningly set into the roof, giving the entire huge space an eerie, ghostlike glow that reminded hir, sometimes pleasantly, sometimes not, of Walking Above The World. "I don't mean to be... to be selfish, but... I mean, I never ASKED, I just sort of decided..."

Kenyon hadn't been asleep, as much as the bone-deep desire for rest pulled at the back of his eyes. The slow, placid, deliberate fox could always tell when his wife was upset about something, which given hir position in life was almost always. However, when shi was pregnant, shi seemed to lose whatever coping mechanisms shi'd built up over the years (and he was forever glad that alcohol was no longer one of those!) and hir distress was almost palpable.

He hadn't expected hir to say that, though.

"Of course not!" he scoffed, nuzzling hir coppery locks in the gloom. "This is my claim, always has been."

"It's only your claim because you were too stupid to know that literally everything here will kill you. And DID kill you, I would like to point out!"

"Until a wonderful," he murmured, giving hir ear a kiss, "beautiful, kind-hearted goddess-"

"Witch," shi corrected.

"-witch... rescued me. And made this place into a little sliver of paradise."

"But it's selfish! There's so much more for them to do in town! The girls are maintaining a garden big enough for twenty, you're going half a mile straight down to work every day with Pueblo, and when I'm not as big as a house I'm off doing... things!" Hir paws flapped with frustration, never quite sure how to describe the Work and the Way. Oh, shi recounted the events of hir adventures as best shi could, but that was only a small part of hir existence as a curandera.

"Oh, you're not as big as a house yet, m'love," Kenyon chuckled, giving hir underbelly a fond rub.

"I can still kill you with my mind," shi growled.

"Not until the pups are born. Until then I'm a fox untouchable."

Normally Odella would have thumped him hard across the ear, or rolled over and shown him what being as big as a house REALLY meant, but on this night shi could only manage a little shiver of apprehension. Shi burrowed hirself closer against hir husband's body. "You don't need to work down... down there anymore either, my love. You might not be aware of it, but you're rich. You could buy half of Bayside tomorrow if you wanted. Briar could go to a real school, Zora could work at any shop in town, and Pueblo could already match any of the Rangers for sharpshooting, and YOU could spend more time with your family! Uncle Rico has made some extremely un-subtle hints about wanting to sell the Gossamer Scarf, and your parents hardly even know what the kits look like anymore."

Kenyon's jaws worked for a moment, tickling Odella's ear. "I'm not rich..."

"Honey. Sweetie... while you're busy giving away half of the stuff you dig out of the ground and insisting people are giving us too much in return, I'm actually keeping track of loans, debts and records. Your Uncle has been acting as your, ah, unofficial banker since Briar was born, and he's had to politely embezzle a little bit of it just to build a bigger room to HOLD your money. He confessed right before the unpleasantness with the storm."

"Pueblo wants to be a librarian!" the big fox blurted out, anything to steer the discussion away from the current topic.

The house sighed around them, settling as the temperature outside plummetted. Odella's long, rodlike tail wriggled back and forth against Kenyon's broad chest, both their minds spinning with the sudden admission.

"Oh."

"Right?"

Silence.

"He told you this?"

"Yes!"

Odella shifted hir cheek against hir husband's bicep, wondering if shi was ever going to sleep this night. "He wants to... uhm... books. With the pages."

"He says that they're more than just words written down. More than just stories, more than just... uhm... recipes. They're the history of the future, whatever that means. Old books need preserving, new books need writing, and Bayside needs to be somewhere that knowledge can be... uhm... oh, dip, I can't remember everything he said."

"Bayside just got a librarian," shi mused softly, closing hir eyes. "Some stuck-up okapi, I heard. Their first REAL one."

"Okapi?"

"Librarian, dear." Shi inhaled, nearly losing hir face in hir own cleavage. "That's..."

"I don't know how to talk to him about it," Kenyon continued, clinging to Odella as though afraid one of them might drift away. "I just always thought... I mean, he SAID he wanted to be a Ranger when he was old enough to point a stick and say 'bang'. I thought maybe he'd inherit the claim from me, there's enough down there for ten lifetimes, but I mean, a Ranger actually gets to see the sun now and then."

"You don't want him to be a librarian?"

"Of course n-..." he managed, clacking his teeth together when he sensed the trap. He might not be the fastest fox around, but it would be a truly foolish person who thought Kenyon slow. "Well... I mean... he wanted-"

"If it's what HE wanted before, then it's just as valid as what HE wants now, isn't it?" Odella yawned, stretching.

"But... well... I just always thought-"

"He's young, Ken, darling. He wanted to be a curandera when he was six, and he wanted to invent a flying machine when he was nine. Maybe he'll become a librarian, maybe he'll become a Ranger... maybe he'll become both."

"That would be... neat..." he sighed, realizing that he'd perhaps gotten a little too carried away with part of what his son had been saying while ignoring the rest. "But books?"

"You've made a small fortune dragging books out of the Hole," shi reminded him, reaching back to pat his hip. "Lately they've been selling for more than steel."

"Really?"

"_Yes._Which is why we're going to talk to Uncle Rico about your retirement planning, once I'm good to travel again."

And somehow shi turned it right back around on me, Kenyon sighed, cradling his overinflated wife lovingly. "Maybe... maybe we could start going to Bayside more often," he whispered into hir ear, giving hir loins a bit of a squeeze. "Maybe start looking for some land out by the Southern Stretch. Maybe your Circle can find a new well."

"Maybe, hrrmmm?"

"Maybe."

"Mmm. I like maybe."

"Me too."

---

Breakfast the next morning was a warm and laughter-filled affair. Odella had proclaimed, after hir tiny allowance of coffee, that the girls deserved half a day off of chores, and Pueblo wouldn't need to head down into the Hole with Kenyon at all.

"Is that because you two had sex?" Briar asked.

Zora snorted into her heavily-sugared oatmeal, and Pueblo's spoon froze halfway to his mouth. Odella, to hir credit, didn't bite completely through hir coffee cup. "Dear, remember when we talked about what subjects were perfectly normal and healthy to discuss with family members, but still not appropriate for the breakfast table?"

"Yes, but technically we're talking about chores."

"_Technically_you're back on full chores today."

"AWW COME ON!" the tiny half-coati yowled, crossing hir arms angrily. "We were all thinking it!"

"I wasn't!" hir siblings lied in unison.

"UNLESS you let me casually and unobtrusively steer the conversation back to what WAS going to be a joyous family announcement!" Odella stated in a tone that brooked no argument.

"Doesn't Dad need to be here for that?"

"He's... sleeping in."

There was a scraping at the back door, one that the kits recognized instantly. It was a dead heat between Pueblo and Zora, who were sitting closest to the door, but the older boy won with the unfair advantage of his longer arms. He yanked open the door, nearly knocking his youngest sister unconscious, to find a black-ruffed and jagged-eared coyote sitting on their back step.

"Morning," the coyote yipped, flews flapping as it struggled to manage proper speech. "Coffee?"

"Come on in, Johnny," Odella called from the table, not even bothering to attempt standing. Shi was feeling especially bloated today, and given hir regular proportions that was saying something. "I see you found a better body. Shrew made it home OK?"

Johnny trotted inside, claws clacking on the thick tiles. His current form was larger than any of the kits, huge rangy jaws powerful enough to bite Briar in half, but right now the tiny herm was hugging his neck and allowing hirself to be dragged back to the table. "Switched bodies a couple miles east of the hills, chased it south until it caught the scent of his own plains. This fella here is a loner."

"I thought they were all loaners," Pueblo noted.

"LONER, not LOAN-... Odella, I think your kids are making fun of me."

"You know you love it," Odella grinned, desperately longing for the days when shi could enjoy a full pot of coffee to hirself. Before breakfast. And another one after. "There's really none around?"

Johnny shook his head, wagging Zora back and forth with high-pitched giggles of delight. "They sense something. Even this guy does, but he's angry enough to stay. Once I convinced him we were on the same side, he let me in whole-heart."

"Does he say why he's-"

"They shot his mate," the coyote cut in, a snarl curling his lips at the very end; there was clearly still some presence of the subdued animalistic personality.

Breakfasts at the homestead never seemed to stay warm and light-hearted for very long when Odella was on the job. Shi screamed inside, wishing shi was_capable of dealing with this, capable of handling the horde, capable of protecting hir hands, hir city, hir _people.

You don't need to hold back, a small voice said. You could unleash Hell hirself on everything and you know the kits in your belly would survive. They'd probably turn out better! You'd have not just one, but THREE curandera offspring! Imagine that!

The voice made a good point, which is why Odella blinked away a tear before anyone could see it.

"Was it the same group as before?" shi eventually asked, once the chastened kits had returned to their seats to eat.

"I don't know. Different eyes, different minds." The coyote seemed to sag, nose to tail. "Shot, though. Long distance. Rifle."

More guns, shi thought furiously. More guns! How many guns did the People Before NEED?!

"I'm going to scout around. The groups I saw before, they might be nearing the southern farms around Bayside by now, but they'd be within Ranger patrols. But the Rangers around here... they've never had to deal with anything like that."

Hanging unspoken in the air was the qualifier that they'd never needed to deal with anything like that because Odella was usually there first, and no-one dealt with an angry curandera more than once. Not in this lifetime.

Shi opened hir mouth to reply when there was a knock at the front door, five sets of ears shooting up. "Blast, are we open for business?" Odella muttered, struggling to hir feet. Hir legs were splayed wider even than the day before, and shi could swear hir belly was weighing everything down so hard it would soon be coming back up near hir tail. Normally I'd be enjoying myself, letting Kenyon bring me peeled grapes and tickling me with feathers, but no-o-o, I need to save the WORLD again!

Pueblo ran unopposed to the front door, and had yanked it open just in time for Odella to drift into the foyer like a cargo wagon.

Pueblo stared at the guest, one of hir paws still raised and curled, prepared to knock again.

The tall, well-built figure at the door stared at Odella, hir jaw drooping open in slow motion.

Odella stared at hir son, noting the way his entire body seemed to vibrate in anxious excitement.

He wants to be the new town librarian, hrrrm? Shi thought to hirself, starting to put the puzzle pieces together.

"H-hello," the okapi at the door managed, coughing into hir fist. Shi was packed into a snug green blouse and a pair of tight canvas shorts, doing absolutely nothing to hide hir ample curves and extremely abundent masculine and feminine proportions. Hanging from hir belt was a machete nearly as long as hir leg, and there was a small yellow book tucked under hir arm; Odella recognized the symbol on the cover. It was a symbol seen on many of the ancient, pitted metal signs dotting the Bloody Foot Hills. "I-I'm... uh..."

"You're LaCombe!" Pueblo blurted, trying to keep his eyes on hirs and not on the plump chocolate-striped thighs on display below hir shorts. "You're the new Bayside librarian! We met a little over a month ago, we brought in a bunch of-"

"Pueblo," Odella interjected softly, silencing the clearly agitated half-coati. "Can you put on some tea?"

"But-" he protested, turning around and communicating as much with his eyes as with his body language. When he saw the same expression returned tenfold, however, he wilted and scurried off to fetch the kettle. "I'll be right back."

LaCombe stepped into the home and shut the door behind hir carefully. Shi moved with cautious deliberation, something Odella knew all too well. "He... yes, my name is LaCombe," shi continued, offering hir hand to Odella, sliding the book with the dangerous cover into the other. "I was sent here by the Bayside Council. Well, mostly by Chair Hebert."

"The dentist," Odella nodded, taking the okapi's hand and giving it a little shake. "He's in charge now?"

"Well, he'd be the first to say he's not in charge of anything, but... yes, he's about as in charge as anyone is right now, considering."

Odella arched an eyebrow, leaning hir head to one side so shi could better appraise the librarian without being obstructed by hir own bust. "Considering?" shi echoed.

"Er... yes. Uhm... Miss Curandera, I know you're on, uhm... leave, right now," LaCombe stammered, gesturing vaguely towards a belly that could have held half a dozen kits during a normal pregnancy, but a curandera pregnancy was as peculiar as it was rare. "But Hebert was very insistent."

"It's the horde," Odella sighed, gesturing for the librarian to follow hir into the kitchen. "If they haven't arrived in Bayside yet, word of their approach definitely has. Refugees from the south already?"

The okapi's jaw dropped again. "Er... yes. Not refugees, exactly. They didn't stay."

"That's... worrying," Odella grumbled. "Though it's just thrown on the pile of worrying things at this point. Sugar in your tea?"

Pueblo approached the table with the kettle, having already set out cups, the little bowl of sugar and the half dozen tiny jars of assorted teas. Zora and Briar were finishing their oatmeal, and Johnny was sitting in Pueblo's seat, licking out the bowl with gusto.

LaCombe squeaked and took a half-step backwards, clinging to the edge of the wall, when shi spotted the coyote, but Johnny just looked up at hir with his huge onyx eyes and, somehow, grinned. "Hey, hot stuff," he grumbled, flashing his fangs. "Pull up a chair. Next to me, if possible."

---

The dispatches had been coming in all night, and the first panicked clusters of rural southern homesteaders started appearing in the town square mid-morning. So far, it was only the conspicuous lack of violence that kept law and order, but there wasn't much further onto the edge the agitated citizens could be pushed.

Rico had opened the doors to the Gossamer Scarf early, offering his cozy and inviting bistro to all comers, along with a hastily thrown-together breakfast menu, heavily discounted, of course. There were faces he hadn't seen in months, and some he likely had never seen before; those living on the fringes of civilization, such as it was, tended to live there for a reason. More than one newcomer seemed to be awed and perhaps slightly terrified by the immensity of the two-storey Gossamer Scarf, and the well-dressed dancing girls currently doubling duty as waitresses.

"And they all had guns," one horrified porcine mother was ranting, clutching two small, struggling children against her hip, pronouncing the word 'gones'. The youngsters didn't seem scared or particularly distressed, and were only struggling to get free so they could explore the exotic restaurant. "Every single one of them! BIG guns, like what what them guns the curandera has!"

It was a story Rico had heard a dozen times already, and the sun was still low in the sky. Rangers were drifting in and out of the Scarf, pulling menfolk aside and questioning them, sometimes writing a few pertinent facts down. A squadron of men, all ages and sizes and species, all wearing different clothes but identical white scarves around their necks, one of them with a strangely-emblazoned jerkin, had marched up to each homestead and turned the folks out of their beds and into the dirt. They bellowed a short, simple speech, demanding that all inhabitants present themselves at the center of Bayside by mid day.

And then they moved on.

The Rangers seemed perplexed as to how many such groups had to be roaming the countryside. They weren't being particularly brutal, and in fact some of them had even waited for the families to dress properly, but they were most certainly being efficient and, for lack of a better word, cold. More and more families were arriving now as the mysterious raiders moved north, and the clusters were larger as the homesteads became more closely packed.

This place is going to be a powder keg by noon, Rico thought dourly, staring out the swinging double doors to his establishment at the town plaza. Years ago it had just been a... a space, really, a huge hardpacked oval, maybe a few struggling purple nettles growing out of the cracks at the base of the perpetually-dry fountain that stood as the base for the founder's statue. Sometimes families would gather and play an instrument or two and sing, sometimes peddlers would set up their wagons, constantly moving clockwise to stay in the shade. Sometimes boys would wrestle and girls would show off to catch the victor's eyes, and sometimes there would be a reason for everyone to celebrate and their would be a dance.

Since Odella's peculiar and wildly destructive brand of benevolent dictatorship had become tempered by a genuine family life, people had begun to take pride in Bayside not just as a place to sell their tubers and buy an ale, but as a place to well and truly call home. There were gardens and paths ringing the plaza now, separated by well-cut bricks of burnt red and gleaming white. There were benches of wrought iron and driftwood scattered around, and more often than not an elderly couple would sprawl out and spend the day enjoying the warmth in their bones. There was a big whitewashed half-half-circle built onto a permanent stage now, what Kenyon had called a 'band shell', that shaped any music played there and amplified it for the listeners. The fountain actually had water in it now, fed by a tiny spring a half mile away and supplied with painstakingly-joined pipes his nephew had fished out of the ground over the years, and the crumbling limestone statue of the town's founder had been replaced by the gold-streaked magnificence of Odella hirself, one arm raised threateningly behind hir head, one outflung as though directing the viewer to look towards the distant horizon.

In short, it was the sort of place that small children growing up around Bayside had always imagined a real city must be like, but knew they'd never see. And now it was filled with those same children, clinging to worried parents, all waiting for what horrible news the gun-wielding marauders would bring with the passing of the noonday sun.

"Rico," a dancing girl murmured, resting a hand on his elbow. It smelled like Tangy, he thought, though she insisted on pronouncing it 'Tan-gee'. "We're going to be out of eggs and rye before lunch at this rate, and... people keep showing up."

"Rye!?"

"The dark bread, the one with the thingies in it you don't like-"

He waved her into silence, nodding. The success of Bayside had brought with it not just more delicacies that could be wrought out of simple grains, but new liquors he'd never imagined. There were three homesteaders who had switched their focus purely to become distillers, and their constant battle for inebriating supremacy was leading to the Gossamer having a new signature beverage monthly. "Right, right," he muttered, wondering if Tan-gee had gotten any sleep. She was a new hire, poached from a wagon passing through several months before. One look at her chest and Rico knew it would be worth it to pay for her entire family to set up shop in Bayside, and he'd been right; Tan-gee was rapidly becoming a popular fixture of the late-night table dances. "Look, grab the lockbox and go see what the stores have, and buy it."

"Buy what, the eggs or the bread?"

"All of it," he replied, already onto a new train of thought. "Just... just buy whatever they have that you think we need."

The exquisitely-buxom otter blinked. "But we just need to handle the lunch rush-"

"This," he snapped, a little more brusquely than intended, "isn't going to go away with lunch."

She yipped under her breath but nodded dutifully and scurried away, wondering if she should get one of the hired cudgels to protect her and the lockbox. She wasn't what LaCombe would have called a book-bright young woman, but even she could tell that the town was... tense.

Rico watched her go and sighed, reminding himself to put another couple dollars into her pay. She was strong, she was a hard worker, and she always had one more dance in her. More than one fight had been stopped by the careful application of her cleavage to the combatants' gaze, and she never complained. The old fox had watched too many girls grow up hard, calloused, tough down to their souls, and he wasn't about to watch another generation enter adulthood with the capacity for hope wrung out of them.

"Odella," he hissed softly, never quite able to reconcile the fact that the single most powerful being in this part of the world was technically his niece by marriage. "We... we could really use you right about now."

---

"But I'm no good to anyone right now!" Odella exclaimed, throwing hir head back in frustration that was mostly aimed inwards. "I can barely walk, let alone... let alone... sweep aside the horde like so much chaff in a hail storm! Is that what everyone expects me to do?!"

LaCombe was finding it difficult to keep hir wits about hir. Shi had left Bayside in the middle of the night, two canteens of coffee in hir pack and two tiny envelopes of cigarillos in hir cleavage, and marched ceaselessly until arriving at the curandera's front door. Shi had never been fleet of foot, despite hir traditionally frolicksome heritage, and shi was seriously considering cutting back on hir smokes after the achingly dry trek. "I don't know," the okapi sighed, slumping against one arm and finally remembering that shi still wore hir backpack. Shi let it slide off one shoulder to thump heavily against hir leg. "Hebert, he made it sound like you could do SOMETHING. Hells, to hear everyone talk you can do anything!"

Odella's eyes lowered. "You must be new to Bayside," shi said. "They like to... paint nicely over my history in the area."

"But you have a statue! A big one!"

"I'll say," Johnny added helpfully.

"Shut it!" Odella snapped. "Lots of people have statues. In the old days, they had statues of everything. They even had statues of trees, if you can believe such things."

"How do you know that? They said you were old, but there's no way you're OLD-"

The baleful glance from the pregnant curandera, nearly at the end of hir gestation as well as the end of hir rope, silenced the librarian. "You've seen plenty in your books, aye, but I've seen plenty with my eyes. I've seen the old cities, I've seen the graveyards they called paradise. I've seen the monuments to death they've left behind. The People Before were strange, and building a statue of that which they feared was the least of their peculiarities."

"I feel we're getting off topic," LaComba said, blinking. "There's a horde. Probably, at least. The evidence is hard to refute. The Rangers are confident they can handle whatever threat might come, but the new Commander is a hard-headed one."

"Dirgo," Odella nodded. "Aye, I know of him. If we're only going based on solid evidence, young Miss Librarian, then he's a good man with a good head on his shoulders. He's done wonders with the Rangers, with the fortifications, with disciplining better than a hundred young men and winning many more over to Bayside's protection than its harassment."

"A horde is _not_a smattering of young men armed with hatchets and clubs. The Rangers might be a fit and fancy fighting force, but they're not soldiers, and they've never seen war."

"And you have?" Odella asked archly.

Johnny's head whipped back and even Odella's tail straightened in surprise when LaCombe drove the small yellow book down onto the granite table with the flat of hir palm, sending the bowls and cups to rattling. Odella couldn't read the words on the front, but shi recognized the peculiar intersecting curves and wavy lines embossed in heavy black on the front. Shi was used to books being brought up with crumbling leathers covers, or sometimes just thicker paper that was more cobweb than cardboard, but shi recognized the rarity of plastic when shi saw it.

"What's that?" the coati asked, already suspecting the answer.

Johnny whined, hunkering down in his seat. The three kits had gone outside to do chores in the earliest hours, tending to the gardens, with the promise that they could all play once their guest had spoken hir piece and moved along (although Pueblo appeared at the window every few minutes, his eyes only for the shapely okapi).

LaCombe's ears twitched at Johnny's reaction. "You know what this is, don't you?" shi asked softly. "This book has been passed down through several generations of my family, along with a hundred others. Most books printed in the old days were made with simple cheap paper, never designed to last. Academic books, texts and official records were a little hardier, but they faded quickly, too. But some... they made some to be virtually indestructible. You could hold a flame to this book, and it would never burn. You could swing an axe at the cover, and it would only dent. Books like these... they knew the end was coming."

"Survival During And After A... Nuclear Attack," Johnny read, tail lashing.

Odella was looking back and forth between the book, the librarian and hir oldest friend, who was showing depths shi'd never plumbed before. Shi knew Johnny was an old soul, and countless occasions he's boasted of being wealthy and powerful back when he'd possessed his own physical body, but shi'd always thought that to be storytelling from a drifting and aimless spirit. "You wrote this," shi stated softly.

"Not ME!" the coyote protested, paws scrabbling as the four-legged body fought against confusing and contradictory impulses designed for a bipedal shape. "Not ME! I wanted peace! I wanted to make people LAUGH!"

"Your people, then," Odella carried on. "Nuclear. That's the word that's all over these hills. That's the invisible poison. That's what was carried on the storm that nearly... destroyed my house," shi finished, feeling hir heart rate already revving up. "It was a weapon."

"It's not as simple as that," LaCombe stated, slipping into the clipped tones of a teacher. Raised by a clan of teachers, it was hard not to. Shi scooted hir chair as close to Odella's as shi dared, not wanting to intrude on hir extremely ample personal space, and lifted the book up so the coati could see it over hir bosom. "Nuclear wasn't a thing, it was a type of thing. The windmills use wind power, the hand pumps use muscle power, the smith's forge uses fire power... and in the old days, their machines and their vehicles and their devices, all great and small, were fed by nuclear power. It was a source of energy so great that it promised to end scarcity for the entire world."

"Yeah, that's obviously what happened," Odella grunted, causing Johnny to whine further.

"If you gave a loaded rifle to ten kits who all knew what guns were but had never used them, would you expect all ten to understand the power of life and death they held in their hands?" LaCombe lectured crossly. "No, you'd end up with nine frightened kits and someone missing an eye, if they were lucky."

"What does this have to do with anything?" the curandera exclaimed. "The horde doesn't have nuclears! The Work and the Way would have put a stop to THAT, you can bet on it! They're just angry, angry furres with more guns than sense and bravery in numbers!"

The librarian shut the book, holding up the back cover for both Johnny and Odella to see. There were many words there, written tiny and black on the eye-wrenchingly yellow plastic, but there was also a strange, eerie ideogram printed just as large as the nuclear symbol on the front. "Do you know what THIS is?!" shi asked the coyote.

Johnny whined, and nodded.

"Tell her!"

"'s a skull," the mangy canid muttered.

"What kind of skull? Do you know the word?"

The coyote could not have looked more wretched when it said, almost apologetically, "'s a human skull."

LaCombe raked a paw back through hir black hair triumphantly, eyes wild and wishing for nothing more than a cigarillo once shi was no longer near the pregnant curandera. "You're right. You and me, we _definitely_need to talk. The People Before," shi continued, turning to face Odella, "were human. They covered the world, they travelled to the stars, they made inventions even someone like yourself could never hope to imagine, and then they destroyed everything."

Odella's paws quivered, and shi dearly, dearly wished the younglings in hir belly would settle down so shi could stop shaking. Shi'd seen many strange things in hir life, it was true, but this conversation was quickly breaking into the top ten. "Say what you mean," shi managed through clenched teeth.

The okapi tapped the picture of the skull, heavy-domed and hollow-eyed, printed huge on the back of the book. "They're back."

When Kenyon finally wandered in to the kitchen, wrapped in a huge robe that had been carefully stitched together from three regular-sized robes, he was surprised to see that his wife had guests. He noted the white-and-brown okapi, surmising it must be the new Bayside librarian. He figured the coyote had to be Johnny in one of his many forms. He counted the bowls and assumed that the kits must have already eaten and were either playing outside or getting in some early chores.

What he couldn't figure out was why no-one , not the excitable body-hopping spirit, not the wild-eyed and smoke-smelling librarian, and not his preternaturally intense bride, seemed to be moving.

Realizing that perhaps he could wait to eat his own repast, he backed slowly out of the kitchen and decided to head back upstairs to the safety of his bed.

---

Noon came and went, and Bayside seemed full to bursting. Word had spread, and homesteaders were approaching from the north out of curiosity at the same rate they were arriving from the south out of terror. Rumors were flying, and more than a few families were already planning to pack up their possessions and strike out on the road again, heading towards the mountains, maybe find somewhere to ride out what was generally agreed to be an imminent invasion guaranteed to crush the town beneath an inexorable wave of barbaric devastation.

"That's the words they used? 'Barbaric devastation'?"

Tangy shrugged, normally something Rico would enjoy seeing. "Maybe not at the same time. He definitely said barbaric a few times, and devastation was in there towards the end. He didn't really seem to stop talking so it's a bit of a blur. Or whatever a blur is when it's with your ears."

Rico waved her into silence. "But you got the supplies?"

"He was concerned it was my third time there, and he's almost out of... everything. He said he was keeping stock in reserve in case this gets worse, but... it's bad." Behind the huge linen-covered bar, a cluster of Gossamer Scarf employees were hauling boxes and bags to the storage rooms and the cold-room in the basement. "It'll keep us for a couple days, if folks don't mind a boring menu, but if things don't settle down with the homesteaders..."

"... there's not going to be many new supplies coming," Rico finished. "Bloody idiots."

Folks had been coming into the Scarf all morning, but the restlessness had become unavoidable and now they were wandering out before they could even consider service. Expressions were glassy; worry had given way to numbness, families struggling to find meaning and direction while they waited for... for whatever it was they were waiting for.

And what are we waiting for? Rico sighed, staring out at the plaza again.

The Rangers were out in force. Every regular, every patroller, every new recruit was uniformed up and securing Bayside's perimeter as best they could, keeping a very close proximity to reinforcements. All long-range patrols had been reined in, ostensibly in order to keep a closer, safer eye on the populace, but Rico suspected it was to protect the Rangers themselves.

Unfortunately, the Rangers also seemed to be turning away any citizens attempting to travel north, rebuking them gently but firmly and escorting them back to the plaza. There were repeated assurances that the citizenry would be kept safe, but only if order was maintained. It was anyone's guess as to what would constitute order in a situation like this; years of relative safety and prosperity had dulled the edge of Bayside's brutal instinct for survival and handed the duties of protection over to young men who spent their days shooting straw dummies.

A throat cleared behind the old silver fox. He raised a paw absently, gesturing towards the bar. "One of the girls will help you," he said, still staring through the streaked and yellowed glass.

"I'm sure they would, but this is neither the time nor the place," rumbled a low but eloquent voice. "Besides, I'm sure the imminent rationing would be good for the old waistline."

Rico turned to see young Doctor Hebert standing behind him, as always in his as-clean-as-could-be-reasonably-managed white smock. The boar might not be a real doctor, not yet at any rate, being only the chirurgeon's assistant, but he was considered to be more trustworthy and less... direct than Bayside's doctor, himself a former battlefield surgeon from some city many months to the south. "Sorry, Doctor... er, Councillor this week, I suppose, hmm?"

Hebert smiled humorlessly. "This town is strangely concerned with my proper title. I would simply answer to 'Hebert', you know."

"I would simply answer to 'hey, you, barkeep', it doesn't mean I deserve to."

The boar nodded, conceding the point if only to expedite his own. "I do come here on official town business, so perhaps we'll just pretend the formalities have been observed, hrmm? I realize we've never really had a chance to get to know one another."

"I see you in here now and then. You have a drink, you keep to yourself, you don't cause problems. As far as I'm concerned you're a blessed angel." Rico knew just enough about everyone in town to manage his premises, but for most citizens the file was quite small. Hebert had always struck him as someone who was smarter than they let on, and considering he was trusted with the health and well-being of thousands of hard-working homesteaders he already let on quite a bit. "What does the Council want with me? If it's about supplies, we-"

"Odella," Hebert stated, softly but clearly.

Rico didn't so much as blink. It seemed over the last two decades , despite his considerable success, wealth and stature about town, he'd become just an accessory to the curandera's life. "Shi's with child, you must know that. Extremely so. Shi has made hir wishes known to not be disturbed during this time, which, yes, was poor timing perhaps. I will have to have a talk with my nephew about making sure there's no hordes about when he beds his wife." His short speech ended a little more acidly than he'd intended, but he wasn't about to take it back.

"You misunderstand me, sir. I am aware of hir condition, and it is not hir, ah, powers I am concerned about, but hir mind and hir reputation."

"Then summon hir. The Council and Odella's Circle are the two ruling groups in this town, as far as most people are concerned, and the Rangers work closely with both."

"Not so closely," Hebert muttered.

"Nevertheless, shi is always receptive to messengers. You needn't ask my permission, or my blessing. I have about as much sway over the curandera as I have over my nephew, which is to say if I had any sway over him whatsoever the two would never have met."

The two were attracting attention from the rest of the Scarf, customers and serving girls alike. Hebert sighed and gripped Rico's elbow, guiding him over to the furthest window and turning their backs on the audience. "Is the entire town like this? I come with polite words and a sincere desire to help and I find myself being scolded at every occasion. Sir, this is not Rockrose, not Silvertip, and certainly not Bullet Head. I may be new, here for less than a year, but it is hard to imagine a population simultaneously more welcoming or more ornery!"

"We do our best," Rico grinned. "Don't fight it. Let it become a part of you."

"Perish the thought."

"Are you going to get to the point? Amidst all of your politeness and sincerity, I seem to have missed it."

"I have sent the librarian to talk to the curandera. Shi should have arrived early this morning. Shi has in hir possession books that speak of the strange, poisonous nature of the Bloody Foot Hills, the weapons that the People Before used to destroy their world, and descriptions of the People Before themselves. Those descriptions are also very, nay,suspiciously close to the description given by Mr. Snowding, the homesteader that Dirgo dragged into town, in secret, last night. With me so far?"

It was Rico's turn to frown, trying to sort out the sudden rush of words. "Ye-e-es," he managed. "I... wait, what?"

---

Word spread like wildfire could only hope to spread, moving from frightened lips to anxious ears faster than the eye could follow. The plaza, thronged with more Bayside residents than anyone could rightly believe, seemed to shake down to the very stones with the message that the intruders had arrived, but so rapidly had word spread that it took fully twenty minutes for anyone on the fringes to actually see them.

They marched six abreast, rifles resting against their shoulders and forming a tiny forest of hardened steel. The Rangers possessed dozens of such weapons, most of them under lock and key at any given time, but there had to be at least as many on display now. As they drew closer the white scarves became visible, and the lone figure walking point wore a heavy white vest upon which a gruesome, deformed black skull was painted.

Rico, watching the proceedings from one of the tiny balconies studding the upper level of the Scarf, recognized the shape of the skull from Hebert's description, and swallowed nervously.

There were none of the so-called People Before in the formation, a rigid block, ten rows of six stone-faced furres. Rico saw men there at least as old as he, rigid backs unable to hide the stoop that still curved their heads forwards. They walked shoulder to shoulder with lads too young to be accepted to the Rangers, and Rico was struck with the briefly hilarious vision of the platoon opening fire and knocking themselves over from the recoil.

The crowd drew back, slipping between the buildings, dragging their children as they went. In spite of their barely-restrained panic, the homesteaders struggled to peer around one another, desperate to see what the invaders would do, what the forced gathering was to be all about. Morbid curiosity, as one of those elemental forces of nature, tended to trump common sense.

The nominal leader of the group loomed over his own men, as well as the huddled citizens around the plaza, a huge and powerful bear with arms Rico fancied were larger than the old fox's entire body. His eyes were small, his teeth large and gleaming, but his head swung back and forth, calculating and cold.

In the distance, keeping pace but forming a tightening ring, the Rangers patrols closed in on the plaza, moving swiftly through the streets and alleys when required. The invading troops occasionally glanced back at them, but there was no concern in their eyes, no fear. As one they walked with the comfortable surety of invincibility.

A weak cheer went up when Commander Dirgo approached from the north, the grim-faced tip of a great wedge of Rangers. Guns bristled from the well-dressed regiment as they emerged from one of the wagonyards where they had set up a temporary command center. The Rangers wanted to be present and on scene, capable of handling any minor disturbances that might (and did) result from the peculiar day's passing, but didn't want to make their presence known to the invaders until they were right in the center of town.

Rico thought that made about as much sense as locking the henhouse door after the fox was inside, but he wasn't part of the Rangers. Maybe getting a group of heavily-armed raiders into the heart of a largely unarmed population was some sort of military tactic he just wasn't familiar with.

And where the hell was Hebert? You'd think of ALL places, he'd want to be here for this!

Dirgo and the three dozen of his most experienced Rangers moved in a wide, deliberate arc, but in order to maintain formation this meant many of the small hedges and gardens bracing the paths were trampled. The Baysiders pulled back further, a single amoebic mass bulging and flexing in order to allow the opposing forces to intercept. The buildings around the square, plank and timber and held together as much by repeated coats of paint as rare and expensive nails, seemed to shiver and flex as they held far more flesh than was ever intended.

"Halt!" Dirgo commanded, raising a single devastating fist and planting himself squarely in front of the white-smocked bear.

The bear took a single step to the side and continued walking, the white-scarfed invaders flowing around the Commander like so much water.

Dirgo had planned for a dozen possible scenarios, calculating measured responses, positions of tactical superiority, acceptable losses and the eventual repercussions if this truly was part of a larger expeditionary force.

At no point had he planned on being ignored.

"HALT!" he roared, spinning around. The wedge of Rangers was already fraying around the edges; these weren't the young recruits that were ringing the town, but the hard-eyed and experienced patrollers. Most of them had been around longer than Dirgo himself. There was quite a difference, however, between running down some scavengers on the dry plains and facing off against three score well-organized opponents with matching weaponry.

To have said opponents thoroughly ignoring you was another level of peculiar.

The bear stepped up onto the stone lip of the water fountain surrounding the base of Odella's statue, turning slowly to take in the crowd. Rico had to admire the way the bear moved, almost theatrical. If he'd just started yelling, there would have been shouts, thrown rocks, imminent violence and bloodshed. The silence was captivating, drawing the air out of the plaza until the pounding of heartbeats was deafening.

When it seemed Dirgo was about to explode, the bear smoothed his paws across the skull emblazoned across his tunic, and cleared his throat.

---

Odella blinked fast and often, feeling as though hir head were about to explode. It had been a busy morning, even though the only muscles of hirs that had really gotten a workout were hir lips, and the furious pitter-patter of hir eyelids. Shi knew it was perhaps hir only tell, the only sign that hir mind was racing, that hir thoughts were hidden, that hir actions brought even hirself dread.

At the moment, it signified that shi feared if shi learned one more fact shi would start forgetting things simply due to there being no further room in hir skull.

_If you could pick which memories would go, that would be a blessing, aye? s_hi thought.

Shut up, shi replied to hirself.

There's a couple decades that the rum couldn't entirely erase...

At the moment shi was walking, very slowly, very gingerly, around the herb gardens that surrounded the homestead in low, lush greenery. Kenyon's heavy paw braced hir back, as shi was forced to lean back so far in order to counterbalance hir belly that shi was very nearly staring skyward. LaCombe walked to hir left, paws twitching whenever it seemed like the curandera might stumble in hir direction, and Johnny walked to the right, and for more than two hours the three had exchanged information.

A picture was forming, though if it was anything any of them could recognize, it was too early to tell.

"And you were_what?!"_ the okapi asked again, still struggling with the concept.

"An actor!" the coyote barked back.

"And you were famous!"

"YES! Very famous! I had a boat AND a plane!" The ideas of boats and planes had taken some time, but LaCombe had been able to produce a few other tomes from hir pack that displayed such marvels. "Look, this isn't getting us anywhere. That was... that was a long, long, long time ago. Really, I don't even know how long. I don't think anyone was counting for... for a long time there."

It seemed that, in the ages long past, the world was really only populated by the humans, or so the humans would have liked to believe. They were the only ones with clothes, buildings, actors, boats, and books with fatal warnings on the front and skulls on the back. Johnny had told them broken, wandering stories of the age in which he lived, perhaps near the end of the human civilization. It seemed likely, given what he described of the radiation symbol.

"It wasn't a weapon," he yelped, doing his best to keep his host body under control. These were difficult ideas for it to wrestle with. "It wasn't meant to be a weapon, any more than metal was meant to be a sword. It was... it was a source of energy, like fire, but with the power of the sun itself behind it. It powered our... our machines, it powered our lights, our cities, and the roads connecting every part of every continent."

"Continent?"

"It's... ok, that's not important right now."

"It's the things separated by oceans," Odella murmured. "There's a continent, then an ocean, then a continent, then an ocean..."

"Ye-e-e-es, but look, this isn't geography class."

"What?"

"JUST SHUT UP AND LET ME TA-ROWW-ROWW-roww-roww..." The coyote's animalistic howls trailed off, punctuated by a furious licking of his lips and a clearing of his throat. "I mean, let me TALK. I've got about ten thousand words up here I haven't used in ages, and I don't have time to explain them all to you. Nuclear. That's the word that you keep asking about, but I don't know why."

"That's what ended your world!" LaCombe replied.

"Maybe, but it's hardly got much to do with the smarmy pricks wandering around nailing people to posts, now does it? Isn't that why you were sent up here, apple-butt?"

"WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?!"

Odella had endured arguments a hundred times worse than this just raising hir own kits, but it was rather frustrating to have to listen to a well-spoken and well-read librarian hurling barbs with a coyote housing the millennia-old spirit of an apparently formerly rich and famous man. There was only so much shi could handle in one morning. "Please stop yelling," shi whispered, blinking.

"COYOTE, SHUT _ UP _, THE CURANDERA IS SAYING SOMETH-... oh."

Kenyon rubbed Odella's back, staring down at the three very different folk he found himself with. Nothing much surprised him anymore; being married to a curandera very quickly destroyed one's ability to discern what was genuinely weird. As far as the company went, this was downright tame. The nature of the discussion was giving him cause for worry, particularly since it seemed every new revelation caused his beloved to withdraw ever so slightly more. "Are you all right, Dell?"

"I'm fine," shi sighed, rolling hir shoulders. "Please, carry on, but if you could perhaps try to stay on topic?"

"I was trying to, but SHI keeps sidetracking-"

"Clarifying!" LaCombe snorted. "Clarity of word and thought is crucial!"

"Ahem," Kenyon rumbled, very pointedly stepping on a broad, flat rock and grinding it until it cracked audibly in half beneath his weight.

Johnny's head drooped, and the okapi swallowed. "Sorry," they chorused, and for a moment the resemblance to Pueblo and Briar being scolded was almost comical.

"The point?" the huge fox prodded softly, smiling to show there were no hard feelings and he wouldn't REALLY crush them as easily as he crushed solid stone.

"The point is, clearly not all the humans died out," Johnny stated.

"The point is, the creatures who destroyed the world once are back!" LaCombe said.

"Well, ONE of them hardly means we're ALL back."

"We? I thought you said you didn't consider yourself human anymore!"

"It's hard to break the habit of a lifetime!"

"You've lived a hundred lifetimes!"

"As a ghost!"

"We should all be so lucky!"

"LUCK...!" Johnny yelped, briefly rising up onto his hindlegs. It was only then that either of the argumentative guests realized that they could see eachother clearly without the vast obscuring bulk of Odella's swollen body in the way. He dropped back down, scruffing his nose with a paw shamefully, and glanced back to where Odella stood motionless, staring up at the clouds. "Sorry. We did it again, didn't we?"

"I swear I'm not normally this... hot-headed," LaCombe grimaced, wringing hir paws. "I haven't slept since yesterday, and I walked all night, and I've had a lot of coffee and I REALLY need a smoke, and-"

"You smoke?"

LaCombe's expression flashed , hir delicate muzzle clenching defensively. "I'm allowed."

"Fuck yeah, you are. Spare one for me?"

"You smoke?"

"I think so! I DEFINITELY have memories of that."

"You're a coyote!"

"I'll figure it out! Lips are lips!"

"I need to head out of here before much longer, I'm supposed to report to Hebert at midnight. We'll figure it out on the way down the hill?"

"It's a date, apple-butt."

"HEY!"

"What?! It's a compliment!"

"It is? What's an apple?"

Kenyon chuckled and shook his head. "Kids, eh?" he mumbled, leaning down to nuzzle Odella's ears. "You all right, sweetie? Legs cramping up?"

"I Hear... something."

His own ears perked, straining, but with the children in the upper fields collecting berries all he could detect was dust blowing on the wind. "Your ears always were better than mine."

"Not with my ears," Odella said, voice rising anxiously. "I Hear it in my mind."

"Oh... oh, no. You capitalized 'hear', didn't you?"

Johnny and LaCombe trotted back, concern clear on their face. "Are you all right, Mistress?" the librarian asked. "Do we-"

Odella raised a paw, one finger extended, and three mouths clapped shut instantly. Shi might be mostly incapacitated, shi might waddle like a drunken bull , shi might be more belly than baleful, but shi still commanded the immediate respect of those that knew hir, or at the very least commanded their silence.

"Someone approaches," shi intoned, eyes half-lidded. "Someone powerful. Someone of the Way."

"Cambiado?!" Kenyon gasped, one fist clenching so hard his knuckles popped.

"No... no, it's worse."

The colossal fox's eyes bulged. "How could it be worse?"

Odella's hand drifted out to the side, until shi seemed to be pointing directly at a patch of sage, already touched with silver along the edges. All eyes followed, but except for a small cluster of bees moving in and out of the foliage there seemed to be nothing of note there.

Kenyon had learned not to second-guess hir intuition, and Johnny had known hir perhaps longer than anyone else in the world. Neither was surprised when it was LaCombe who eventually asked, "What are we supposed to be looking at?"

Shi had barely formed the final syllable when the very air around the patch of sage pulled in on itself, twisting like a mirror melting in the fires of a blacksmith's forge, and out of nothingness a shadow emerged. The ground beneath them shook, vibrating like Kenyon's hodgepodge banjo, and the shadow seemed to invert itself.

Kenyon frowned, having seen this mode of travel before, while Johnny cautiously looked away lest his host body become spooked to the point of madness. It was very difficult to occupy a mind that was experiencing an existential crisis for the first time. LaCombe, on the other hand, couldn't pull hir gaze away, so when the bizarre apparition eventually solidified into a short, stocky feminine figure dressed in black, the okapi's shock was compounded by suddenly and vigorously throwing up hir tea into the herb garden between hir feet.

"Timura!" Odella gasped, leaning forward as much as shi dared. Kenyon responded instantly by slipping his paws to hir shoulders, acting as an anchor for the exceedingly front-heavy coati.

"Oh, shit," Johnny moaned, slouching and sprawling out on the path. He inched his way over to LaCombe, careful not to get too close. "Just take deep breaths, it passes quickly. You aren't really supposed to LOOK when curandera do that."

"Wha... wha-rfff... what was...?"

"Walking Above The World. I'll explain later. Right now, shhh."

The newcomer was hardly taller than Odella, putting hir a head shorter than LaCombe and barely up to Kenyon's chest. The resemblances were more than superficial, with the ringtail being spectacularly buxom, though still not quite as impressive as Odella. Hir complex, overlapping black robes did very little to hide hir broad hips and a maleness that Kenyon was reasonably certain could give his wife a run for hir money. Curandera were invariably hermaphrodites, and tended to possess any number of rather exotic physical attributes.

It still took him a moment to realize, however, that the robes were more than just black... they were charred, with holes burnt through in numerous places. Timura's left ear was ripped and bleeding, the eye below it sealed shut with swollen, blackened flesh. More blood speckled hir muzzle, and shi stood with hir right arm held tightly against hir belly, wrist curled inwards in a disturbingly unnatural way.

"How... how did you make it all the way here?" Odella asked, hir tail twitching furiously. "Even I dare not try to Walk all the way into the Hills!"

Timura took a step, hir one good eye bulging with the strain, and stumbled. Shi caught hirself with hir one good paw and cried out, biting back a curse. "I had to!" shi hissed from one knee. "I had to.. to risk it. Ye gods, you really do live directly above it! Above the_city..."_

"What happened? Kenyon, help hir!"

The huge fox slowly released his grip, making sure Odella didn't take a tumble, and moved forwards to scoop the ringtail up into his arms as though shi weighed nothing at all. Timura squawked in pain again, but relaxed a moment later, sagging against Kenyon's chest. "The horde took Rockrose," shi wheezed.

The three kits appeared from the far side of the homestead, skidding to a stop. They knew better than to approach their mother when 'curandera things' were happening, and the unmistakable wet thunderclap of someone Walking Above The World definitely counted. Odella turned hir head and barked to them, "Water and blankets and my medicine trunk! NOW! Living room!"

Three little heads nodded and disappeared. Odella stuck hir arm out, hir little footpaws moving in a complicated dance to slowly reorient hir body to face the house. "Librarian, hold my elbow! Kenyon, get Timura inside! Johnny, perimeter!"

LaCombe was still woozily wiping hir muzzle, but shi found hirself reacting without a second thought. Johnny sprinted off, planning to make a few loops of the little bowl valley that sheltered the homestead, but knowing it was just a task to keep him busy and out of the witches' hair. Kenyon moved swiftly ahead of the two herms, ringtail curandera cradled in his arms, wondering if they were ever going to have a normal weekend ever again.

---

The invaders barely stayed long enough to inspect their handiwork before marching out of the plaza, directly south from whence they'd came. The roving squadrons of Rangers uncertainly securing the outskirts attempted to stop them, but when their orders were ignored they were forced to simply let the invaders continue on their way.

From the moment they'd appeared on the horizon to the moment they disappeared into the distance, they had uttered not one single word.

The sun was nearly set, casting long shadows and slashes of burnt orange across the landscape. The Dust, the apparently endless expanse of powdery silt that marked both the western edge of Bayside and of civilization in general, seemed to glow with inner fire, a smoldering oven just waiting to slowly envelop and mummify anyone desperate or stupid enough to attempt the crossing.

Normally at this time of day there was a brisk business along the edge of the cliff that bordered the Dust, a hundred foot sheer drop where children delighted in dropping small stones and watching the puffs as they disappeared. Young couples went for walks along the rim, gazing out at the blazing ochre miasma, holding onto that age where certain death held a particular romance. Families would picnic and lounge in the day's last rays. It was a strangely alluring sight, and one that even lifelong residents never seemed to tire of.

On this evening the edge of the Dust was empty. The off-street bakeries and teahouses were barren. Greenways and backyards, supplied with regular water thanks to the unprecedented dowsing efforts of the Circle and Odella's young witches, were silent and still.

For hours, the entire population of Bayside for miles around had been clustered around the plaza, horrified by the desecration but unable to take their eyes off of it. By ones and twos and threes they drifted by, making every effort to seem happenstance, and although they struggled to read the proclamation (even those who couldn't read at least hazarded a few blocky words) they were eventually forced aside by the next accidental observer.

Rico could see it just fine from the window furthest from the Gossamer Scarf's door, a position he feared he would never leave. He'd spent the entire day trying to tear himself away, but soon the serving girls simply adjusted their normal duties to accommodate what seemed to be his new office.

Right now Tangy was leaning against him, her gaze on the windowsill, but every few minutes she would tug aside her locks of unruly hair, glance out at the body, and sigh.

"Do you think shi knows about it?"

"It does seem like the sort of thing shi would... normally find out about very quickly," Rico hazarded. "But this isn't a normal time for hir, when shi's with child. You've heard the stories, oh aye, Odella the Revenger, but right now shi's got other duties."

"Shi's not coming to help." It was not a question.

"Shi will, girl, shi will," Rico nodded, frowning as he struggled to convince himself. He pat Tangy's shoulder as chastely as he could manage. "Shi's never backed down from a fight. Hells, if shi goes too long with hir feet up shi goes LOOKING for a fight. We used to tell our pups in bygone days that if you drifted away from home and wound up looking for a dangerous life, shi'd help you find it."

Tangy hooked her bangs with a pinkie finger, glanced out at the body again, and sighed. "We've got to take it down! SOMEONE needs to take it down!"

"Dirgo and the Council are... handling it," he grunted, biting his tongue to keep from calling himself a liar.

The statue of Odella had stood for a year at the heart of Bayside, hopeful but dangerous, protective but violent. It would be hard to argue it didn't capture hir essence, even if some of the more old-fashioned families thought that having such a body on display, even if it was carved from blank white marble, was naughty and led to impure thoughts.

The citizens of Bayside had watched, aghast, as the invaders threw several heavy ropes across the statue's shoulders and hoisted up the stiffening, lifeless corpse of a young antelope. He looked to be just freshly into adulthood, older than some of the Ranger's latest recruits but still young enough to be helping out in his parents' fields. Dried blood had crusted around his mouth and eyes, a great corsage of reddish-black adorning his head where the bullet had pierced his skull. No-one recognized him, but he wore simple, familiar clothes, and the maker's mark on his belt had originally come from Bayside's famous tannery.

Nailed to his chest with two heavy iron spikes was an arm's length of heavy parchment, upon which the Proclamations had been written. Stretched as he was across the statue's tremendously full, if accurate, bosom, his legs dangled and swayed in the breeze, occasionally shedding flecks of dirt and gore into the little fountain pool at the base of the statue.

The Proclamations weren't complicated. In a week, the full might of the Crusade would arrive at Bayside, and the population there would be graciously and generously absorbed. The Crusade already numbered in the many thousands, and Bayside would render its strength truly unmatched, and unstoppable. All goods, all useful tools and perishable supplies, would become the shared property and prosperity of the Crusade, and would bring the mighty nation closer to it's eventual goal. The goal was rather vaguely alluded to, but it was hard to argue the point that somewhere in the world there needed to be a land of plenty, a place of fertile soil and gentle seasons, where life would not need to be a tireless, despairing struggle.

Those fleeing the Crusade would only be able to flee for so long before they, too, were given sanctuary and purpose.

Those resisting the Crusade would be put to death.

The Crusade purported to be led by a seer, a man from the past who could not be harmed, and in his infinite goodness and noble purpose brought forth the mighty weapons of ages gone by. This was seen as a sign that the Crusade could not be denied, could not be resisted, and already dozens of villages had been peacefully welcomed without shots fired. Others, of course, had resisted, and they were used as examples to sway the minds of those who hadn't heard the message and, with their sacrifice, prevent further bloodshed.

Dirgo grimaced distastefully and spat. "Bullshit."

"That's not really a term we like to use anymore," Hebert said blandly, standing beside Dirgo as he so often seemed to be doing these days. They were a short ways back from the desecrated statue, using one of the wrought iron benches to shield themselves from the press of bodies. The rest of the Council had their hands full dealing with the pockets of frustration and the occasional outbursts of violence and vandalism. The boar shook his head and cracked his knuckles, softly, in his pockets, where no-one could see. He'd prided himself ever since his early days of on-the-job medical training on being dispassionate and professional, but this was pushing even his resolve. "You have to admit, they've worked out their banter."

"It reads like one of those kids stories, where the good go to paradise and the wicked are punished for all eternity. Except they're giving you a choice, right here and now, with a bullet."

"Not right now, thankfully."

Dirgo snorted. "A week? There's not going to be a Bayside left in a week!"

"You give them too little credit."

In the distance a window broke, followed by shouts of protest and a brief smattering of applause. "Do I?" the bulky wolverine scowled. "This is panic, dentist. It's right below the surface, but it's leaking out in a hundred places, and that lid can only stay on for so long."

"Panic is a reaction, similar to shock. Do you know about shock?"

Dirgo's tiny eyes spun to take in the stocky boar, neck muscles tightening so hard the Commander's shoulders swelled. "What?"

"Have you ever been shot?"

Hebert was counting on it, and he was not disappointed. The Commander pulled at the snaps on his smart green tunic and pulled it wide, exposing a crescent of dark, muddy pink scar tissue across his chest, disappearing beneath his armpit. "Three times," he rumbled, sounding oddly flat. "Three times in a row, every one aiming for my heart. The field medic we had back then hadn't treated much more than a chopped-off pinkie before that day, and the one bullet wound he'd treated hadn't lived long enough to complain about the sutures. They were coming out of the ground that day, coming right out of the burrows they'd dug overnight-"

"Could you lift your arm?"

The wolverine stopped, his well-worn train of thought stalled out at the station. "What?"

"When the first one went in, could you lift your arm?"

"Of course not!"

"Did it hurt?"

"Did it hurt...?!? What kind of fu-"

"Right away, RIGHT away, Commander. Did it hurt?" He didn't raise his voice, not quite, but he was well used to the old medical trick of tightening the throat to add a hint of hoarseness when it seemed like the nurses were dallying.

Dirgo's eyes narrowed, clearly suspecting a trick. "It was cold, but... no, it didn't hurt. Not right away. I didn't even know there was a third bullet in there until-"

The boar reached up and tugged the tunic partway closed once more. "This town doesn't even know there's a third bullet in there. They're not feeling anything right now. Oh, they think they're angry, they think they're running for their lives, they think they see doom on the horizon, but their brains are numb and they're seizing upon whatever comes their way. They're not acting, they're just reacting."

He turned back towards the statue of Odella and the stretched-out antelope. "Tomorrow morning, Bayside is going to wake up, and they're going to wake up angry. The real anger, the anger I bet you felt when the battle was over and you were left with your chest on fire and blood in your lungs and an inexperienced sawbones cutting into you with hunting knives to dig out three chunks of lead. The anger that made you want to rip your bandages out and storm back to the armoury and get back on patrol, am I right?"

Dirgo straightened, but it was not to try and intimidate the boar with his tremendous height; he was, as best as the proud wolverine could manage, recoiling in surprise. "I... fainted. When I tried to pick up my sidearm."

The chirurgeon nodded. "Tomorrow morning, they're going to wake up, and they're going to be done reacting, just you wait. They're going to act, they're going to WANT to act, and they are going to NEED someone to_show them how to act!"_

The Commander flinched, just the tiniest bit. Hebert wasn't even sure he'd seen it. It would have been nice, poetic, even.

They turned back to the statue, the last rays of the sun disappearing around them, the sky still a burning brick-red.

"The body stays up."

"It does."

"They need to stay angry."

"They do."

"They might still not survive this."

Hebert chuckled and thumped his elbow against Dirgo's. "My boy, that's something they've heard a lot around these parts over the years."

---

Timura was sitting up on the couch, waving away all attempts to comfort hir with blankets, pillows, or any of Zora's collection of patchwork dolls. The ringtail was hunched over, shaking slightly, drawing hir robes closer, but for the moment shi wasn't in danger of collapsing onto the ground and shi wasn't about to give one more inch to hir perceived weakness. A curandera might be holding their body together with naught but willpower and carpentry nails, but they had their pride.

"At least let Kenyon bandage your wrist! It's obviously broken!"

"I've had worse!"

Kenyon and LaCombe were standing by the fireplace, both acutely aware that being in between two squabbling witches was a poor idea at the best of times, but with one pregnant and the other a bloody mess it was likely suicide. Timura held hir tea in hir good paw, the wounded one tucked beneath hir bust and out of sight. The superficial resemblances to Odella were startling; no-one had those sorts of proportions except another curandera.

"Why did you come here at all? If you were at the Rose, that's already too far north for your territory! The Rose is in Telkwa's lands, and if there was any sort of invasion the Way would have seen to-"

"Telkwa's dead," Timura said levelly.

"What?!" Odella straightened so hard shi nearly knocked hirself over, arms flailing as shi either fought to balance or to punch the nearest wall. "When? How do you know?!"

"I didn't choose to come here first, Odella," the ringtail snickered. "You didn't leave much of hir homestead standing the last time you two got together for tea, but shi'd rebuilt nicely. Except hir place was abandoned, had been for weeks. Shi'd left a Path, back the way I'd come, back through the Rose and out to the east. Shi'd... shi'd already tried to stop the horde."

It seemed unthinkable. Odella was young as far as established curandera went, a little over three hundred years old the last time shi'd bothered to try and tally; shi had earned the nickname 'the Wild Child' from the elder witches quite honestly. Telkwa was ancient enough to actually have some grey in hir hair and a few wrinkles around hir eyes, wheras Odella hirself hardly looked a day out of early adulthood. Telkwa was smart, shi was meticulous, and despite hir expertise with herbalism and healing shi was just as capable a combatant as the formerly-wanton coati.

Shi never would have walked into a situation shi wasn't sure shi could handle, and Odella was having a hard time thinking what sort of situation that would apply to. A horde? Just men. Men with guns this time, to be true, but no more than mortals marching together. I could have handled that in my sleep! What...

LaCombe held up the virulent yellow book, the skull-emblazoned back cover towards Timura. "It was this, wasn't it?"

Timura, as gifted with the Second Sight as any curandera in the land, flinched before the book was all the way up. "Unnatural," shi spat, tossing back hir tea as though it were a slug of rotgut. "Unnatural! I've killed most things that weren't alive to begin with, but that... that thing..."

"You saw the human," the librarian said, eyes wide. "You saw it!"

"Oh, aye, I saw it."

"What did it look like?"

"Like a swine what got stepped on and stretched out," the ringtail snarled. "Didn't look like nothing even your... your kits would be afraid of." Hir voice softened somewhat at the mention of the children who had been sent outside while the adults spoke. With hir Sight, shi could plainly detect them peering through the distant kitchen window at the activity in the living room, but shi didn't mind. Shi could never stay mad at youngsters, least of all the offspring of the Wild Child hirself.

Odella, still trying to wrap hir mind around Telkwa's fate, carefully eased hir bulk onto the edge of hir rocking chair. This left hir able to see naught but hir own bust and the ceiling high above, but shi didn't care to look at anything or anyone right now. "Then tell me how it defeated you," shi said, wishing more than anything shi could dash off headlong into danger, into the unknown threat of the horde. Wishing shi could crush something with hir bare paws. Wishing shi could act.

"It didn't...!" Timura howled, rising from the couch and wincing when hir wrist suddenly lost its support. Shi sat back carefully, tossing the empty teacup onto the low wooden table with a clatter. "I smote it. I Walked in the Light right up behind it, standing alone in the heart of the Rose, and I brought down lightning right onto the top of its head while it was ranting about paradise and destiny, and ground beneath its stupid flat feet cracked and charred but it walked out unharmed!"

LaCombe gasped, and Kenyon just tightened his jaw and continued staring at the swollen bulk of his wife, rocking back and forth almost imperceptibly. He knew that hir mind was always working, but it was when shi seemed to be feigning indifference that shi was putting hir restless thoughts to good use. Normally, shi would putter and fidget and cook and clean and play with the kits or sometimes just go scouting with Johnny, anything to occupy hir consciousness as well as hir idle paws, but sealing hirself up inside hir skull was always a last resort.

Be careful, he thought fearfully. Be safe...

"Unharmed," Odella said softly, whiskers twitching. "Interesting."

"Its clothes charred and smoldered, even the hair on the top of its head, but it was just as pink as a newborn babe. I could see it with my eyes open, plain as day, but I couldn't see nothing with them shut. Just... emptiness."

"How could you-" LaCombe started to ask, but Kenyon put a warning paw on hir shoulder.

"They see more with their eyes closed. They see things that aren't there, or they'd say they see what's really there," he whispered into the okapi's ear.

"The Way sees all," Odella recited, eyes closing sleepily. It was a mantra that the curandera often resorted to when they wanted to seem wise.

"The Way clearly didn't want nothing to do with this," Timura grunted. "I could see its guns, all right. Tossed them before the lightning could fry 'em. It's done this before... faced curandera. It called me out. It was expectin' me." Bit by bit the ringtail's collected and clipped speech was fading into hir original patois, that of a young dirt-farming herm not too different from Odella.

"But the Way brought you there, on that day, at that time."

"No, a family on the far side of terror crossed paths with me heading south into the Scald. Told me all about what had been going on, figured no-one would bother following them any further south than the Rose. Scald ain't good living for anyone, not since you moved your territory north." There was more than a note of accusation in that last statement.

"That doesn't make any sense," LaCombe broke in. "The humans are frail, according to everything I've read. They've got books upon books upon books for medicine, first aid, the treatment of injuries, sicknesses, wasting diseases, everything imaginable. If half of what I've seen is true they were always on the verge of some plague or other, cities being wiped out and bodies in the streets, which is why they had machines to do their work for them. They... they can't walk through_lightning."_

"Look who's the expert," Timura asked sharply, staring at the plump okapi. "This one did. I struck it, and it bled, but it struck me back and I... and it... it was stronger than me."

That made Kenyon's jaw drop, but only for an instant. Odella had broken more of his bones in moments of stress or carelessness or passion than two decades of injuries accrued while scavenging the underground city. Shi'd always splinted them tenderly, bandaged him up and apologized in hir own uniquely sensual ways, but a curandera's body was commanded by more than mere flesh.

"I summoned fire inside of it and it burned me own skin. The Way wasn't just blind to it, the Way might as well have been blowing ashes at an axe head. The horde had been just camping outside the gates, but it had... it had young'uns with it. Had brought them in, showin' them off for the people, I dunno. Make 'em join up. And they was... they was hittin' me, and I wanted to just knock down the statue they had in town, try and just kill it with good old rock against bone, make it bleed more, but the young'uns was everywhere..."

Timura hiccuped, and LaCombe thought that the slightly felinoid curandera had started crying, but if anything hir expression had simply gone blank. Shi stared down at hir paws, good cradling bad, and breathed in and out rhythmically through hir nose. The damage to hir clothes made sense now, hand-sized holes charred through black fabric and fur alike.

"You ran," Odella said.

"There wasn't nothin' I could do, not then!" Timura shouted, seeming very small. "There was kits and pups all around him, and there was more outside! The horde, it ain't likes it was in the old days, murderous men keepin' women on chains, smashin' in things with clubs. It's families! It's homesteads and villages and whole towns gobbled up into this great big monster! I looked down on 'em when I was Walking in the Light, and I wasn't about to be bringing down no thunder and lightning on no young'uns!"

LaCombe covered hir mouth. Kenyon stared at Odella, and Odella just pushed hirself back and forth with one toe, straining robes sloshing like the bathing barrel when it was full.

"There needs to be something you can do!" the librarian asked after a lengthy pause. "I mean, yeah, ok, you can't, like... summon lightning_out of the sky to _smite him or anything, but there needs to be something! Right? Something?"

Hir hands flapped expectantly like pigeons struggling to evade a predator, but neither curandera responded. Shi turned to Kenyon, hoping the immense mountain of fox would be able to back hir up or at least talk some sense into his wife, but shi couldn't meet his gaze. He stared placidly over hir, eyes only for Odella.

"Something?!"

"Kenyon, sweetie? Would you show LaCombe the storage room in the Hole?"

LaCombe spun, but Odella's eyes were still closed. "Storage?" shi gasped. "Exactly what do I need to see in storage?!"

"The secure storage, hon. Thanks."

"Open your eyes!"

"No, I'd... rather not."

A paw the size of an encyclopedia volume encircled LaCombe's upper arm and shi suddenly discovered that shi finally had Kenyon's full, undivided and eerily focused attention. "It's outside," he rumbled softly, his feet already moving but being incredibly careful not to seem like he was dragging hir. "It's... probably relevant."

"Probably?! What..."

"I thought librarians were supposed to be quiet and calm," he said once they were outside, closing the kitchen door behind them. "I understand this is probably a... stressful situation, for someone who doesn't live with hir."

"Stressful?!"

"Could you stop yelling, please? We're not in a hurry."

"We're not?!"

The kits trotted out from the far side of the house, forced nonchalance giving them a little extra spring in their step. "This happened in the Rose, and knowing how fast Timura can travel it probably happened today. The Rose is an easy five day trip to the south, and if there's thousands of people, women and children and supplies, they're not moving fast, so call it six or seven days. You need to head back in an hour to meet with the Council at midnight, and it doesn't look like you're going to get anything else out of Timura. You have time to look at this, and it's something that Odella felt important enough to trust you with. Pueblo, get the descent harness."

LaCombe allowed hirself to be gently led, which is really all the huge prospector was doing. His paw encircled hir arm as gently as hir own shirtsleeve, but shi was fairly certain that if shi made a run for it shi would only succeed in dislocating something. "You can let go of me."

"I can," he agreed.

They were passing through the herb garden again, on their way to the huge, somewhat upsettingly organic spire of blackened stone jutting out of the lowest part of the little bowl valley. The stream that fed the various gardens and fields vanished around the far side of it, but there was a well-work and flower-lined path leading into a cave on this side of the base, around which the librarian now noticed also had candle sconces set into the stone.

"Are you going to?" shi asked.

Kenyon seemed to ponder. "Soon."

The kits jogged on ahead. The girls fished some matches out of a lacquered box just inside the cave entrance and started lighting candles, illuminating the interior, while Pueblo disappeared into the shadowy depths with ease lopes, clearly at ease in the darkness.

"What are you going to show me?"

"Two things. Well... ok, first hundreds of things, and next thousands of things, BUT they're sort of collectively just two things, so-"

"Yes, thank you, I believe I got the gist of it," the okapi pouted. "You know, I was REALLY hoping to have a nap before I had to head back, I've been awake for over thirty-six hours now..."

"We'll brew you some coffee before you leave. Now that Odella's with child, shi's had to cut back, so we have a few sacks in the cold room."

"Sacks?!"

"Shi... likes hir coffee," Kenyon mumbled, for the first time that day seeming genuinely displeased.

They reached the cave, now glowing merrily from the light of a dozen heavy golden candles. Shi had expected something rough-hewn and foreboding, but the cave had been carved out bit by bit until it was as straight and regular as any stone passageway in Bayside. In fact, it reminded hir of the storerooms beneath the Gossamer Scarf, where shi'd arranged more secure storage for hir rarest books.

Pueblo was already standing there, holding a complicated criss-cross of age-darkened leather and bronze buckles.

LaCombe stopped just outside the cavern entrance. "What, exactly, are you going to do with that?"

---

The sun had been set for some time when the final lurking shadows drifted out of Rockrose, sacks clanking across shoulders and trunks swaying heavily between grunting porters. The bodies of the young guardsmen who had been unfortunately crushed beneath the Rose's formerly-impenetrable stone doors had been extricated, dressed and given a simple burial by the lower ramparts of the southern wall, a place considered a mark of honor and respect. Joining the two narrow streaks of upturned earth was a third grave, the final resting place of the unknown young man so recently nailed up in the central courtyard.

The Rose was empty, very carefully and deliberately looted of all valuables, goods and supplies. Invaders might have spent days sacking the various strongrooms, storehouses and granaries, but this scavenging was being perpetrated by the inhabitants themselves. Bakers trundled wagonloads of goods out of their own stores. Moneychangers carefully distributed their wealth in order to provide for safe and sensible bartering while the horde travelled. Homes large and small were emptied out, leaving behind anything that wouldn't make life on the road easier.

When it was all said and done, the ancient fortress had fallen to invaders without a single aggressive shot fired.

The nomadic army's ranks swelled tremendously that day. They set up camp a handful of miles down the westward road, still well within sight of the Rose but without the unavoidable memories and guilt-ridden sense of betrayal staying within its walls would have created.

Borne had learned that trick early. Remove them from their homes, give them the luxury and security of distance, he thought. Make the road back to their lives before seem unreachable. Give them a good night's sleep under your care, just one, and they will be yours forever.

The leader of the horde (even though he was loathe to use the word, preferring to speak in terms of followers, not leaders) walked through the bulging shanty town, tiny cooking fires as numerous as the stars above. With the sudden influx of supplies there was the smell of baked bread drifting on the breezes, of dried meats and cured cheeses being shared with friends and strangers alike. The most experienced members of the travelling society went from tent to tent, wagon to wagon, offering strong drinks and quiet words with the newest recruits, welcoming them to the movement.

That was key, Borne mused, waving to some of his lieutenants as they set up makeshift guard towers to keep an eye on the perimeters. Keep them moving. A rolling stone gathers no moss.

He had read dozens of books from his tribe's sacred relics, but to his continued consternation none of them had explained moss to his satisfaction. He felt that his life's purpose would reveal new meaning when he could properly understand that phrase.

After the confrontation with the curandera, the population of Rockrose had come around very quickly indeed. They had been unfamiliar with that particular creature, a bizarrely-proportioned feline of some sort, but the presence of a witch had been undeniable. He wiggled his pinkie finger around in his ear and flexed his jaw, the distant ringing rising to briefly drown out the sounds of cookpots and worried whispers; his hearing still hadnt come back properly after that thunderbolt!

Oh, shi had tried the usual stuff. Lightning, fire, claws... It was for that reason he had an entire trunk of white robes in his wagon. They never lasted very long. His clothes were vulnerable, even his weapons, but his flesh remained unblemished.

Borne twisted his neck, yawned forcefully, and sighed. Mostly unblemished! Stupid ears...

He continued to make his rounds, making sure his presence was felt in every corner of the encampment. The old-timers, the lieutenants who had followed him across the cracked and sundered plains to the east, hardly paid him any notice. He had made special effort to become close, sociable, even chummy with a handful of new acquisitions from every location, making them his emissaries to the steadily-swelling population. He knew their names, he could spot their offspring and make smalltalk. As for everyone else, it was more important to simply be seen.

It would be a big meal, a short night, and an early start. Keep their minds and feet (paws, he chuckled, ever amused) occupied.

The next major stop on the road to destiny was reportedly quite the place, a city of wealth and bounty, complete with their own pet witch. Over the last year he'd heard of villages numbering less than a hundred individuals referred to as 'towns', and towns with maybe three hundred referred to as 'cities', but this Bayside was different.

Thousands, they said. Thousands upon thousands. They welcome anyone and everyone, if you can contribute.

The human smiled to himself, scrubbing his fingers across his stubbly chin. In three days his agents would return from the north, and give him a full reporting. In a week, his legion would be unstoppable.

---

"Oh, dip," LaCombe swore, eyes wide.

The trip down the Hole had been horrifying, swaying over an apparently bottomless pit that no amount of candlelight could penetrate. Shi'd periodically dropped stones from the basket slung across Kenyon's back, and hir keen ears had detected not a one of them striking bottom. He assured hir there was a cave, and shi would get to see it, but first there was something perhaps more immediately pressing.

After roughly three hundred feet of descent, the terrified okapi watching armlength after armlength of rope slip through the huge fox's fingers, he began to swing his bulk back and forth. Shi whined, clinging hard to his neck, but rather than slamming into the sides of the shaft he almost gracefully lit on the wide ledge shi'd been too preoccupied to notice.

The basket bounced as he walked, following the ledge around to where it disappeared into a crack in the wall, one that had clearly been widened by careful tooling over the years. He squeezed through, LaCombe ducking to keep from bonking hir head on the tapering stone arch, and fumbled around in his pockets for his matches.

When the first ensconced candle was lit, shi realized they were in a small, oblong chamber, a side chimney to the main shaft. Shi couldn't quite make out the ceiling above them, but the walls couldn't have been more than twenty feet apart.

With the second candle, shi saw that the chamber was full of boxes, shelves, barrels, and racks, a hodgepodge of crates and containers even more cramped than the Gossamer Scarf's storerooms.

After three candles, shi realized what shi'd been meant to see.

"Dip, indeed," Kenyon agreed sombrely.

The fox knelt and shi clambered out of the basket, knees wobbling, heart still pounding from the gut-wrenching trip down the Hole. Shi had enough room to take a single step, but after that shi would be taking hir life in hir own hands.

"Are they real?" LaCombe breathed, tentatively reaching out to touch one of the dozens of rifles sticking out of a splintery wooden box. They were different lengths, different metallic hues, and even had different decorations along what shi considered the 'top', but they were unmistakable. Next to it, a broad, high-sided wicker basket was mounded with revolvers the way a garden market might have a basket mounded with potatoes.

"Oh, yes. Very real."

"But... you've supplied so many guns to the Rangers! Dozens of them! Why-"

"Why hide them?"

Shi inched to the side, making sure shi wasn't about to accidentally step on a gun. It wouldn't have surprised hir. "Exactly! With this, everyone in Bayside could protect themselves!"

Kenyon arched an eyebrow, but he knew that even the best and brightest of Odella's Circle, the only others entrusted with this secret, sometimes took a few minutes to follow the path. "That's true. We could give everyone a gun."

"If there is a horde-"

"-we would be on equal terms."

"Yes!"

"And after?"

LaCombe blinked, peering through a shelf piled high with some sort of gun much larger than a revolver, but much shorter than a rifle. "After?"

"We deter the horde. Maybe there's casualties on both sides, maybe enough that they reconsider and leave us alone, but only after hundreds of of your fellow townsfolk have perished. After that, what then? Bring the guns back here?"

"Well, of course! You'd need to keep them... safe..."

There it is, Kenyon nodded, watching the plump okapi frown. "After fighting off a rampaging horde, the good citizens of Bayside would just return the guns to Odella and move on."

"They... might..."

"They might," Kenyon agreed. "Back in the basket."

LaCombe swallowed and turned, but Kenyon was already extinguishing the candles between thumb and forefinger. "We're going back up?"

"No."

"Dip."

At least this time they had been descending for hardly a minute before Kenyon started to swing, pushing off the nearest wall with a single toe and drifting in a wide arc. The sudden change in sounds around them, the claustrophobic wooshing of air pushing ever upwards, told LaCombe that the shaft had widened around them. The little light mounted to Kenyon's head spun and wobbled as they swung, though, and shi couldn't make out anything beyond that.

There was a crunch of gravel and they were once again standing on a narrow rocky lip. Moving with sure, practiced motions, Kenyon tugged a thick leather strap out of his harness and clipped himself with two wicked-looking hooks to two iron rings that had been pounded into the very stone.

"Do... I get one of those?"

"Once I get you on the ledge."

"Oh. So-"

"Don't sneeze."

"Oh, that's _very_helpful!"

He knelt once more and reached his hands back, paws wrapping around hir arms with a strength that, for once ,was very reassuring. Shi doubted anything short of Odella hirself could have wrenched hir from his grip. Another leather strap was slipped around hir waist, and shi hastily buckled it, giving the hook a few experimental tugs.

"You're fine. Pueblo does this every day."

"He had a... different childhood than I did," LaCombe snorted.

"Two paths converge," Kenyon replied cryptically. "Turn around."

Taking a deep breath to steel hirself, LaCombe obliged. The light on Kenyon's forehead illuminated very little; shi could make out the ledge around them, extending maybe five feet to either side, and the rocky face at their backs.

Beyond that, above and before and below, there was nothing. Nothing at all.

"Where are we?" shi whispered. "How big is this cave?"

Kenyon pulled a small, cylindrical shape out of his vest, and passed hir the tiny metal matchbox with his other hand. "I need you to light this for me."

"Light it? What is it?"

"Just light the little string on the end of it." Sure enough, there was a small string, like a candle wick, protruding from the waxy cylinder. "Careful. These are worth more than the guns."

"Wh-what?! What is it? Is it a weapon?"

Kenyon shrugged. "Most things I've found could have been used as weapons. The People Before were very good at that. But I think this was a tool. Please?"

Fingers numb despite the suddenly warm, humid air flowing past them, it took LaCombe three tries to produce a flame from the stubby match head. When shi held it to the wick it began to hiss and spark angrily. Shi squealed and backed up, driving the iron ring into hir back, but Kenyon seemed unconcerned. He simply tossed the object off the ledge, and in moments it was swallowed up by the void.

"What was that?! What the HELL was that? You just threw it away? OW!" The match, which shi'd forgotten about, had burned down to hir fingers. Shi dropped it on the ledge and stomped it furiously, sticking hir fingers in hir mouth. "Fmooww!"

"Six... five... four..."

"WHAT?!"

"Three... two... look away, please."

"LOOK AWAY FROM AUGH!"

The explosion was purely visual, a detonation of faintly greenigh light blazing up from the depths of the cave, but shi could have sworn shi heard and felt the accompanying blast. Hir eyes watered and shi blinked furiously, wiping at them with the neck of hir shirt, wondering if shi should yell at Kenyon some more or just ignore him altogether.

When the pinpricks of pain faded from hir retinas, shi got hir first good look at the cavern, and almost immediately the sense of disproportion and vertigo pulled hir little hooves out from beneath hir. Shi swung to the side and pitched forward, the heavy belt around hir waist jerking taut and preventing hir from tumbling over the edge.

It was from there, on hir hands and knees with hir head sticking out over the lip of the ledge, that shi got hir first real sight of the People Before.

The city, for that was the only word shi knew that could accurately describe it, stretched out beneath them further than the blazing singularity of light could illuminate. Shi felt as though shi were among the clouds, staring down at Bayside from heights shi could scarcely comprehend, but every building in Bayside could altogether fit within any single structure shi saw below. Huge stony roads crisscrossed by the hundreds, some widen enough for a dozen wagons to pass unimpeded. A collection of towers clustered together in the distance, and if each studded row of glassless openings represented a single level then some of them had to be fifty floors high, at least.

"But that's impossible," shi breathed, feeling hir stomach lurching but still blessedly empty from earlier.

"You said it yourself," Kenyon nodded, leaning back and crossing his arms. "They had power. They had machines. They could create anything they wanted from almost nothing. They created huge roads and cities, homes and goods for millions, tools and devices and wonders we can't even imagine. And do you know where I got all those guns?"

LaCombe couldn't tear hir eyes away from the wonderful, horrible sight of the dead city. Shi nodded. "From down there."

"No," Kenyon sighed, kneeling and pointing to the area beneath them, where the brilliant light source was already starting to flicker and weaken. "I got all those guns, all the weapons you've seen in Bayside and in the chamber up above, and in the other chambers I have hidden, I got all of those just from the area beneath us bounded by that road, and that road, and that curving road right... there."

Shi followed his finger, tracing out the area as a portion of the whole and finding it was scarcely a fraction of the city that shi could yet see, knowing there had to be still more beyond the sphere of luminance. "Just there?"

"I've been working this claim almost twenty years, and that's as far as I've gotten, other than a few day trips into the farthest corners, just to complete my maps. Della figures I've got another twenty lifetimes of work ahead of me."

LaCombe balked. "Can... can shi do that?"

The huge fox turned to look at hir and the awestruck expression just caught before the light below sputtered and died, and he burst out laughing. "No, that was just a figure of speech," he guffawed, shifting his weight and leaning back once more, blinking in the sudden darkness. "No, I'm just going to live the requisite number of years, no more, and with any luck no less. Someday, when I'm set to retire and when we have people we can trust, really trust with the care of Bayside, we'll turn this claim over to them. There's wealth down there to keep Bayside in goods and materials for... I don't know for how long. Long enough, Odella says."

Once again existing in a universe of blackness, with only a rock ledge to call home and a peculiar fox for company, shi turned over the sights in hir mind. "All those people," shi whispered. "Gone. And this was just one city. So many great works! Cities like this, spread across the face of the world!"

"Yeah." That seemed to sum up Kenyon's thoughts on the matter.

Despite the warmth, LaCombe shivered. "It wasn't guns that did this, though."

"Maybe not. It wasn't guns that sank an entire city into the rock. It wasn't guns that left craters and radiation all over the world. It wasn't guns that blocked out the sun for decades." He spoke as if reciting some ancient verse, which in a fashion he was. "Odella doesn't sleep often, but when shi does, shi speaks. And I've listened. It wasn't a bunch of guns that destroyed the People Before."

He turned to face hir, the little forehead light seeming to fill hir world. "But when not just anyone but everyone has the power of life and death in their hands, and the rightful fear of that power but not the respect, what sort of future can you have except this?"

---

Pueblo was at the top of the shaft when they eventually ascended, helping to guide his father onto solid ground and anchor the harness to the wall rings. All of the candles were lit now, cool night air swirling in from the far cave entrance. Snakes of waxy smoke twisted and danced, reminding LaCombe of the overlapping criss-crossing highways and byways of the city below.

When Kenyon knelt Pueblo was there in a flash, bouncing on his tiptoes and gallantly extending a tiny paw to the voluptuous librarian. "Here, let me help you," he said eagerly, trying to keep his eyes on hir face and mostly succeeding.

Shi took his hand absently, stepping back out onto solid ground but staring at the cave wall as though trying to coax the mysteries of the past out of it. "Thanks," shi mumbled. "I... yeah."

"You're welcome," he replied instantly, having been taught from an early age to always be polite, though only now was he seeing the purpose. Anything to keep him talking to the buxom okapi. "Did you see the city?"

"Yeah."

"And the guns?"

"Yeah."

"I found a lot of those. So many of them were hidden, under beds, in kitchens, under floorboards. I can crawl in those little places," he added proudly.

"That's nice."

Pueblo frowned, glancing accusingly at his dad but saying nothing. Now shi's too overwhelmed to notice me, Dad! Good one! he seemed to say. "The girls are inside, helping Mom and the other curandera," he spoke instead, trying to remain present. "Finally let hir wrist get bandaged. And I thought Mom was stubborn!"

Kenyon chuckled, shucking the climbing harness and packing it into the oily-rag-filled crate that protected it from age and wear. "It's something that happens to you when you're... like that," he nodded. "What does all that power mean if you're not right all of the time?"

LaCombe jerked, the huge fox's words breaking through hir daze. "Of course," shi mumbled. "What is power, if not the authority to declare what is right and wrong?"

"Don't you start talking like that," Kenyon warned Pueblo, his lips twitching. "All those books will make you talk like hir."

"You can read?" LaCombe asked, glancing down as if noticing the youth for the first time.

Pueblo's coati-striped fox-tail dropped like a stone. He looked at the librarian, looked back to his father, and then shrugged. "Don't worry," he muttered. "I'll go tell them you're back."

After Pueblo had scampered off, Kenyon leaned in close, hunching over just to bring his eyes down to LaCombe's level. "You might want to try that conversation again from scratch sometime," he said, slowly and carefully.

"What did-?" shi started to ask, but shi was just talking to Kenyon's broad back, the horse-sized fox trotting off towards the cave entrance and the house just dimly visible in the distance.

"Snuff the candles on your way out," Kenyon called over his shoulder.

LaCombe stood in the cavern alone for several minutes, mentally sorting the events of the last few hours into categories so shi could properly ponder the facts on the long walk back to Bayside. Shi was good with facts. Shi had memorized immense passages from dozens of books, had a vocabulary far in excess of nearly anyone in town for all the good it did, and could talk comfortably at length on any of a hundred scientific topics. Shi had prided hirself on hir intelligence, hir ability to organize, and hir sensible level-headedness.

And yet shi was fairly certain even Kenyon, rumored by a significant portion of Bayside's inhabitants to be more than a little simple (which shi was now doubting), was better at basic conversation than shi would ever be.

Shi snuffed the candles, using the very last one to light a small, bent cigarillo, which shi angrily puffed on until hir eyes watered.

When shi finally wandered over to the homestead, lit from within by a warm orange glow, everyone was once again gathered around the kitchen table. Extra chairs had been brought in from the living room, and Timura's good elbow was resting next to where Johnny's paws splayed across the granite table top. There were empty bowls of stew piled on the counters, and Odella's daughters were preparing several large cups of tea.

When the door clicked shut, seven pairs of eyes turned to face hir, and it took all of hir somewhat battered self-esteem to straighten hir spine. "Thank you," shi said softly, bowing to Odella as much as hir sore hips would allow. "For... trusting me with that."

"Feh," the woefully pregnant coati said, waving a paw diffidently. "Everyone'll find out eventually anyways. We just need someone with half a brain talking sense in town until I can get there."

Kenyon, who was already sitting next to his bride and was fondly running two fingers through hir coppery curls, froze. "You're what now?"

"I didn't want to tell you until everyone was back. You didn't say shi was being a lazy-bones, or I would have mentioned it sooner."

"I'm not a lazy-bones!" LaCombe replied.

"You're in no condition to travel!" Kenyon protested.

"You haven't even HEARD the plan yet!" Timura snapped.

"Shi's safer here! We can protect hir!" Kenyon flexed a powerful arm at that, his other slipping around Odella's shoulders. A flash of annoyance crossed hir face, but shi said nothing.

"Yeah, but who's going to protect Bayside? There's a lot of innocent people down there." This from Johnny in between wet, splashing laps of his tea.

"Shi can't use hir powers!"

"Shi doesn't need to!" Timura rolled hir eyes, as though speaking to imbeciles. "Shi's got EXPERIENCE, and while you boys were playing in your hole we were coming up with a plan!"

"What is the plan?"

"I'm trying to tell you!"

"No, you're not!"

Pueblo was sitting with his sisters, all three of them hunched over their own steaming mugs and doing their best to stay below the sightlines of their elders. LaCombe walked gingerly over to them, feeling as though shi were in the room full of guns once more, and knelt next to them, hir sturdy travelling clothes creaking. Pueblo's ears shot up and his tail started wagging, but he kept his face carefully neutral and his eyes on his tea.

"You didn't let me finish back in the cave," shi said softly, reaching into hir satchel. "I was GOING to say, you can read fast?"

Pueblo's eyes flicked over to hir, and despite his best efforts they bounced down to hir impressive bust and rather overly-impressive maleness, before setting back on his tea. "Uh huh."

"Good," the librarian whispered, leaning in close. "I need your help with something."

This time, the boy's tail went up with interest, and stayed there.

---

An hour later, hir canteens filled with the strongest coffee Odella could brew without resorting to hir powers, LaCombe was jogging out of the bowl valley and into the warped and blasted expanse of the Bloody Foot Hills. There was not much difference to travelling those slopes at night compared to the day; despite the stories, monsters did not crawl out from beneath the boulders and suck out your internal organs as soon as the sun set. On a cloudless night such as this there was enough light from the heavens to read by, if one were so inclined, and the path was well-maintained by messengers and deliveries from Bayside. Hir thick legs moving swiftly and surely, a little trail of cigarillo smoke marking hir passage, shi vowed to make hir midnight deadline with Hebert and deliver the message shi'd been instructed to memorize.

Shi planned to sleep for about four days after that, but that was a problem for future-LaCombe.

"Do you trust hir?" Timura said, standing on the lip of the bowl valley, hir injured arm carefully wrapped in a black sling. Shi might be burnt, battered and beaten, but shi had an image to maintain, after all.

"Considering I only met hir this morning, and I already showed hir the dead city and the weapons cache?"

"Considering, yes."

Odella sighed, digging hir knuckles into hir spine and wincing. "Shi's too smart to lie to me," shi said at last. "And don't you be bringing up anyone in particular when I say that!"

"I wouldn't dream of mentioning Cambiado by name," Timura snarked blandly.

"That weren't the same and you know it. Cambiado weren't that kind of smart."

"There's kinds of smart?"

Odella thought of hir beloved Kenyon, one of the few people who'd been stupid enough not to be afraid of hir upon discovering hir true nature, too stupid to stay out of the Bloody Foot Hills, too stupid to even understand the fundamental necessity of lying to someone's face. Hir sweet, tender Kenyon, who spoke only truth, who knew more about talking to youngsters and building homes and basic respect than anyone shi'd ever met. He'd made his mistakes, for sure, and shi'd been there to save his life from the worst of them, but he'd come by them all honestly, and he'd learned from them. Shi shuddered to think of the sort of person shi might have become were it not for that one kiss, so many years ago...

"Oh yes," shi mused. "There's many kinds, just as many kinds of smart as there are kinds of stupid. And you and I, Timmy, we're a special kind of stupid."

"Speak for yourself," the ringtail huffed. "And don't call me that. It's a stupid plan, don't make me stupid."

"Of course it is. But you can't be cuttin' the head off of something what don't have no head. Just like that tentacle beastie back, oh, what, ninety years? Came out of the Dust, walked right over the walls of the Rose, you remember that?"

"Hah!" Timura laughed, wincing slightly as some tender areas pulsed with pain. That just caused hir to laugh harder, willing to spite hirself just so shi knew who was in charge. "That was a hell of a thing, wasn't it? Every tentacle you cut off started making more. I thought you were going to scream 'til your head blew up, you were so mad! 'STOP THAT', you were yelling, like it was some misbehaving child!"

"Wasn't so funny at the time!" Odella bellowed, but there was a hint of laughter in hir eyes. Hir paws flew to hir belly, mostly covered by two layers of robes, uselessly short belts flapping around hir ankles. "Ooh, now, look at that, you made me wake up the little ones. Hush, you! Go back to sleep."

"And you remember how you got rid of all those beasties, don't you?"

"Of course I do," the coati nodded. "Thing wouldn't burn, thing wouldn't freeze. Thing wouldn't stay dead. But sure enough, did it hate being yelled at."

"Followed you back over the cliff and into the Dust," Timura said smugly. "And you, shouting at it the whole time."

"Just had to get them far enough away from the edge of the cliff that they couldn't hear nothing but me. Then it was just a matter of Stepping Back and being quiet."

"Sank right back into the Dust." Timura heaved a sigh, turning around to stare down at the bowl valley, and the cozy homestead at the centre of it. "Think they're still out there? Sleeping, or whatever it is tentacles do?"

"Probably. If it came back out I think we'd have heard about it by now."

"Probably." Timura glanced up at the stars. "Still a stupid plan, though."

"Oh, you hush up and help me back to the house. There's a couch I desperately need to collapse on."

---

Night passed slowly in the homestead.

Timura had intended to be on hir way as soon as shi'd delivered hir dire message of doom, but a few cups of tea, bowls of chili and carefully-wrapped bandages later shi was sprawled out on Odella's favorite couch, snoring like a collection of dented flutes in a high wind.

Johnny promised to start his mission first thing in the morning, as long as he could be allowed a comfortable bed for one night. Dying and hopping between bodies with the abandon he'd been forced to endure was tough on the old spirit, as well as the creature he inhabited, and the coyote was working itself into a panic from the conversations he couldn't quite understand. The kits were hardly in a better state of mind, with talk of hordes and nuclears and humans, and so the three half-coatis were all piled into Pueblo's bed, with Johnny keeping their footpaws warm. Pueblo lay curled up at the center of the mound of fluff, arms wrapped tight around the strange and somewhat frightening yellow cover of the book LaCombe had given him.

Kenyon, moving with his customary slow, implacable grace, had tidied up the kitchen, tamped down the hearth fires, and carried his beloved up to the monstrous collection of pillows, blankets and hand-stuffed mattresses that passed as their bed. On a good night shi got two hours of sleep, on a bad night shi maybe closed hir eyes for one... and so it was with some confusion that the huge fox realized the curandera spooned up tight to his lap was breathing slow and regular, hir arms and legs still. Hir chest rose and fell, and shi didn't stir when he carefully draped an arm across hir bust to hold hir close.

He nestled his nose into the mop of angry curls that topped hir head and inhaled hir scent. Shi might cook oatmeal for hir kits, shi might serve tea to guests, shi might go from shop to shop in Bayside paying far too much for simple goods, and shi might allow hirself to be tied to the cast-iron posts anchored into the walls of their bedroom and politely ravished from time to time, but shi still smelled of the hard-drinking supernaturally-powerful wild child who dragged him back from the edge of his young life. He knew hir mind was here, with hir family, but hir heart would be forever roaming the wastelands, looking for a fight, or just someone to protect.

Shi sniffled, twitched once, and exhaled a long, slow purr, settling against him comfortably. His paw drifted south, resting small and gingerly against hir gravid belly. He could feel the little rumbles and thumps from within, the curandera's mind and heart wholly preoccupied with protecting hir unborn, both from danger and magic itself, but still shi was conspiring with Timura to try and avert whatever disaster was marching on Bayside.

"You are a hero," he whispered, as softly as he dared. Odella might die saving the world, but if he could protect hir for one moment longer and shi could do some good with that moment, he would consider it worthwhile.

---

Night passed slowly in Bayside.

A wild-eyed and frankly scary-smelling LaCombe equal parts trotted and stumbled into the Gossamer Scarf, which was still fully lit with shutters thrown wide against the night. Shi had intended to meet Hebert by the statue of Odella in the heart of town, but one look at the poor soul splayed out across hir marble bust drove hir away. There were bedrolls and even simple picnic blankets spread everywhere, countless folk sleeping out under the stars with only air between them. The okapi tried hir best, but shi knew shi'd kicked a few of them awake in hir dash for the comforting glow of the Scarf.

"Where is he?!" shi roared, chest heaving, dirt streaking hir face. The clock on the wall was out of focus, and there seemed to be at least six hands traversing the polished brass face, but shi was almost positive it was before midnight. "Hebert! Where... I'm meeting him! HEY! I'm MEETING him!"

The serving girl that the town librarian was hollering at cowered, sheltering hir tray of water glasses with her body, nay, with her very life. "W-who? The... one who..." she quavered, gesturing out towards the statue of Odella beyond the still-swinging doors of the saloon.

LaCombe cocked an eyebrow. "What? No, I know where HE is, where's Hebert, he's NOT there, and he's SUPPOSED to be there!"

"Ahem."

The Scarf was reasonably full, every seat occupied by folks working far too hard at minding their own business. A few tables had playing cards spread across them, a few had simple wooden board games, but for the most part people were simply sitting, and staring, and passing the time. Hebert stood up against the far wall, opposite the huge polished bar, and gestured to LaCombe with a heavy pewter mug.

"If you could keep it down. People are reading," he added drolly, sitting back down.

LaCombe felt regret and remorse and shame flash across hir face, but with hir legs purely running on stress and caffeine shi didn't have time for such niceties as feelings. "I'm back!" shi crowed proudly, dropping heavily into a seat that was swiftly vacated by a burly donkey with a good sense of what would have happened if he hadn't.

"Yes," Hebert agreed. "Did the Rangers give you any trouble?"

"They pointed GUNS at me!" shi exclaimed, and it was only with repeated flat-palmed gestured from Hebert that shi descended from a dull roar down to the level of simple obnoxiously loud conversation. "Can you believe that?! Stopped me on the road, asked who I was, and pointed GUNS at me!"

"Are you all right?"

LaCombe snorted. "Guns. Pfft. Whatever. I just came from-"

Hebert reached across the table and wrapped his thick but supple fingers around hir flapping paws, and squeezed. "Yes," he said, slowly, every letter dripping with meaning.

Hir eyes widened, and shi glanced around. No-one was looking at them, but several ears were twitching with intent and malice aforethought. "What _happened_here? There's... a BODY!" shi stage-whispered.

The chirurgeon decided that would have to do. "We got a message. Hopefully, you have one to counter it."

"What?" LaCombe shook hir head, clearing the cobwebs. Now that shi wasn't jogging through a barren desertscape beneath the harsh light of the bone-white moon, shi was realizing that shi might actually be a little tired. "Oh! Right. Yeah. So, the human in charge of the horde almost killed a curandera in Rockrose today."

Except for the sound of a glass shattering, the Gossamer Scarf had never been so silent as in the minute following that statement.

LaCombe looked around, blinking rapidly. Hebert sighed, pushed back his chair and stood, carefully easing the woozy okapi out of hirs and angling hir towards the door. "OK, let's maybe you and I go for a walk, hmm?"

"Awww, but I just STOPPED walking!"

"Trust me."

---

Night passed slowly in camp.

There were a few runaways, and for the most part they were allowed to run. There was always a few. It was sometimes nice to have word of one's arrival sent on ahead, to help prepare the population. Perhaps tales of the (nearly) bloodless taking of Rockrose would help to sway this Bayside, Borne mused. Besides, if they were too disruptive it wouldn't do to have them spreading that sort of nonsense around. It caused unrest. It destroyed morale. Borne was very big on morale.

The human sat in his tent, carefully sorting through the day's collection of clean rags as he worked all of the insidious dust and grit out of his revolvers. They were heavy weapons, gleaming milled nickel sparkling with countless burnished scratches, nicks and dings from who knew how many hundreds of years of careful use. He wasn't about to let family heirlooms fall into disrepair, not when he was so far from home.

How many miles?_He thought, as he did nearly every night. His tent was small, modest, not half as ostentatious as those surrounding his. It was good to keep your trusted allies around you while you slept, especially when there were thousands of well-armed walking-talking animals who would just as soon eat him as look at him. One bullet would be all it would take, which was always the fine line he was fated to tread. _How many miles from the safety of Salvation?

He should sleep. He knew that tomorrow was going to be a task, marshalling the combined forces of his flock and the recent additions from Bayside. There would be resistance, reluctance, and likely outright insubordination. The journey would not be interfered with, the mission would not be denied, but there would almost certainly be delays which would need to be made up in the coming days.

After all,_he thought. _We have an appointment to keep.

The revolvers now as mirror-gleaming as they were likely to get without the tools of Salvation at hand, he wrapped them with the final cloths and tucked them into his holsters, where they would rest until morning. His eased his tired frame from the trunk he used as both table and chair, and into his cot. It, along with the trunk that housed it and most of his possessions during the day, were the only real luxuries he allowed himself.

"Comfort detracts from purity of thought," his mother had always said, usually in between rounds of assigned chores and immediately after one of his repeated youthful complaints of hunger. "Purity of thought leads to purity of essence, and purity of essence leads to...?"

"Peace on Earth," he recited dutifully in his small, moth-eaten tent, years away from the only world he'd ever known. Even now, secure in the knowledge he might never see any of his family ever again, he was unable to shake the responsibility to respect the order of Salvation.

Borne sighed and stretched, removing his long white robe and carefully folding it into the small, rectangular mass that would be his pillow that night, as it was every night. He stared down at his body, hardly recognizing himself anymore. Gone was the pallid, almost doughy flesh he'd grown up with, free from blemishes or wasteful fat and exposing every ridge of hard-working muscle and bone beneath. Months of walking, down into the ash-grey lowlands surrounding Salvation, and then into this virtually endless wasteland, had darkened him nearly to the shade of the wood-grain handles of his revolvers. A diet far richer in grains and dairy than he'd imagined possible had filled out his long, lanky frame, new muscle growing where he'd thought it incapable.

Would any of them recognize me now? He mused. I look like one of the Saviors. I wonder if they would have exiled me had they known... hah, maybe that's what irony is.

He pulled a book out of the trunk, a small but exceptionally thick tome bound in tough black material he couldn't identify. It wasn't the repository of all knowledge, he was aware, but it certainly seemed to be the index for the Universe itself. New Modern Oxford English Dictionary was still just barely visibly embossed on the well-worn cover. Borne flipped through it until he found the entry for irony, and chuckled to himself.

---

The next morning found Bayside empty of the horrible energy that had built up the previous day. Gone was the frantic expectation that at any moment a horde would march over the horizon and strike down the thousands of folks who had come to call this land home; it had been replaced by the dull ache of worry, like a stone chained to the soul. People who only a week before had been singing and dancing at the wedding of Aella the soapmaker's daughter and Giffords the blacksmith's son now found themselves trudging through the streets of Bayside, looking for the meaning of life in the the shadows and cobwebs.

"Do you see?"

"Yes, yes. I've seen this before, but..."

Hebert appreciated the pause. It helped to remind him that there was a thinking man, a mother's son, somewhere in the huge wolverine's tough hide. "But?"

Dirgo snorted, just once, and as restrained a sound as he'd ever made. "But it was_after_ the battle. After the raiding, after the brigands had finally been driven out of the town's walls, when the civilians were picking up the pieces. It was then that they walked like this."

"The first battle has been fought, and it's been lost," Hebert sighed. "They marched right into the heart of their home, and they stuck a knife in it."

"Nails."

"Fine. But there's no enemy they can point at now, there's no brigands clamoring at the walls or stalking the streets. There's nothing. Just an empty wound." Hebert shoved his hands into his smock and wished he had some coffee. All of his supplies were currently being used by his entire stable of nurses to keep the medical staff at full alertness. There was no physical damage from the invaders the previous day, but the anxious citizens were quite adept at coming up with new and exciting ways to hurt one another. "Now do you understand?"

The Commander glanced sidelong at the stumpy little boar. "One of these days you're going to have to tell me how a dentist knows so much."

"I hope I get the chance."

The pair were standing on the roof of the library, which was just a long, low warehouse that had been repurposed into half a dozen individual units. Hebert had initially been skeptical of the Circle's plans to use it, as Odella had phrased it, as a place to 'further the social and cultural advancement of Bayside'. He wasn't sure how that was going to get done in a building that still smelled of vinegar and old feathers, or how it was to be accomplished by poaching the most colorful and least useful members of the passing caravan wagons, but as the low head on the Council's totem he had voted just to see what would happen.

Six months later there was a trio of artists occupying the room near the back, working with whatever natural or artificial ingredients they could find to produce a marvellous array of paints, chalks and pigments, and were working diligently to decorate the inside and outside of any business that cared for it. Next to the artists was a second workshop being run by the seamstress, Daila. She had insisted she needed a special facility purely to train three new workers, younger girls with nimble fingers, for the production of 'delicates'. Hebert wasn't entirely certain what that involved, but Daila's boutique had suddenly become much more popular.

There was a unit where musicians could meet, discuss, trade tips, and most importantly repair old instruments, many of which Kenyon brought out of the ground from his claim. After repeated complaints, the fourth unit became reserved solely for the burgeoning community of local drummers.

The last two were LaCombe's domain, with one unit holding far more books than Hebert thought existed in the world, and the other somehow managing to contain an explosive quantity of random loose papers, inks, pencils, quills and binding equipment. Somewhere underneath those seemingly random piles of literary raw ingredients there was the bed that LaCombe had brought with hir, as that unit also doubled as hir living quarters. Shi had been offered a real home within the city limits, but had turned down that grandiosity.

And now, standing on the roof of the library, boar and wolverine could hear the larger than life okapi snoring beneath them, having fallen asleep while shi was still being dragged through the side door.

"You think that plan of hirs will work?"

"It's not hir_plan, it's the curandera's plan. _Two of them, if what shi said is true."

"Why do we even NEED a plan, if we have another witch?" Dirgo rumbled, sarcasm dripping from his fangs. "Can't shi just gather them all up and smite them? Rain down fire and lightning and... and whatever it is they do?"

"You don't care for the curandera, do you?"

"Whatever gave you that impression?"

Hebert reached out, but his thick mitt was forcibly halted barely halfway to the rifle slung across Dirgo's broad back. "D'ye know where you got your pretty pretty people-killer there?"

The wolverine pushed Hebert's wrist away and snorted again, his default form of verbal punctuation. "From hir husband," he said shortly. "He pulls things out of the ground, comes down, sells them."

"Not the guns."

Dirgo's fur rose, particularly prominent along his neck. After far too long, he uttered a single, reluctant "No."

"If it was Kenyon's way, you wouldn't have any at all. He wants them melted down. The curandera believes that, perhaps, we would be better off being able to protect ourselves, and so shi's arranged for the Rangers to have weapons, and ammunition, and training." He knuckled his back, watching the briefest of scuffles on the street below get broken up by two young Rangers. Shouts took the place of fists, and were thrown with considerably less restraint. "Just in case, you know... there wasn't a curandera around."

"And that's supposed to make me trust hir?"

Hebert sighed. "I suppose not. But perhaps you might want to consider why you don't."

"That's easy. Shi's got power without earning it." The hulking soldier glowered. "I've seen where that leads. I've seen the misery that can result from some young dumb punk getting a headful of liquor and his paws on a rifle, and thinking he can change the world. From what I heard, not too long ago, your wonderful curandera was as much of a threat to the healthy as shi was a protector of the weak... and shi's a lot worse than a gun."

The two men were silent, watching the near-miss of violence slowly dispersed by the Rangers. The stories of Odella before shi got married were the stuff of folklore, half of them things he couldn't rightly believe. They painted two very different pictures of the curandera, one the stalwart defender of the endangered, bringer of justice to the maligned, and the healer of the sick. Why, dozens of folks of every age and station in Bayside claim to have been delivered by the curandera, often under terrible or trying circumstances, and given what he knew about hir lifespan he supposed it was within the realm of possibility.

But on the other hand, shi'd been a whirlwind of unpredictability, of violence and lust, more often than not robbing those shi'd helped while their heads were still spinning. Shi'd been a lecherous demon, challenging young men and women to fights or tests of skill or wit, and then claiming their bodies as payment when they invariably lost. Most curandera were distant, removed from the day to day of society and the public life, but Odella was infamous for the best and the worst of reasons.

"And you can't tell me marryin' gonna change a woman, I don't care how much magic shi's got," Dirgo added.

"You've got some trust issues, Commander."

"It's why I'm still alive."

"Sure, let's go with that."

---

People drifted in and out of Bayside all day. Some trudged back south to return to their homesteads, too worried about the state of their crops to be overly concerned with running into any more advance fringes of the horde. Others flowed down from the north, word having spread and eager to see the corpse that had been strung up across Odella's statue. Some were genuinely disappointed to find out that the body had been removed and given a proper burial before dawn, and the proclamation was now simply nailed to the bulletin board outside the Gossamer Scarf.

The newcomers did not have the blank, dazed countenance of those that had been present for the horde's announcement, but they picked up a similar manner soon enough. Already it seemed as though a sizeable portion of the region was fully prepared to surrender, or at least acquiesce to the degree that wouldn't get them executed on the spot. Several groups, after a poor night's sleep and too much early-morning fortified wine, banded together to make the journey to Odella's homestead and plead with hir for assistance, pregnancy be damned.

"We can't just sit here and wait! We can't do NOTHING!" came the rallying cry, spreading like a virus through the population.

Dirgo's Rangers were on the scene almost instantly, putting a stop to such talk and informing them that an emissary had already been dispatched, and had already returned, while conveniently leaving out the fact that LaCombe had been sent before the horde's messengers had arrived. It was announced that there WOULD be a response from Bayside, with the Council and the Circle working together to come to an agreement as to how best to implement the curandera's plan.

"Just sounds like made-up words, to me," Hebert muttered softly.

"It's not what you say, it's how you say it," spoke the leader of the curandera's Circle of young witches. Most of them would never be able to do more than summon a candleflame or extinguish the same with a gust of wind, but that was enough to be able to tap into those strange, otherworldly senses that made the Circle so very useful. They could dowse for water where teams of skilled prospectors had failed, they could sense and sometimes diagnose injuries beyond Hebert's ability, and they had a remarkable knack to identify and select the most compatible folk from the wandering wagon trains that passed through. "Right now, we need to sound more like we're completely on top of the situation than we actually are."

"More words."

The sleek, well-coiffed hyena shrugged. "Hard to talk without them," shi said simply. "This isn't the time for brutal honesty."

The Council and the Circle were meeting in the library, which was considered neutral territory to both groups. LaCombe was, according to the noises coming from the next room, mostly awake, and was preparing to make hir presentation to the town's leaders all at once. Currently hir priorities seemed to be crashing around in hir quarters, tripping, swearing, and gargling coffee with wild abandon.

"You sure? We could just send LaCombe out onto the amphitheatre and let hir figure out what to say. I'm sure shi'd bash something out-"

"No."

Hebert grinned, at least momentarily amused at the expression on the hyena's face. He'd known Geanna since shi'd come to him for hir very first fang extraction, and shi'd always been a level-headed, calm child. Shi had grown into the sort of young woman he would have been proud to take orders from, were it not for the peculiar way shi seemed to treat everyone around hir as just slightly inferior. It seemed to be an unfortunate side-effect of becoming part of Odella's Circle, he was noticing. The rest of the Council, local business-owners one and all, were letting Hebert take the lead for this meeting, since he seemed naturally immune to the proto-witches' demeanor. "You sure? Shi can be very efficient when shi's put on the spot."

"This is not the time for your jokes, Hebert," another member of the Circle sighed, a dainty cougar who used to be one of the Gossamer Scarf's dancing girls and never quite seemed to shake that manner of dress. When the Circle had to deliver bad news, they usually sent Jocelyn to do it in order to lessen the blow somewhat.

"Was I joking?"

Jocelyn slapped hir paws against the table and rose, preparing to use hir full authority and likely hir full volume to harangue the leader of the Council, but was interrupted by the door between the library and LaCombe's quarters slamming open. The okapi, dressed in fresh clothes that still looked hastily donned and sporting a head of hair that clearly hadn't seen a brush since before hir trip to the Bloody Foot Hills, stomped through and circled around to hir own desk by the window, a collection of rolled papers tucked beneath one arm.

The Circle and the Council watched in bemusement as they were each accorded absolutely no regard by the dishevelled librarian. LaCombe swept a collection of small boxes, rare pencils and loose papers onto the floor with a muffled crash, and started unrolling the scrolls shi'd brought out, which turned out to be maps. Fishing around rather inadvisably in the depths of hir decolletage, shi somehow produced a handful of pushpins and began putting the maps up along the wall, heedless of what other decorations were being covered.

"Yes," Jocelyn smirked. "Let's send hir out to talk to everyone."

"Shh," Hebert admonished. "That's rude."

"Good morning!" LaCombe yelled brightly, body fairly bursting with nervous energy.

"It's well into the afternoon," Geanna said politely.

LaCombe didn't even pause. "Yesterday I made the treacherous journey to Odella's homestead and made contact with hir in regards to the apparently imminent arrival of a horde from the south."

Confused and amused expressions were passed between the Council and the Circle. The road to Odella's homestead was perhaps the safest road in the region in recent years, but they were willing to grant the new librarian a little slack. Most youngsters in the region learned to hunt and fight just as a matter of self-preservation, but LaCombe was noticeably terrified by the papercuts shi frequently received.

"While I was there," shi continued, putting up another map, "we encountered another curandera named Timura, who was badly burnt and beaten half to death."

A dozen expressions went slack-jawed blank as those words sank in. Hebert had heard it all the night before, at varying speeds and in various chronological orders, but it was a different matter to hear it spoken aloud, especially to Odella's trainees.

The maps on the wall were starting to form an overarching view of the territory, showing far more land than the huge mural hanging on Dirgo's wall. Some of them were hand-drawn, obviously quite recently, just to fill in the gaps. "The Rockrose is some two-hundred thirty miles to the south, located... here, but is close to two-hundred and sixty five due to the way the roads curve, particularly at this junction point... here." More thumbtacks pinned the map, some trailing tiny strung labels. "Based on data gleaned from records I've kept, talking to the travellers passing through here both on foot and as part of wagon trains, the average overland roadspeed of a large train is approximately three-point-seven miles per hour for an average of ten hours per day. This does scale asymptotically as the size of the train increases, so it can be presumed the horde will be moving marginally slower than that, predicting three point four to three point five."

"What does-" one of the Councillors asked, but Hebert silenced the old goat with a raised hand. This isn't the time, he urged with his gaze.

Hands working like hammers, seven large red pins were drilled into the wall deep enough that Hebert was pretty sure they were now load-bearing. "So _here_is the approximate indication of their travel," shi lectured, "expecting them to arrive in seven days at the outside, six days if they are forcing a march, and five days if they are expecting to properly take us by surprise, but they would be arriving late in the day if that is the case."

"We should plan for five days," Jocelyn said immediately. "Fortifications can be erected-"

"Rockrose was a literal fortress," LaCombe interrupted, heedless of the politely aghast expressions from the rest of the Circle. "From the eyewitness report, it was absolutely no barrier."

"Eyewitness?"

Hebert raised his palm, trying to flag LaCombe's dancing eyes. "Perhaps you should start at the bottom and build up to the plan, Madame Librarian."

"I was doing that," shi replied, brows furrowing crossly. "Please hold all questions until the end, thank you."

Both the Council and the Circle were used to long speeches, presentations and the occasional rant from concerned Baysiders, but this was a unique situation. Even when describing Johnny's spotting of the horde's advance party, Timura's encounter with the human, and the brutal manner in which shi was defeated, hir words were dry and grating. The audience chafed, eager to get to the conclusion, whatever it might be.

Shi's smart, Hebert thought. But book-smart, not smart-smart. Everything shi's saying is true, and it's still not what anyone wants to hear, or even needs to hear right now. Not exactly.

LaCombe was describing Timura's extensive bandaging process with the occasional detour into describing the actions of Odella's children, when Hebert cleared his throat and stood up. "Perhaps we can skip ahead to what the actual proposed plan of action is, now that we're aware of the reality of the situation directly facing Bayside."

The okapi blinked, glanced at hir notes, glanced at the maps and shrugged. "Might as well. I suppose this can all be handled in the folios and meeting minutes I will be distributing to everyone later."

"Oh, joy," Geanna sighed.

"Now, as you're all aware, Odella's friend Johnny can transfer his consciousness from body to body, temporarily sharing space within their minds." Most of the crowd blinked, not quite being aware of this in so many words but also not willing to interrupt. "One of his common bodies, a takaoka bird, was shot when it got too close to the horde's advance party, indicating they are also aware of this. As such, it is going to be difficult to get reports as to the movement of the horde."

LaCombe brought out a charcoal pencil and was scrawling a series of short curves and loops on the maps just to the south of Bayside. "And so while the citizens of Bayside begin the requisite earthworks, and the Circle begins dowsing for water in these regions here, here, and here, we are going to request one of the younger Rangers to defect to the horde in order to allow Johnny's spirit closer access."

It was Hebert's turn to drop his jaw. This had... not quite been mentioned earlier...

"But what about the defenses? What about the curandera? What about the _guns?"_Geanna demanded hotly.

"No guns," LaCombe replied, as though denying someone permission to go to the washroom. "That's not the way a horde like this can be beaten."

While shi continued to sketch, the Circle and the Council all but exploded. Shouts filled the normally quiet library, but shi didn't bother trying to shush them; shi knew they'd run out of breath, eventually, and then maybe they'd be ready to listen to the rest of the plan.

---

Two days passed while Odella and hir family readied the homestead for what might very well be an extended absence. There was very little the gravid coati could help with directly, and so shi found hirself on the wide, narrow balcony that ringed the second floor of their home, waddling back and forth and bellowing orders as quietly as shi could like a comically over-inflated drill sergeant.

Eventually the rows were weeded, the irrigation ponds were banked and allowed to overfill, and the pantry was cleaned out and squared away down into the coldroom. The kits packed their essential belongings, Kenyon loaded the wagon with every tool that could conceivably be of use in Bayside's defense, and Odella supervised the transport of hir trunk from the very back of their closet down to the living room. This was done with the care and delicacy one might carry a barrel full of dynamite through a blacksmiths forge, and knowing what lay within Kenyon might almost have preferred the latter.

"Are you sure-"

"We're NOT leaving that behind for some bandits to rifle through!"

"Honey," Kenyon chuckled, "there's not a bandit for a hundred miles that would dare set foot in this valley."

Odella scowled. "That was before I was reduced to a giant bowl of pudding," shi grumped, trying to cross hir arms and failing miserably due to hir current figure. "Right now every bandit in the region has either joined up with the horde, or is probably robbing whatever isn't nailed down and running for their lives. Not that I'd blame them. You've packed up all the delving gear?"

"Yes, dear, the huge fox nodded. "In the wagon."

"No-one's getting down that Hole while we're gone!"

"No, dear."

"There's _nothing_they can use to climb-"

"No, dear."

Odella nodded, as satisfied as shi'd been at any point in the last week. "Good. Not going to have that on my conscience if this doesn't work."

"It will work."

"What makes you so certain?"

Kenyon took a half-step forwards, sliding his arms around his wife and giving hir as much of a squeeze as he dared; shi might be in a delicate condition, as the euphemism went, but shi was still strong enough to snap him in half and hir temper was short enough shi might try it. "Because in all the lands in all the world, in all the centuries that were between your birth and mine," he whispered, brushing his nose against hir ear, "there's only been one thing that's ever defeated the Wild Child Curandera."

Hir eyes widened. "What's Timura been telling you? I've never-"

Figuring if he hadn't had his footpaws stomped flat by now he was probably safe, Kenyon stifled hir protests with his mouth. Bracing hir lower back with his powerful paw he did his very best to bear the burden of hir weight, lifting hir a half-inch off of the kitchen floor. "And now," he continued, breaking the kiss, "that same Wild Child is going to use it on an entire army."

Odella blinked and blushed, brushing an invisible hair out of hir mouth. Shi started to reply, something self-effacing, perhaps insisting that hadn't counted as defeat, maybe some cutting remark to hir beloved that shi would instantly regret and try to soothe over with kisses of hir own, but all that came out was a breathy, resigned sigh.

"Against that sort of weapon, who could hope to win?"

The curandera snerked, swatting Kenyon affectionately on the muzzle. "Oh, now you're getting awfully full of yourself, Mister."

"That's for after we come home," he promised, giving hir belly a pat. "Now come on. It's a long walk down to Bayside, and I'm not going to rattle you around by trying to go fast."

Protesting uselessly the entire way, Odella let hirself be led outside to where the wagon had been backed up right to the kitchen door. The kits were sitting on the wide front bench where Odella hirself usually sat, but the body of the squat wooden carriage was crammed full of luggage, crates, boxes, and more than a dozen heavy pillows and blankets piled into a roughly Odella-shaped nest.

"This is undignified," shi pouted as Kenyon deposited hir into the swaddling mound as though shi were no more than a newborn babe hirself. "You're going to at least let me sit up front before we get to town. Thank the stars Timura's already left."

"I'm sure shi's seen you in compromising positions before."

"That's a damn lie!" Odella lied, longing for the day people were afraid of hir again.

As much as shi liked to complain (and shi didn't like it, exactly, but it was the only way shi could articulate hir frustration), shi had to admit that the nest was comfortable and in all likelihood necessary. Just past hir three kits shi could make out Kenyon harnessing himself up, and as soon as the wagon lurched into motion shi realized just how sensitive shi'd become. The path through the little bowl valley was as straight and smooth as any road in the region, and every crunch of gravel caused an unpleasant ripple of discomfort to radiate through hir body.

Odella leaned back, realizing that shi essentially looked like a huge ball of tight, sloshing fur pinning a small coati, and cradled hirself with hir paws. "Sorry, babies," shi whispered to hir tummy. "Just a little bit longer... Mommy's job is never done."

The sun was still rising into the sky when they crested the lip of the valley. Briar and Zora took turns spinning around on the bench to either fan or shade their mother, who couldn't escape the sun's glare or merciless heat. Pueblo, meanwhile, had his nose buried in that yellow-coated book LaCombe had left him, and shi was fairly certain this was his third time through the tome.

---

Corporal Saraceno leaned against a gnarled, stunted tree, shielding his eyes from the glare of the noonday sun. He was fairly sure the tree was still alive, on some level. His patrols had carried him past this particular tree, marking the boundary between the flatlands of the Painted Death and the lumpy slopes of the Bloody Foot Hills, many times, and he was reasonably certain that it had indeed grown somewhat over the last two years. It was a sickly, streaked grey, covered in stubby branch-like growths and permanently devoid of leaves, but it had somehow found a way to survive. He felt a little bad leaning against it, figuring it deserved more respect than that.

Then again, it was either lean against the tree, or lean against one of the ancient pitted metal signs declaring the Hills absolutely unsuitable to any sort of a healthy life.

"Shi'll be here," the coyote at his side yelped. "Shi may be late, but shi always gets where shi's going. Eventually. I mean, as far as I know."

The hoss nodded, palms falling to where the pommels of his sabres used to be. Yesterday morning he'd been roused early from the bunkhouses, gathered in the stockade yard, and assigned additional sharpshooter training. That evening, his ears ringing and his fingers numb, he'd been summoned before the Council and politely but firmly stripped of his firearm. Just three hours before leaning up against the gnarled tree he'd been informed of his true mission by a talking coyote.

This wasn't on the recruitment poster, he thought, wondering why he didn't feel any particularly strong emotions. His mission was bordering on suicidal, and that was completely separate to the horrifying existential ramifications. He was a good young officer, he followed orders to the letter, and he had an excellent memory. He supposed that he fit all the requirements Commander Dirgo and the Council were seeking for this particular task. He was a prudent and sensible choice. Prudent and sensible. That's me.

"It's all right to feel scared, kid," the coyote said, muzzle twisting around the syllables.

"Probably," Saraceno agreed.

"This is a pretty fucked up thing they're asking you to do."

"I suppose."

"I'll keep you safe, though. Odella's never sent anyone to do a job shi wasn't confident they couldn't handle."

"I'm sure."

Johnny cocked his head. "You're a peculiar fellow. If you're worried about _me_doing something..."

The hoss shrugged. "Not really. Ain't much to do up here."

"You're selling yourself short, kid."

Saraceno tugged his hat down a little lower, squinting through the marching ranks of warnings signs and up the hill. "Here they come," he said calmly. "You ready?"

The coyote rolled his eyes, something the creature was extremely well-suited to. "You're an odd duck, kid."

"What's a duck?"

"It's... not important. Just keep your head down, try to stay calm. If everything goes according to plan, you'll be drinking in the Scarf in under a week."

"Does this seem like the kind of thing that would go according to plan?"

"About as much as anything ever does around here," Johnny laughed, high-pitched barks filling the air. "I like you, kid."

"Thank you, sir."

The wagon trundled closer, moving slowly but steadily, drawn by the massive and instantly-recognizable hulk of Kenyon, the curandera's husband. Saraceno had seen the huge fox around town many times, either selling his wares in the plaza or spending his coin freely in the shops, or sometimes just napping outside the Gossamer Scarf. He was a gentle, amiable sort, giving the impression of someone who would be happy without a cent to his name, which did nothing to dispel the rumors that he was a few sticks short of a cook fire.

He quickly scanned the three kits perched on the front of the wagon and became briefly concerned, wondering if the curandera had not been able to make the trip after all. He supposed it wouldn't change the plan, exactly. This meeting was just more of a formality.

Panting and sweating but still standing tall, Kenyon drew up close to Saraceno and Johnny, and it was then that they saw the white-clad mound in the wagon. A small, even dainty, paw reached up and pushed the coppery locks back from the curandera's face, revealing sparkling dark eyes and a disgruntled expression. "Oh, gracious," the coati groaned, "I thought we were never going to get out of those ruts. Pueblo, Mommy needs a little help... oof... rolling over."

Corporal Saraceno had never spoken directly the curandera before. He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but this wasn't quite it. "Ma'am," he said, tugging the brim of his hat respectfully. "Are you... all right?"

"M'fine," the woefully swollen coati grimaced, wiggling as hir oldest child tried to manoeuvre hir with a long, smooth plank working like a prybar beneath hir nest of pillows. "Just a little... unf, tender right now. You the boy got suckered into this job?"

Saraceno turned the words over in his mind. "I suppose, ma'am, though I wouldn't say suckered."

"Not to my face, at any rate," shi grunted. Johnny snickered, hopping up onto the wagon and poking his nose against Odella's belly. "Hey! You knock that off."

"One more for the road? I might never get the chance to do this again."

"You're lucky I can't kick you right now! Kenyon, kick him for me."

"In... a minute..." the fox panted, still taking huge breaths and adjusting the straps crisscrossing his chest. "Make Zora do it."

"Awww, why me?"

Saraceno's eyes danced back and forth, trying to follow the peculiar path of this conversation. "I don't think this is the time, ma'am."

Johnny stopped dancing around the curandera's belly, staring at the hoss and tilting his head. "He's a good soldier," the coyote said, though it sounded rather more derogatory than the words themselves would indicate. "Look, kid, we're just saying hello and goodbye. Didn't you say goodbye to anyone this morning?"

"I said goodbye to the guard on duty at the stockade gate when he approved my marching papers."

As if on cue, Johnny, Odella, and Kenyon all frowned. "You don't got anyone else to say goodbye to in town? Your folks around here?"

"No, ma'am, no folks."

The hoss stood patiently while any number of meaningful glances were exchanged between the passengers on the wagon. It seemed as though something important had just happened, though he couldn't put his finger on precisely what.

"A-a-a-anyways," Johnny said, hopping back down. "I guess this is it. Any words of encouragement for our hero of the day, Della?"

The curandera was perched more on hir side now, rising like an angry white-robed soapbubble out of the carriage deck. "Don't be a hero," shi ordered, glowering. "A hero is just someone who gets other people killed. Look it up sometime. You don't need to do anything brave. In fact, if you could be a little more scared, that would probably help. You're defecting, after all."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And stop calling me ma'am!"

"Yes, miss."

Odella's eyes narrowed to slits. "You're not related to my husband, are you?"

Saraceno blinked. "Not that I am aware of."

Shi looked about to reply, swelling with anger, but shi only managed a tired sigh. "You and I are going to have a little talk when next we meet. Right now, though, we might as well get this underway. Johnny?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Oh, don't you start with me!"

Deciding that this was just how these people acted, Saraceno did his best to put it out of his mind. He knelt, palms again moving automatically to shift his nonexistent sabres out of the way, and stared at Johnny. "Do I have to do anything?"

The coyote shook his head. "I don't think so. Been a while since I've had to do this. It's not always fun. Just... try to relax."

"I am."

"You know, I think I believe you. OK, here goes nothing."

For a long moment nothing seemed to happen. Kenyon and the kids watched the hoss and the feral coyote sitting motionless opposite one another. Odella couldn't see from hir seat in the back of the wagon, but hir ears twitched expectantly.

All at once the coyote recoiled, four paws backpedalling and scrabbling in the dust and gravel for purchase before dashing off. It stopped twenty yards away, glanced back once over its shoulder, then aimed itself due north and took off at a brisk pace.

Saraceno blinked and frowned, standing once more and staring down at himself. "Uhm..." he said. "Did it work?"

"Yes," he replied.

"Oh." The hoss's jaw worked, and he poked his lips curiously. "Did you say that?"

"You betcha," the hoss said.

Briar grinned and Zora giggled. "Mom won't let Johnny do that to us," the half-fox whined good-naturedly.

"That's is_certainly_ not appropriate," Odella snapped. "He's a terrible influence."

"I'm not that bad!" the hoss protested, before adding, "He is? This is going to get confusing. Nah, it's fine, I'll stop talking. See ya, Della. Er... I mean, ma'am."

Saraceno shook his head. He thought he'd feel something, feel a presence, a weight, a voice, but there was nothing. There were simply words coming out of his mouth unbidden, and they seemed perfectly natural. It was only when Johnny's influence stopped did his brain start rationalizing, and he found himself second-guessing his own actions. One part of him wanted to believe that WAS himself talking, and not the spirit that now dwelt within him.

"Is it supposed to feel like this?" Saraceno asked.

Johnny paused a moment before replying. "I don't know. Not many, you know, _people_have let me in before. Most fight it. You kinda opened all the doors at once. It's weird. Like being in my own head again."

Odella just clucked hir tongue. "You two better get along. It's going to be a trek."

"We can head them off tomorrow night," Saraceno said, almost entirely positive that was his own statement and not Johnny's. "You worry about Bayside."

The curandera sighed, but Kenyon replied for hir. "Shi always does," he rumbled, adjusting the straps. "Settle in, kids. Johnny... Corporal... good luck."

"Thank you," the hoss replied, sounding in harmony with himself.

The family wagon creaked and groaned as it accelerated to a gentle walking pace, following the road curving slowly to the north. Saraceno and guest waved at them once, adjusted their hat, and started trotting south, building carefully into the sort of run they could maintain for many hours.

---

The people of Bayside were not especially physically hardy when compared with the average lowlander around Rockrose. They weren't known for their warrior spirit or their unquenchable thirst for vengeance, preferring wherever possible to negotiate a fair settlement or sometimes just hide until the Rangers could be summoned. They weren't rich enough to do this very often, which was why the Rangers had become such a well-known and often-seen force in and around the region.

The people of Bayside had survived and prospered for so many decades for two very specific reasons. For one, it was the town that the curandera known as Odella had claimed as hir home, which bestowed unto it the sort of fearful reputation most warcamps could only dream of, and for another, because the only rule that had ever been written down and made a requirement for citizenship was now carved onto the base of Odella's statue.

"Meruerimus vestris spina?" LaCombe read.

"We found it carved into the stone near where the first well was dug. It means that we work together," Hebert explained. "It means that when one of us is down, we all work together to pick them up. It means that, no matter what, being a part of Bayside means you always have allies, friends... family."

"No, it means 'I have got your spine'." The okapi recognized the language, or at least recognized some of the more simple words from it. "That's not even a euphemistic interpretation of 'back' to mean alliance or teamwork, it literally means possession of the bones of someone else's torso."

Hebert stared at the inscription at the base of Odella's statue and sighed. "You knew that when you were first invited to join the town, didn't you?"

The well-read librarian nodded slowly. "I... didn't want to say anything. I mean, it's an excellent sentiment. Very... threatening. I wouldn't want to tussle with any group that claimed to already have my spine in their paws..."

"Just forget what it says, all right?"

"You brought it up!"

Bayside was a bustle of activity, although the center of town was quite sparse. Two days prior, the Council and the Circle had stood side by side in the amphitheatre, while Dirgo's Rangers very politely directed everyone for miles around to attend promptly at sunset. Knowing how the previous announcement had been taken there was some understandable reluctance, which was why the event was phrased rather differently. Hastily-stamped pamphlets still blew around the stage, proclaiming there was to be an Inside Out Party sponsored by the Gossamer Scarf, and each such pamphlet would be redeemable for one item of food or drink from Rico's private reserve.

Of course, Rico wished that some fine print had been included to specifically state each pamphlet was only good ONCE, but he had been promised reimbursements should the town survive the coming week.

With the town's burgeoning population comparatively well-fed and slightly loosened by better than a dozen casks of wine, Rico's entire annual supply gone in one night, the situation was very carefully restated by Geanna and Hebert. Yes, there was a horde on the march. Yes, the Rockrose had fallen. Yes, there was every indication that they had significantly more people and immeasurably more guns than Bayside. Yes, the curandera was for the time being refraining from using hir eldritch powers.

By the fourth statement people were already drifting away from the crowd, and several more had crumpled and begun sobbing into their free drinks. Order was restored for a few moments by LaCombe, standing behind the Council and the Circle and doing hir best to look small and hide from the crowd's searching gaze, asking to borrow Dirgo's sidearm and firing the massive revolver once into the air. Normally he'd never have handed it over to a civilian, but he was secretly amused to see how shi would react.

Disappointingly, shi didn't seem afraid of it at all, and except for the numbness in hir fingers and the ringing in hir ears after the shell had exploded shi showed no reaction whatsoever.

After the smattering of screams died down, Hebert then outlined the plan.

And so it was that for two days straight, the people of Bayside threw themselves wholeheartedly into their work. All around town, but especially in the open scrublands a mile to the south, earthworks were springing up. Hundreds of shovels had been dragged out of sheds, with many hundreds more in dire need of repair to be useful. The town's pair of blacksmiths, as well as the new metallurgist, had been working day and night hammering out dents, straightening blades, drawing new spades out of old butcher knives, and putting every strong shoulder to work pumping the bellows. Wheelbarrows had been trundled out from every homestead, and every decrepit wagon was being broken down and rebuilt into a smaller, more useful form.

Every other paw, young and old, not currently occupied with Bayside's essential services, had been conscripted into shovelling, mounding, carting, unloading, and otherwise transforming the dry and cracked desert into long, winding trenches, in accordance with the charcoal lines drawn on LaCombe's maps. Staring at them from the ground they looked like terribly inefficient irrigation ditches, but it was only from a bird's eye view that they took on a more recognizable, more meaningful shape.

No-one knew what the meaning was, but that wasn't important. The sigils looked powerful, they looked magical, and sigils writ in the earth itself with brushstrokes a hundred yards long needed to be channelling some tremendous energies, indeed.

A young kitfox sprinted up, jamming a tiny scroll of paper into LaCombe's hand. "Here you go ma'am the seventh stroke on the fourth character has been completed and the moved earth is being formed into a protective berm and watchtower and me mum says there's a wagon approaching and it looks like the curandera's wagon I have to go now bye!"

LaCombe and Hebert watched the youngster go, heading south like an arrow and kicking up a wedge of dust. LaCombe's main duty was to make sure, by means of hourly reports wherever possible, that all of the earthworks were being completed in accordance with the master map, currently nailed up in hir library. Copies had been made and distributed to the foremen in charge of each sigil, and the three members of the Circle versed in the arcane sorcery of 'land surveying' were making sure they were as mathematically perfect as possible.

"Oh, to have that kind of energy again."

LaCombe glanced sidelong at the burly boar and snickered. "I can't imagine you _ever_having that kind of energy."

"You'd be surprised."

"That would take some doing after the week I've had."

"Welcome to Bayside."

"You keep saying that..."

From above the sigils as they currently existed didn't look like much, but the map in LaCombe's library, the reproduction that Dirgo had insisted be installed in his own office at the stockade, and the more public copy that was hanging in the Scarf, showed Bayside existing at the rough epicenter of a whirlwind of curved, sword-like brush strokes. The sigils existed as one great and complicated bramble, but seemed to be made up of individual characters overlapping like puzzle pieces. Much talk had gone into what the terrible-looking runes could mean, but everyone agreed they spelled bad news for anyone daring to attack Odella's home.

LaCombe still didn't know what the sigils would actually DO, but Odella and Timura had been adamantly clear that they would be essential to Bayside's survival.

"Think it'll be enough?"

Hebert shrugged, and the pair started walking. They had another scheduling meeting with some of the foremen in an hour, and LaCombe was making hirself an indispensably honorary part of both the Council and the Circle. Shi might have a rather loosely-interpreted definition of how to be a public speaker, but shi was proving to be a wizard at keeping the hundreds upon hundreds of documents organized that the earthworks had produced. Job assignments, shift rotations, who was assigned to acquire food and drink and raw materials, who owned what and to which area it was assigned... there seemed to be endless requirements but the hammer-blunt okapi handled it all without complaint. In all actuality, shi seemed to be enjoying it.

"The curandera thinks it will, and for right now... that's good enough for me. Shi's never steered us wrong. Of course, most of the time shi hasn't needed to steer us at ALL. Sometimes we only find out a month later that we came this close to dying by some calamity or other." Hebert was not so smug as to not be exceptionally grateful for their furious little guardian angel, but it was sometimes unsettling to be so dependent on someone whose greatest virtue was being even scarier than the scary things in the world.

"I guess right now I'm happy it's putting a damper on the fist-fights." Their path took them in a wide circle around the plaza, once again clean and pristine thanks to the organization of the legion of grannies too hunched to lift a shovel. "This is more than just... a calamity. This is an army. A crusade, to read the decree that they'd nailed up to that poor-... to the statue."

"Crusade?"

LaCombe jerked a thumb over hir shoulder to the inscription behind them. "It comes from a few places, but like a lot of words it has origins in that strange old tongue. It meant 'an army that had been marked with a cross', but it was an army raised specifically to stamp out evil."

"Oh. So we're safe, then."

"Not by half," the okapi grunted. "I've read some histories, done my best to piece 'em together. For a long time, centuries maybe, there were endless crusades, always back and forth. Vengeance upon vengeance. _Everyone_thinks their cause is the one true. If they were just raiders, they could be bought off. If they were conquerors we could come to an agreement with the land and with the people. But they have a mission, and they seem to see it as their... destiny."

"The only people around here talk about destiny are the curandera."

"It was only a matter of time before someone else decided to try it," LaCombe said darkly. "Words have power. Every time the world forgets that, they're at the mercy of those who... who... who have the _best_words, and... argh, you know what I mean. I need a drink."

"It probably is about that time. You've been working hard. If you want to head back into town, you can-"

"I meant_coffee._"

"Oh."

"I'll be fine," shi sighed, pulling a cigarillo out of hir breast pocket and sparking it with one of the matches shi had taken to tucking into hir hair. Hebert had really only known the okapi for a handful of days, having had no real interaction with hir before this incident, but he was no stranger to watching someone coping with the stress of authority. "Curandera's on hir way. Still got a lot to do."

"There'll always be more to do. The trick is being all together when it happens."

Shi glanced sidelong at the boar. "You trying to use fancy words on me now?"

"I wouldn't dream of it."

"Good. I won't have none of that."

"That's a double negative."

The ember of LaCombe's cigarillo blazed, but shi stuffed down hir retort. Hebert was the town dentist, and the chirurgeon's assistant. He'd yanked out a dozen local teeth the month before, and a handful of bullets in the past year when bandits got a little too full of themselves. Like the town doctor, he was a former combat medic from further down south, where proper civilization constantly seemed to be tearing itself apart, but shi suspected there was a good deal more to the boar than just the desire to patch holes in people. More to the point, he was the only person in town who didn't ask hir to repeat hirself, 'just a little slower this time'.

The main street of Bayside was unusually neat and tidy this day. The coachhouse to the west had been built upon over the recent years until it was just as large a lodging establishment as the Scarf, with dozens of small rentable rooms, though without the drinks and carousing. Opposite were a variety of storage houses, trade posts, porter's offices and Bayside's largest schoolhouse, where a second floor was already being discussed at Council meetings. Normally they would all be bustles of activity, with cargo stacked higher than Kenyon's eyes every which way and fresh-picked produce swapping paws with brisk efficiency, but for the time being normal life had been suspended.

The coachhouse doors were drawn and barred. All shipments, coming and going, were stored away under lock and key. The schoolhouse was open, but just to operate as a central daytime crèche for the pups and kits too small to help with the earthworks. Two Rangers leaned against lamp posts on opposite sides of the wide street, slouching casually but keeping an eye on the situation and covering one another.

The whole of the town, for better or for worse, was occupied with transforming the landscape as per the curandera's wishes, which provided the thinnest of barriers between their conscious minds and thoughts of impending doom.

"Speaking of impending doom," LaCombe murmured under hir breath, drawing the last few puffs hastily out of hir smoke.

"I heard that!" came the curandera's voice from the wagon that was still better than fifty yards away, the unmistakable mountainous silhouette of Kenyon blocking all but the heavy wooden wheels.

LaCombe blinked, ears flapping anxiously, but shi straightened hir back and stubbornly refused to feel ashamed. "I meant your little ones!" shi called, even though it was plainly obvious that shi didn't need to speak up.

When Hebert and LaCombe finally intercepted the wagon, Kenyon was pausing to catch his breath and quietly berate his wife for using hir preternatural hearing. "You're not supposed... to use your... you know..." His paws flapped vaguely. "Powers."

"Good listening ain't no super power," Odella muttered, craning hir next to see over the edge of the wagon. "Hebert there?"

The okapi balked. "What, you can HEAR me muttering from half a town away, but you can't tell who's standing next to me? He smells like soap and sounds like a dented barrel rolling down the street!"

"How embarrassing this must be for you," Hebert said blandly. "I'm standing right here."

"What I was GOING to say, when you got close enough for POLITE conversation," LaCombe continued, rolling ahead stubbornly if only to put the awkwardness behind hir where shi didn't need to think about it, "is thank goodness you're here. It's been two... well, three days of hard work, and I think spirits are starting to flag. It would do the town good to see you here among them. Hi, Pueblo."

"Oh, aye, I think they've noticed I'm here," the rotund coati sighed, shifting hir weight and setting the axles to creaking. "You thought it was bad enough listening to you!"

Hebert and LaCombe leaned sideways and saw that a small, but growing, wedge of citizenry was following the wagon, keeping a respectful distance. Many of them still carried their tools, and a few were pushing wheelbarrows still full of earth. Their eyes were, if the librarian had to choose a word from hir vast lexicon, worshipful.

"Does this happen every time?"

Hebert and Odella barked nearly identical laughs. "No. This is damn near sombre for them," Odella said. "When we show up with presents, oh goodness, you can't beat them off with a stick fast enough."

"Now dear, we don't beat them with sticks anymore," Kenyon lectured kindly, moving back to the front of the wagon and starting the last brief leg of his journey. "We'll be getting settled in at Rico's rooms at the Scarf, then me and the kits will head out and... you know... be seen, for a little bit."

The wagon trundled by, the rattling of sideboards and jumbled luggage unable to mask Odella's last words. "While I'm stuck on my ass doing nothing."

They watched the curandera and hir family for several minutes, until they had vanished into the plaza to the north, followed by at least forty locals hoping for the honor of a kind word or a blessing.

"Still feeling confident in this plan?"

LaCombe pulled out another cigarillo, flipping it back and forth between thumb and forefinger and glaring at the setting sun. "You got anything better to feel confident in right now?"

"Point."

---

Saraceno camped that night under the shelter provided by a cracked boulder in the middle of a lowland rubble field. There was just enough room to wriggle into the crevice with his long coat wrapped around himself for warmth, his toes protected and warmed by the dying embers of the pathetic fire he'd managed to build. There was hardly enough scrub around to get a proper fire going, but he supposed that was just as well. Fire tended to attract the local wildlife, and he had no-one to stand watch while he slept.

At least, not in the traditional sense.

"You'll stand watch while I sleep," he asked the night air while clearing rocks and debris out of the crevice that would be his bunk for the night.

"You sound disbelieving," he replied with a hint more smarm.

"Not at all. I just... if I'm asleep, doesn't that mean the rest of my body is, too?"

"Well, yeah, sort of, but your eyes and ears still work while you're asleep, they're just, like, plugged into different parts of your brain."

"Plugged?"

"Yeah, like wires are-"

"Wires?"

He made a distressed grunting noise and thumped his forehead, surprising himself. "It's really hard to talk to you people sometimes, you don't understand simple English."

"English?"

"OK, now you're just screwing with me."

"What do you mean, 'you people'?"

Johnny and Saraceno continued their discussion for several long minutes, confusing and turning away a small hunting group of creatures the hoss would have recognized as scorpions and the ancient spirit would have recognized as monsters from a horror movie. Eventually it was decided that Saraceno would trust his sleeping and helpless form to Johnny's protection, and if they did get killed and eaten during the night Johnny owed him a beer.

He awoke shivering, but he was happy enough to wake up at all that he didn't mind. He inched backwards out from beneath the boulder, dusted himself off and scrounged in his pockets for the last dregs of his cheese and crackers. It had been agreed that he should show up at the horde convincingly hungry, and his stomach was already rumbling angrily.

The sun was hanging low and sullen in the sky when the two minds in a single body climbed on top of the boulder to survey the situation. The horizon to the south was hazy and smudged, and Saraceno cursed his luck. "Damn. I'd hoped I could see them by now."

He scoffed and raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. "Look closer," he said softly. "Realize what it is you're not seeing."

Feeling like his eyes were being squeezed from behind (and in a sense he supposed that was true), the hoss squinted and began to reinterpret what lay to the south. What he'd mistaken for a low-hanging cloud or perhaps an unseasonal dust storm seemed to be concentrated in one area and punctuated by dark vertical streaks.

"Cook fires."

"A _shitload_of 'em."

"Are they close?"

"No, I... I think there's just that many of them."

While they walked, legs moving swiftly despite the growing desire to turn back, Johnny taught his new associate some decidedly old-fashioned curse words. It looked like the regular ones just weren't going to be enough.

---

Odella's presence in Bayside was a mixed blessing. The general mood improved vastly when word spread that the curandera was staying at the Gossamer Scarf. Following the coati's plan was one thing, but having hir bring hir entire family to town showed a level of support that no amount of secondhand words could possibly match.

With that in mind, LaCombe supposed it evened out the fact that schedules were now being thrown into disarray as citizens lined up by the hundred in the plaza to greet the curandera, to meet hir, to touch hir belly and perhaps get a personal reassurance that everything would be all right.

The Circle was out in force, doing their best to handle the curandera's affairs for hir and organize the crowds that threatened to overwhelm Rico's business. He'd dropped his prices enormously and was now giving away food and drink for less than cost, but Kenyon assured him that they would be amply reimbursed once the situation was over.

"Situation," the old fox snorted. "That's a funny word for what's going on. A 'situation'."

"We use all sorts of words when we want to distract ourselves from the horror of truth," LaCombe said. "Just more of the magic in the language. We'd probably have gone mad if we couldn't lie to ourselves, just a little bit."

"That supposed to make me feel better?"

"It's not supposed to make you feel anything, just... saying."

"You're starting to sound like hir," he sighed, gesturing to where Odella, his daughter-in-law, was taking up the entirety of the red overstuffed couch he'd had brought down from his apartments upstairs. The curandera was holding court, as it were, by the wide black granite hearth in the far corner of the Scarf.

"Is that a compliment or what?" LaCombe had hardly ever stepped hoof in the Gossamer Scarf since hir arrival in Bayside. Hir first two visits were to refill hir coffee jug when hir own supply ran out, hir third earlier that week to meet with Hebert. As such, shi wasn't quite sure what to think of the fox than ran the place.

"Not at all, just... saying," he said dryly, giving hir the slightest of winks.

Odella was flanked by two of the younger grrls of the Circle, both of them quite abundantly proportioned, as the curandera tended to be. They did their best to dress modestly in dark skirts and vests; Odella was all about being accepting of one's body no matter how it had decided to grow up, but shi was also determined that the fledgling witches of Bayside learn to rely on something other than their looks. There would be plenty of time to show off their excess curves when they had mastered the basics.

The lineup outside the Scarf stretched around the corner and cut off two other buildings completely, but they were only allowed inside in groups of four, barring special circumstances. Right now an entire family of badgers, nine young pups of varying ages and the harried father watching over them, was kneeling before Odella's couch. The pups were bouncing and squeaking with excitement at being this close to a real life curandera, while the heavyset patriarch had his eyes closed and his forehead pressed against Odella's knee. Shi was stroking his sunburst of white-streaked hair and murmuring something reassuring.

"Who's that?" LaCombe whispered. Shi had spent the last hour just watching the locals seeking audience with the curandera. Most of them wanted nothing specific, merely to be close to hir.

"That's Burnes," Rico replied, leaning in close. He was standing behind his bar, as always, while LaCombe overflowed one of the stools on the other side. "Used to be a prospector, oh, twenty years ago. Taught Kenyon a few things before m'boy set out on his own. Made his money, came back and bought a swath of land up north, just on the edge of the Dust. Had to hire more than a dozen locals to tend it. Ended up being some of the best soil around these parts."

"He doesn't look very... wealthy," shi mused, noting the fairly plain, sacklike outfits the family wore.

"Two kinds of prospectors. The kind come back and like to live big, kind of their reward for surviving, and the kind that come back with no taste at all for the fancy life. That boy coulda bought half the buildings in town back then, back when we only had half as many buildings as now, but he didn't want things. He just wanted a quiet life and an army of little ones."

"Well, he's got the latter."

"Oh, aye, and a dozen more in the earthworks right now."

"So what's he here for?"

Rico took a deep breath. "His wife's in the Rangers. I think she's a Captain now. And right now... they're all on patrols."

The badger, eyes still closed, nodded once and stood awkwardly. Like a spreading wave his monochromatic offspring did likewise, grabbing the paw of the next one in line and tugging them upright. Odella offered them a smile, and pat hir own belly meaningfully.

"Oh," LaCombe said.

"Yup. His back's all but gone, so he's no good to anyone with a pickaxe no more, but right now it's his potatoes keeping the town in stews and hash, and he's not taking a single penny for it. Good man."

Burnes led the train of badgers out the side door while the grrls from the Circle let another group into the Scarf, this time a trio of old ladies. LaCombe sighed and stood up hirself, stretching and feeling hir back creaking. Shi'd hardly slept the last few days, and the guilt at taking an hour just to sit and observe the people of Bayside was starting to become unbearable. "I'm going to make the rounds again. Anything you want me to tell Ken or the kits if I see 'em?"

While Odella sat on hir couch and did hir best to personally greet everyone for a dozen miles around, hir family was spreading good will throughout the region. Kenyon himself was tirelessly taking shift after shift with the earthworks crews, while the kits were appearing everywhere seemingly at once, delivering cold drinks and baked goods. The effect was electrifying; some groups had even started spontaneously singing while they worked.

"Just tell them to take care of themselves while they're out there. They're no good to anyone if they drop."

"Have you _ever_known anyone in that family to listen to sensible advice like that?"

Rico laughed. "No, I... I suppose not. Still."

"Still," shi agreed, slapping a few coins on the bar. "And don't tell me my money's no good here."

"Wasn't going to. YOU still owe me for all that coffee."

"That was a... public service," shi grumbled evasively. "For the good of Bayside."

"You sure you ain't a lawyer?"

"Bite your tongue, sir."

---

As it happened, both Saraceno and Johnny were right.

Approaching the horde was like walking into a forest fire. This was a metaphor that required Johnny to first explain what a forest was, and then explain how big trees used to be back in his day. The idea that something so vast could ever be on fire made the hoss anxious. Johnny had pondered going into how some forest fires could be seen from space, but that felt like opening a can of worms that might take up far too much of his energy.

"How do worms get in a can?"

"Look, just... shut up. You and I can share a drink after this and I'll explain about all the wonders of the ancient times, from canned worms to space shuttles, but for right now could you please just concentrate?"

There was plenty to concentrate on. They hadn't counted on properly intercepting the horde until that night, but it was barely noonday before they were swallowed up by the vast mobile army's forward ranks. At the moment their wrists were bound behind their back and they were being briskly marched south to where the human known as Borne would determine their fate. Just to make sure that they didn't try to run, several large rifles were also helpfully trained on the back of their shared head.

Johnny had discovered that he could mumble at levels below even a whisper and Saraceno would be able to hear them, and vice versa. They each thought it peculiar that they couldn't just THINK things to eachother, given that they were sharing a brain, and given that Johnny could on some level communicate that way with the animals he sometimes shared, but some sort of barrier seemed to exist there.

"So how exactly are you going to help, then, if you can't hear their thoughts?"

"Oh, that's... uhm... different."

"You do it by force, don't you?"

"Technically there's no FORCE involved..."

"That's not right!" he explained under his breath, drawing a suspicious glance from the bristlebacked moose to his right. "You can't just rip into someone's mind like that! That's not questioning, that's not interrogation, that's... that's... that's horrible!"

"And what they're doing is any better? Look at that wagon right there, that lady is crying, and she's hugging two pups, and they don't look so great neither! Look, all they're going to get is a very confusing headache. I'm not cracking a safe and making off with all their pretty pretty brain meats, I'm just going to poke some nerves and see what pops up! It's like... picking up a picture book at random and opening it to a random page, and everyone's brain is a whole library!"

"That does not make it right!"

"And you decide NOW to have this discussion?!"

The moose was leaning in closer, heavy brows squinting. "You chanting? This ain't that sort of a congregation, son. You're just going to talk."

"I've been thinking about it since yesterday!"

"How was I supposed to know that?"

"How was I supposed to know you wouldn't know that?! You're in my head!"

"Look, kid, it's not that bad," the moose said, not unkindly. He shifted his rifle to his right arm and pat Saraceno's shoulder. "You came to us. Just... be honest with him, and don't worry. He's a little funny-looking, but he isn't bad."

The hoss was aware of this conversation, peripherally, but he was focused on what was going on in his own brain. A physical force seemed to be building between his ears, every clomp of his hooves setting the hairs on the back of his neck rattling like sabers. "It just doesn't feel_right!"_

"Kid, a lot of things don't feel right, which is what keeps people from doin' them all the time!"

"You're saying there's the right time for everything that's wrong?!"

"I... not in so many words?" Johnny was starting to sound nervous. "Kid, calm down, you're gonna get yourself killed here, and if you go down I'm probably not lasting long!"

Saraceno was trying to get himself under control, confused at his own reaction. He'd known that he was carrying Johnny directly into the horde so the intangible spirit could gather information, and if they couldn't leave together then Johnny would try to gain passage on wildlife to make his way back up north. The hoss knew that in all likelihood he was going to become at best a prisoner of the horde, and at worst would find himself food for the carrion-feeders of the desert. It was a risk, but if he could help provide key information to save Bayside, he considered it worth it.

It made sense. Of course it did. The deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands, weighed against some impromptu supernatural mind-reading? It didn't even seem like an equation worthy of wasting his time with. He was no philosopher; he'd been told growing up at the orphanage, and then in the Ranger's Recruits, that his gifts to the world were a strong arm and a keen eye and nothing more.

And yet however his mind laid out the lines for right and wrong, this fell squarely on the side of 'wrong' and he couldn't shake himself free.

"Kid!" the moose said, concerned and more than a little upset. The other members of the escort were looking around, as well, fingers rippling worriedly across their weapons.

"Kid!" This from Johnny, Saraceno's own voice strained and hoarse.

"I'm not a kid!" the hoss snapped, a wave of dizziness passing through him to ground itself in his eyeballs. He raised his arms to brace himself against thin air and stumbled, landing hard on one knee and jarring his teeth from the impact. He came to rest on his side, a cloud of dust rising around him and joining the omnipresent haze created by the horde still marching by on all sides.

His last thought before darkness closed in around him was to wonder if Johnny would still be able to complete his mission if Saraceno died before reaching the leader of the horde.

---

By late afternoon, the crowds at the Scarf had thinned out enough that Odella felt shi could finally venture outdoors and properly supervise the town's activities. To call the coati restless would be doing a disservice to restless folk everywhere; the several days shi'd spent nursing Kenyon back to health those many years ago had been the longest time spent in one location in more than a century. The Circle were loathe to let hir so much as walk around under hir own power, fearing for the safety of hir unborn kits, but none were so bold as to actually, definitively, say 'no' to Odella's face.

And so, after more than a dozen indirect protests and delaying tactics, Odella allowed hirself to be lifted into the back of hir wagon and escorted to the defensive perimeter to the south of town.

"I still find this a little... inappropriate," shi said, struggling not to use any of the words that Kenyon has suggested might be just as bad as hir eldritch abilities. Somehow he'd gotten it into his fool mind that the way shi acted while pregnant, especially so close to the end, could affect the health of hir little ones. Shi'd agreed to eat healthier, and to eat more, but not swearing seemed like cutting off a limb.

"It's a gesture of respect, Mistress," Geanna said from hir position on the wagon's bench, supervising the four Circle grrls pulling the wagon. Even the faintest traces of curandera ability lent a noticeable physical presence, and the dainty femmes appeared to have no problems hauling the heavy wooden cart. "We can't have you marching miles through the hottest part of the day!"

Left implied but unspoken was the additional concern that it would take all day just to get to the nearest earthworks; Odella's walking speed was somewhere between a crawl and total incapacity. "Don't feel respectful being hauled around like a f-... invalid."

"Wouldn't be respectful letting you walk when the grrls here could use a little more time outdoors," the hyena snorted.

"Y'all should always be outdoors," Odella retorted. "The Work and the Way wasn't meant to be cooped up under a roof. Any others felt the Call?"

Geanna shook hir head. "Not in months. Some of the recent ones haven't been more than a whisper, really. They have a hair of the Sight, maybe, got a good knack with finding water or setting bones, but nothing like when we started."

Odella arched an eyebrow, but said nothing. Geanna only had a hair of the Sight, to the coati's standards, but shi wasn't about to dismiss anyone with any sort of ability. The hyena was stronger than the rest of the Circle, but that still only gave hir the faintest taste of what Odella had spent hir life coping with. "Might not be much need for it anymore," shi mused.

"Mistress?"

The curandera sat up as much as shi could, cramming a pillow behind hir back and trying to shove hir disobedient bust down and away from hir muzzle. Ever since hir milk had started coming in, even hir old maternity robes and dresses hadn't been fitting properly. Shi was starting to wonder if shi was just going to have to get used to not seeing anything directly in front of hir until the kits weaned. "Ain't been a new curandera, full of the Work and the Way, for ages," shi said, trying to phrase hir words carefully not to offend the rather uppity hyena. "I'm one of the younger ones, and I been around for, oh, three hundred years and a little bit. Timura's older than me by a couple decades, and shi used to be considered a youngster, too."

"We're not a kind used to growing old," shi continued, watching the concerned expression on Geanna's face. There was a stormy uncertainty behind hir eyes. "The Work is dangerous, and we're given more power than any one ought to have... and there comes a point where even that ain't enough. Not enough to keep going."

"There's nothing could stop you, Mistress," one of the Circle called from the front of the wagon. "You defeated the Storm itself!"

Odella winced, remembering the explosion that had levelled the life shi'd built for hir family, the one safe refuge away from a world of monstrosities, chaos and death. Shi'd defeated the Storm, true, shi'd dispersed Cambiado's spirit to the uncaring void, shi'd triggered an explosion that had been seen a day's hard march away. "That I did," shi muttered. "Used to be when a curandera did something like that, they'd give up their Work, and a new grrl would hear the Calling. One falls, another rises."

The wagon jostled and there was a faint, hoarse cheer from the Baysiders working on a vast, curving canal. Reddish-black earth had been banked up on the north side of the trench, the very bottom of which was a muddy scar carved into the dry, despairing desert landscape. A few trickling springs had been tapped to feed the canals, although so far they weren't good for much more than dirtying paws; a pair of young felines wearing simple burlap smocks were bouncing around and flinging mud pies at one another.

"What are saying?"

"I'm saying, Geanna, that we've been falling for ages, and with this human fellow we've been falling fast lately... and there ain't been more rising."

From what Timura had said, it was obvious the horde, and the human at the forefront of it, had claimed more than one curandera. They didn't know for certain how long the horde had been on the march... three years, maybe more? The ringtail had identified jewellery and weapons that they knew came from so far away that the distances seemed almost inconceivable to the average person who lived and died within sight of their birthplace.

"What about young Briar?"

"SHI AIN'T NO-...!" Odella shouted, struggling to leap to hir feet but defeated by hir own traitorous body. Geanna recoiled, eyes wide, thick paws covering hir muzzle in a mixture of fear and shame.

"I didn't mean no disrespect, Mistress!"

Odella breathed, deep and slow, over and over, casting hir eyes to the sky. "It's... all right," shi managed, choking back a frustration that frightened hir more than a little. "I... shouldn't have yelled. Shi's got the Calling, I... can't be denying that. But shi ain't no curandera, and if there's any justice in the Universe shi won't need to be."

_And since when has there been justice in the Universe?_said the wheedling but often-accurate voice in the back of hir mind.

"All of us in the Circle, ma'am... all of us would dearly love to be a true curandera," the hyena said earnestly. "To take up the mantle of your duties."

"Yer wanting me dead so soon, then?"

"NO!"

Odella laughed, waving away the terrified grimace on Geanna's stubby face. "I's just joking, Geanna. I know, I've done a terrible job of teaching you what it means to live by the Work and the Way, if you're wanting to do it by choice. But you mean well by it, I suppose. Maybe you're the new wave, the new will of the Way. Rather than giving all the magic to someone like me, which never seemed like a sensible thing to do anyhow, there's lots of you gettin' a little piece of it."

Geanna didn't like the idea that shi might only ever get 'a little piece' of the curandera's renowned power, even less than shi liked the thought of sharing it with the rest of the Circle, but shi nodded politely anyway. "What does it mean?"

The curandera shrugged. "Maybe it means the world finally needs less killin' and needs more people dowsing wells, birthing babes, calming fevers. Needs more goodness, and less... me."

The hyena stared for a long time, not wanting to nod hir head in agreement for fear of disrespecting Odella, and not wanting to disagree for fear of negating hir own purpose. In the end shi just turned back to the grrls pulling the wagon, and urged them to keep to the right to allow a small train of wheelbarrows to pass by. The Baysiders hauling the dirt and rocks smiled and straightened at the sight of the swollen coati, brushing their paws along the wagon for good luck.

Less me, shi thought, not completely put off by the idea.

---

Saraceno awoke flat on his back. His head rattled against a hard but slightly yielding mass that turned out to be an almost paper-thin blanket rolled up into what might charitably be called a pillow. He was in a wagon, he figured, trying to suss out his surroundings without opening his eyes. A surreptitious shifting of his weight confirmed he wasn't tied down, shackled, or restrained in any way. That was surprising.

"It shouldn't surprise you that we didn't want your first thought to be that of captivity," said a deep, pleasant voice near him. The accent was peculiar, the vowel sounds slightly slurred. "By all means, sit up, make yourself comfortable."

The hoss opened his eyes. It was not just a wagon but a carriage, with doors to either side and a proper roof above from which hung candle sconces on chains. There were windows all around, with real glass, and the curtains were pulled back to let in as much light as pierced the dusty atmosphere beyond. Heavy trunks and boxes were pushed up against the front and back of the space, with more thin blankets acting as cushions.

On one of those cushions sat what had to be the human. An actual, real,living human. His skin was shiny and smooth, and nearly as dark as Saraceno's own chestnut flanks. He wore a simple white robe, but the young Ranger immediately recognized the heavy revolvers slung around his narrow waist. The nose was wedge-shaped and high, separated from the mouth, which was recessed and undersized. No wonder he slurs, Saraceno wondered. It's impressive he can speak at all!

"Curandera sent you, hmm?"

Saraceno hadn't meant for his jaw to drop, it was just that, well, not one scenario he'd considered quite approached this territory. "Uh... no, shi... no."

The human chuckled. Saraceno was no expert, but it seemed a friendly enough sound. "I'll take that as a yes. I figured she'd have to send some sort of spies. I'd honestly expected more than one, though, so I'm going to have to assume you have some... plan to leave the horde and report back to her, yes?"

The hoss frowned. On this point, he didn't need to lie. "There was no guaranteed way for me to return, no. It was more... hopeful."

"That's just wasteful! She's not off somewhere, peering through your eyes, is she? Can she do that? I've heard tales."

"I... honestly don't know. I've never heard of hir doing that. Shi's more the type to, uhm, make things explode."

The human threw back his head and laughed at that, apparently loud enough that a long reptilian head suddenly appeared at one of the windows. The human waved the concerned soldier away, wiping his eyes with his other hand. "That does seem to be how they like to operate!" he grinned, baring his square teeth. "Is it true what they say? She can't lift a finger to help you because she's pregnant?"

Well, so much for THAT being a secret. The hoss wondered if this meeting could possibly go worse. "Shi will not use hir powers while it may endanger hir condition, this is true," he said in a low voice. "But shi's made it clear that, given no other option, shi will protect Bayside with all of hir ability."

The human nodded, stroking the incongruous hairs randomly scattered around his lower face. Saraceno had seen a bull with mange one time, worried nearly bald and constantly slathered with medicines, and he was reminded of that poor fellow now. "Mark of a true protector," he nodded. "Maybe we're not so different."

"You sack and pillage and murder! You couldn't BE more different!"

The human blinked, seeming surprised. "Is that what word has carried on ahead of me?"

Saraceno growled, rising carefully to his feet. He was weaponless, and the human was considerably smaller, but those revolvers gave him pause. "You nail the innocent in the center of town, pierced by your... your demands. You sweep aside the hard work of generations, the thousands of lives that have shaped the world into something they can call home, and you gun down all those who stand in your way! What would you have us think?!"

The human paused, considered... and smiled his small, strange smile. "I'm gathering up the lost, struggling, directionless_creatures of this poor world, and leading them somewhere _better."

"Why?!"

"Isn't it obvious?" The human reached into his robe and produced a small square of paper, handing it to Saraceno. "To protect _my_family."

---

Gabridon staggered, nearly falling face-first into the well-worn dust. "Whoa-a-a-a," he quavered, feeling his scant breakfast of hardtack and beans threatening to come up.

"What is it?" The huge swine's wife was there in a flash, wrapping one arm beneath his to steady him. "You all right? Too much sun?"

He shook his head, blinking away the double vision. "No, I... I just... whew. It was like a dream. I was walking along, and then... bam. I was back in Charlton. It was like we'd never left. You had just brought in the laundry, and... and I could smell tea. It was so_real._"

Amsel smiled. Gabridon was an imposing creature, nearly as wide as he was tall, but even he was overshadowed by his bovine bride. "I do miss those days. Are you sure you're all right?"

He glanced back at their tiny wagon, more of a rickshaw. A single rope lashed around Amsel's waist dragged it easily behind them, all of their worldly possessions stuffed into three trunks and one sack of toys. Ben and Cam were off playing with the other crusaders' children somewhere, probably another game of tag between the heavy wheels of the cargo wagons. "Yeah," he said, straightening up and slinging his rifle over his shoulder. "Must've just been something I ate."

Johnny left the couple behind, leaping into the mind of an elderly coyote who was curled up, half-asleep in the back of the next wagon over. He'd only managed to pry into a few memories, but he was getting better at knowing where to press to get the responses he needed. The spirit had never had much use for this sort of activity, much preferring to leave people alone with their memories, but this was a dire occasion.

After Saraceno had forced him out, mental barriers battering the noncorporeal Johnny like boulders in an avalanche, it had been a flurried of leaping from mind to mind while he tried to keep an eye on the fallen hoss. Staying too long led to suspicion from the person in question, and it was more than a dozen leaps before he found someone whose natural barriers were low enough for him to rest. It was exhausting passing from one consciousness to another.

When it became clear that Saraceno wasn't in any immediate danger, being carefully carried to one of the large carriages at the center of the horde, he decided it was time to actually fulfill his part of the mission.

After another ten leaps, he found he could land in someone's mind and immediately trigger memories from a specific time in their past. It was a bit of a gamble, but he was getting better at figuring out how far back he needed to pry. The horde, it seemed, hadn't existed before about five years previous; before that, everyone led happy lives of their own.

Well, 'happy' was relative. There were countless memories of bandits, rival clans and townships, bloody warfare, starvation and tragedy... that was, sadly, par for the course in a lot of the world. Wait, what does that mean? Par for the course... that was... green grass... GOLF! Holy shit, I remember golf! Haha, that's crazy!

He was getting more accurate memories from when the horde conquered the various citizens in a path that led in a rough horseshoe shape south, then west, and now north once more. Johnny had the faintest recollections of what this continent looked like, back when it was covered with forests and lakes and golf courses. The earliest memories he could find in the frankly normal-seeming minds all seemed to involve a mountain, a huge flat-topped butte that glowed an angry red.

Before that... nothing.

This means something, he thought, leaping out of the old lady and into another young gun-toting member of the horde. This is important.

---

"Why are you telling me all this?"

Borne leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. Saraceno wasn't terribly good at reading people; that stretched back to his youngest days at the orphanage, when the other youth would play tricks on him and it would take him days to figure it out. He wasn't stupid, far from it... he just tended to take people at face value. In his time as a Ranger he'd stopped many fights, arrested several criminals and been called to arms to defend the outskirts against raiders and thieves . He had, he thought, a fairly good idea of what constituted 'a bad person'.

The human was something else altogether.

"Well," Borne said slowly, "because I get the feeling you're going to have a couple more days to mull this over than I'll be likely to get once we arrive in Bayside. Because you were selected to spy on me by the curandera because shi trusts you."

"Shi didn't pick me, I-"

"Whatever, whatever." The human's strange paw, dark on the back and pale on the palm, flapped at him. "You were picked by someone shi trusts. That's good enough for me. You are going to expedite this parley, because I don't want there to be a long drawn-out altercation. Bayside is large, it's protected, it's armed. It has more than the Rockrose had, a dozen scouts with rifles and an inflated sense of invincibility. No, everything I've heard about your little town screams 'bad news'."

"Then... why go there at all?"

The carriage continued to jostle, the horde moving inexorably north. "Because it's a tremendous opportunity! The people, the supplies, the experience! If we can convince them to join us, bloodlessly, peacefully, to unite your population with ours, there would never be any need for violence again! We wouldn't just be a crusade, we would be a nation!"

Saraceno leaned back slightly, Borne's eyes widening with an unnerving, sparkling intensity. "A nation on foot," he retorted.

"Only for now! I've heard the stories, I've scrounged the maps. There's safety up north, there's running water and seasons and green trees!"

The hoss was aware of the concept of trees that were green, and the thought still struck him as perverse. "And all this... is to protect your family."

"Yes!" Borne leapt to his feet, fingertips brushing his revolvers and sending a jolt through Saraceno's body. "Years I spent, years, trying to unite the tribes of you ani-... of you people, around my home. We were trapped like rats, underground, living and dying in the darkness, born like maggots on the carcass of the past! TRAPPED!"

Saraceno glanced down at the picture he had been given, yellowed and cracked around the edges, shiny against his thumb and rough against his forefinger. It wasn't a painting or a drawing, it was something else entirely, what the human described as an imprint of pure light onto the special paper. The 'picture' was mostly black, indeed seeming to be underground somewhere, putting the hoss in mind of a cluster of people gathered around a small, intense lantern. There were more than twenty humans of various sizes and shapes, except they were all uniformly white and gaunt, and shared an expression on their muzzles best described as sadness. It was hard to tell.

Borne had indicated that one of the skeletal figures, wearing only overalls that hung loose over bony shoulders, was himself.

From what he'd described, that was just the one family out of the thousands crammed together in the endless caverns beneath their mountain home. They lived off of some sort of plant that grew in total darkness, living off of the society's waste; it could be processed for food, dried for fuel, and their very existence revolved around maintaining the devices in which it thrived.

For thousands of years.

Those that ventured out from the cavernous warrens, seared by the sun and blasted by the wind-blown dust, rarely survived, and apparently those that did were not treated well by the furres that lived at the base of the mountain. Saraceno barely recognized the bronzed, heavily-muscled creature opposite him as the ghoul in the picture, but there was a certain similarity to the eyes that could not be ignored.

This is what they become when they live under the sun,_he thought, swallowing nervously. _This is what ONE of them can do with two guns and a quest.

"With the mountain safe and protected, my family can once again live on the surface. It's... it's no life to speak of. We tend the vats, we drain the vats, we... we release the dead into the vats. I promised them I would make them safe again, or die trying."

Borne sagged, dropping back onto the trunk he'd been using for a seat. Outside, the horde marched on and on. The human raked his fingers back through his black hair and stood again, hunched over to avoid striking his head on the slatboard roof.

"We will talk more later." Saraceno knew it wasn't a polite request. "I need to make my rounds. I will have some food and water brought around to you shortly. Make no mistake, you _aren't_a prisoner. You're a guest."

"Can I leave?"

"No." The door of the carriage slammed shut.

---

Two more days passed, and the energy of Bayside was transformed. Rico had spent time trying to convince Hebert that the Baysiders wouldn't take the imminent armageddon lying down, in the hopes that he would somehow convince himself of the same. Hebert had spent time trying to convince Dirgo, for much the same reason. To a man, they were all expecting the best and preparing for a worst, and wondering just how different the two scenarios could be.

The optimism of the workers in the fields was, frankly, shocking to them. It seemed that the farmers and homesteaders, the porters and the traders, the miners and the carpenters all expected a swift and decisive victory, standing proud behind their curandera. The songs sung over the nightly bonfires were bright and festive, not at all as forced as the first few had been. Some folk even talked of looking forward to the horde's arrival, and how the days afterwards would be spent.

No-one was quite sure what form the curandera's justice would take, but there was endless animated speculative discussion about it.

"It's going to be a wall," one dusty worker said, some sort of rodent that Rico couldn't quite identify under the layers of caked-on dirt. "That's what all this is going to be, a wall! A huge wall! Shi's going to summon it up out of the very earth, and forever block out the savages to the south!"

"That's ridiculous, the roads go right THROUGH the south!"

"I've got family to the south! Where is this wall going to be? No, it's going to be a flame, a great cleansing, purifying flame! The letters we carve into the living ground are the syllables of creation, and shi knows the language of the gods!"

"If shi knows the words, why do we need to make the letters a hundred yards tall?"

"Look at hir! Size matters!" This got a laugh, but contained just enough potential for truth that it created a splinter group of folks discussing how the syllables would be pronounced. Rico watched them carefully; they were whispering with their heads together, and that never led anywhere constructive when the topic concerned his niece-in-law.

The Gossamer Scarf was full to bursting, boisterous and full of bright eyes, broad smiles and wandering paws. His serving girls and dancing girls had their paws full keeping up with their professional and personal service duties, money and drinks flowing freely once more. He'd been nervous when it seemed like business was returning to normal, worried it was just going to be the calm before the storm, and given how storms tended to go in this region that was nothing to be casual about.

And bit by bit, the energy was infecting his pessimistic mindset (though he would have insisted he was merely being realistic).

"Heading up," the old silver fox said to Tangy, currently the only girl free to tend the bar. He finished laying out the assortment of foodstuffs he'd scrounged up from the back, where his fresh supplies were becoming severely depleted. New shipments of rations had been arriving all day as some of the homesteaders were cycled off of earthworks in order to maintain their fields, but they were being consumed as fast as he could unpack them. "You're in charge until I get back."

The otter nodded frantically, finishing tapping two beers and sliding them down the bar to the group that was heatedly discussing the merits of drowning the horde in dust versus drowning them in actual water. "Sure, yeah, fine, no, things are GREAT here!" she said, her ever-prominent bust bouncing as she heaved a dramatic sigh. "Hauling dirt all day, slinging ale all night, this is the life!"

Rico chuckled. "You can slow down a little," he said carefully. "No-one will mind if you don't work yourself into exhaustion tonight. In fact, I think I'd prefer it."

"Just trying to keep their spirits up!"

"Darling, you could stand there completely motionless and keep their spirits up."

"Yeah, but where's the fun in that?" she grinned, scampering off to refill a serving grrl's tray. "Say hi for me!"

Rico just rolled his eyes and hefted the tray, two pitchers of water and one pitcher of juice sloshing. It had been a while since he'd been on serving duties; he liked to joke that the skirts just didn't flatter his legs anymore. Maneuvering carefully through the crowd, he headed up the broad curved staircase to the upper floors, which were also seeing considerable use. To the rear of the building were the rooms for rent, all full of homesteaders from the south too nervous to return home and likely would be until this horde business was over. At the front, overlooking the Scarf's famous grand hall, were the dancing girls' and grrls' rooms, for when they weren't dancing in the strict technical sense.

He guided his tray past the closely spaced doors, all too aware of the muffled sounds of pleasure from within, and trotted to the much quieter hallways beyond.

"Room service," he called, knocking on the door to Room 11 with his head when it became clear he needed both paws to grip the tray. Did these always use to be so heavy?

The door opened to reveal Kenyon's vast bulk filling the portal, the buckles on his heavy coveralls level with Rico's eyes. "Awww, it's only Rico," he rumbled, moving to close the door again. "Sorry, everyone."

"HEY!"

Laughter spilled into the hallway as Kenyon opened the door once more, stepping back to allow his uncle entrance. "Just kidding," he grinned, tail wagging. "Please, come in. The kits were about to start chewing on me if they didn't get anything to eat."

"We_have_ food in the_wagon_, we don't need to eat your uncle out of house and home!" This from Odella hirself, taking up a corner of the sitting room and the entirety of the poor couch that had never been designed for this sort of duty. Shi still wore hir white robes, but a blanket had been thrown over hir belly that only seemed to amplify how swollen shi had become; Rico wasn't even sure how shi fit through the room's door!

The kits spilled out of the next room, which held two large and very expensive beds. The Scarf might be known for its sultry and affordable maidens, its selection of wines and its discretion, but it was also Bayside's finest restaurant, a popular location for birthday celebrations, and spacious lodgings for travellers. They were upon him before he could bring the tray all the way down to the small round table, but he managed to land everything with a little help from the deceptively swift Kenyon. "Whoa, there, easy! Let me put it down first!"

"No!" Briar chirped, bouncing up and down. "You need hugs NOW!"

Pueblo paused, paw halfway to cramming another cracker into his muzzle. "Hugff?" he said sheepishly. "Forry, I jufft ffaw the ffood..."

Chuckling and shaking his head, Rico left the three kits and his mountain-sized nephew, and perched on the edge of the stool near Odella's couch. He tried not to focus on hir belly, but given that from this angle that just left focusing on already far-too-noticeable nethers or breasts, he gave up and stared at the candle just above hir. "I don't mind, really," he said gently. "I've certainly got enough to feed you all, and... you really only brought oats and hardtack with you. Everything else you sold to the Rangers to distribute to the citizens."

"We gave it away, we didn't sell it," the coati replied crossly. "I'm not about to go around SELLING food to starving people."

"We're not starving-"

"Don't you tell me what you're not!"

Rico paused and decided to try and change the subject. "You spent all day touring the town today. I even hear Commander Dirgo had to deploy a few of the Rangers as an escort for your wagon."

Odella sighed, shifting hir weight so shi could actually see who was addressing hir. "He didn't need to do that, my grrls had it under control. There was just some... excitement, I suppose."

"He made it sound like a riot."

"Wasn't a riot! Just some damn fool people acting like they've never seen a pregnant lady before!" Hir paws tugged at hir robes, shifting the blanket a few inches and doing absolutely nothing to hide the vastness of hir belly. "The grrls had it under control."

"Then I'm sure it was nothing," Rico said smoothly. "That said, I have to be able to show my appreciation for everything you've done SOME how, and if I can do that by stuffing your little ones full of cheese and crackers, then so be it."

"Fmank youff!" the kits chorused. Kenyon would have added his own thanks, but he'd been caught finishing off one of the jugs of juice.

"You act like I don't feed you!" Odella snapped.

"You don't!" Briar replied helpfully.

"Well... I've been busy!"

"Moving on," Rico said hastily. "Tomorrow is the last day, as I understand it."

The sounds of audible chewing faded almost instantly, four tails lowering several inches.

"Er, what I mean to say is, it's the last day, before, the, uh... horde arrives."

"You've quite a way with words," Odella grimaced. "Have ye ever thought if becoming a curandera? You've got the subtlety for it."

"Er... yes," he blushed. "Look, I know it's not my place to be questioning-"

"Smart man."

"-but there's a lot of... talk. Not just here at the Scarf, but all over town. In the trenches, as it were. Talk's just talk, of course, it's all well and good and it's perfectly natural given the circumstances, but the nature of the talk is... concerning."

"Ahh, ye lost the edge," Odella sighed. "Now you're back to hemming and hawing and pussyfooting around what you really want to say."

"I think he means-"

"I KNOW what he means, Ken," the coati snapped. "I want _him_to say it! Stars above know no-one else has the balls to say it to my face."

"There's talk of a wall, there's talk of fire and water and ice and knives and lightning from the sky and monsters from the depths and... and all_sorts_ of things. None of them would surprise me, really, considering the things you've seen and done and saved us from."

Hir eyebrow arched. "Really? None of that would surprise you?"

"Not... much," he conceded. "The monsters might be a little much, but it's gaining some popularity among the youth. No-one knows what the sigils in the dirt mean, so they're having to guess, and these aren't the sort of folk prone to philosophy."

"And what's your guess, Uncle Philosopher?" Even sprawled out on a rather drab paisley couch, with hir hair in a haphazard bun and a blanket casually tossed across hir belly, even looking about as gravid as a snake that's just swallowed an ox, shi commanded the space around hir. "You've successfully plied my family with cheese, bought their undying loyalty. Out with it."

Rico scrubbed his paws together. "I've seen LaCombe first thing in the morning, when shi can barely string two words together without one of them tripping over the other, and I've seen hir after shi's drank two pots of coffee and sucked back two of those awful cigars of hirs. It's a fun switch, to be sure, but shi's humming like a sawband when shi's like that."

"And?"

"And now I'm seeing an entire town like that!" he all but exploded. "I've known half these people my entire life, and you wouldn't get more than two blinks out of them if you suddenly caught fire and declare yourself King of the Cactus People! They see problems one at a time, knock 'em down and cope as best they can, and move onto the next one. They're hard-working, and I dare say simple, folk, and right now more than I can count are hopping up and down and debating how you're going to sweep an entire horde off the face of the earth like so many poker chips!"

"It's only natural to wonder about things like that."

"They're not 'just wondering', they're fever-hot for it. There ain't enough coffee in the world to set them jumping like this, but they're jumping. I've been hearing from my grrls more and more, they're not sleeping, and lots of them in town aren't sleeping, either. This ain't nervous energy, I've seen that before. This ain't fear, I've_definitely_ seen that before. This ain't even how they get when you come to town. This is..."

Odella grinned. "Magic?"

"YES!"

"Well, what'd you expect? You think I'm just gonna have thousands of people digging ditches in the hot sun for no reason? That seems cruel, don't you think?"

Rico looked back and forth between Odella and Kenyon helplessly. The kits had finished off the food and were busy sharing the second pitcher of juice between them, apparently oblivious to the fact that there were cups provided. "That's your plan?!"

"That's... an ingredient."

"And what are you going to do when they get here?!"

Odella pushed hirself a little more upright, one paw flapping. "Zora, sweetie, could you get me a water? I'm a little parched over here."

Rico watched, incredulously, as the young half-coati brought her mother a cup of water, seemingly without a care in the world. "Here you go, Mother."

"Thank you, dear."

Rico's hands twitched, his fingers plucking at nothing. He slammed his palms against his knees to keep them from bouncing, but that just set his tail to thumping against the back of the stool. He looked to Kenyon, but the barrel-chested fox just shrugged apologetically.

"Well?!"

Odella finished hir drink, licked hir lips contentedly and sat back. "When they get here, we're going to politely ask them not to attack us."

---

The horde marched all throughout the day. There seemed to be some sort of a schedule to which parts of it would stop periodically, the entire amorphous mass of nomadic society folding in upon itself endlessly. The front would pull to the side and stop, and have until the rear guard passed to complete their tasks. In this fashion the center of the horde always kept moving at a steady but impressively brisk pace.

Huge metal wagons filled with water plodded along implacably around the carriage Saraceno found himself in. Apparently, two had been left behind in Rockrose to be refilled, and they would catch up when the horde stopped in Bayside, which according to Borne would be in two days.

Perhaps more than anything, Borne was intrigued at Bayside's self-sufficiency. "Hundreds of wells?" he'd gasped, when Saraceno described the Circle's full-time tasks of dowsing for fresh groundwater and setting up new homesteads. "Remarkable! This witch of yours seems quite... different to the ones I've met."

Saraceno didn't know curandera from one another, but from what he'd heard Odella was, indeed, one of a kind.

Saraceno slept in the carriage. Food and water was brought to him regularly by blank-faced but not unkind soldiers, each armed with a similar rifle. At one point some younger members of the horde (Saraceno had a difficult time not thinking of them as prisoners) clambered into the rolling carriage, full of questions about Bayside. They were from somewhere incredibly far off, having spent more than a year on the road following Borne, and the rumors of a city of plenty were captivating.

"How high are the walls?" one young, whip-lean canine asked. Saraceno didn't recognize the species, something with incredibly short black hair and far too many teeth. "Are there many children allowed inside?"

"We... don't have walls, like that," Saraceno frowned. "There's a fence around the Rangers Compound, but you can jump over it. I guess we have a gate, on the major roads, but that's just for the look of things. There's... plenty of children, I guess? I don't know exactly, I didn't read the last census."

Their eyes widened. "No walls?" the smaller, fluffier girl asked, clearly something related to the goats Saraceno was used to. "How do you stay safe? You must have a mighty army!"

Saraceno fielded a few questions regarding the Rangers themselves, careful to avoid anything directly related to numbers or armaments, and explained that their curandera had a fearsome reputation. In recent years, that reputation had been enough to protect them from harassment, and where that failed the Rangers were swift to respond and bring the criminals to justice.

"What about beasts?!"

"Monsters!"

"Abominations!" giggled the third one, a shaggy young pony that Saraceno thought looked slightly like a younger version of himself. It was clearly a word they enjoyed using. "We were set upon by an abomination in the spring, with wings that blotted out the sun and teeth _everywhere!_Not just in its mouth!"

"How did you escape?" the older hoss asked.

"Borne protected us!" the pony proclaimed proudly. "The soldiers drill constantly, memorizing tactics and formations and... and stuff. The abomination swooped in, and landed on one of the water tanks, and started trying to tear into it, and he shouted out 'FORM UP!', and all the guns came up like weeds in a field, and he shouted 'FIRE!' and then the creature, I mean, the abomination went ker-FLOOM, like it exploded! Everyone was so happy, we just set up camp right there to celebrate!"

Saraceno frowned, not liking the sound of that. The Rangers were a skilled and dedicated force, but Borne's artillery was filling him with dread. "We... haven't had creatures like that in a long time. I remember hearing about one when I was just a foal, but it was to the south of us, and Odella... er, the curandera, lured it away."

Their spirits fell, clearly expecting to hear tales of ferocious battles. Saraceno knew a few of them second-hand, bandied about the Rangers barracks after hours, but he wasn't about to go around filling their minds with violent hearsay.

After they'd gone, a stern-faced bull with a huge hat pulled down low over his eyes sticking his head in the door and hollering at them for interfering with the guest, Saraceno sat against one of the trunks and pondered. He'd gathered information, that was undoubtable, but it seemed as though they'd learned more from him than he from them.

The sun was looming low and heavy in the sky, turning the omnipresent dust clouds brick-red. The horizon-spanning caravan would stop the moment the sun disappeared completely, at which point a thousand tiny cookfires would spring to life.

Eventually he decided that he probably wouldn't survive to see Bayside again, or if he did it would be to watch it disappear, empty and defiled, into the distance behind them. He had faith in the Baysiders, he had faith in the curandera, and he even had faith in the plan, what little of it he knew, but there was a certain brutal, horrid logic to Borne's mission.

The door squeaked. The tired, and for the first time in his life morose, hoss glanced over to see a tall, lanky rodent of some kind he couldn't quite place. The horde contained any number of exotic species he couldn't identify. Black ridges of fur seemed to be battling for space with much closer-cropped brownish fuzz, which only made the loose-fitting white tunic more glaringly out of place.

"Let me in," the weasel-like creature said in flat, leaden tones.

Saraceno looked down to where one of the creature's feet was already placed inside the carriage, and shrugged. You've got more right to be here than me, he thought.

The newcomer's lips twitched and he nearly spat between his tiny front teeth. "Let me in!"

The horde was still marching outside, but for how much longer? Minutes, maybe, no more. The words were bland, but forced, the creature's eyes wide with... something. Urgency, not fear. Delicately tapered fingers rippled across the barrel of the rifle it clutched awkwardly, turned sideways against the door frame and blocking it from climbing fully into the carriage.

It didn't stop him from reaching out and jabbing Saraceno's cheek roughly with a tiny black claw. "Let me IN, kid!"

Oh.

"Johnny?" he asked, taking a deep breath. The rodent's eyes bulged, but could do nothing but wait as the hoss tried to clear his mind.

I pushed Johnny out before. I must have... put up barriers. I want... I want to let Johnny in. It became a mantra. He exhaled, slowly, visualizing bricks being removed from his brain, the closest he could come to approximating the situation.Remember the mission. Let Johnny in. Remember the mission. Let Johnny in. Remember the-

"OK, shut up," he said, blinking in surprise.

The rodent blinked, flexing his jaw and looking about in bemusement. He tried to move further into the carriage but the barrel of his gun caught him across the chest. He frowned and took a step back, dancing quickly to keep pace with the still-rolling carriage.

"And the water better be cold this time!" Saraceno hollered.

The weasel, for it was of the weasel family but of a type which he himself did not know, just nodded, and shut the carriage door. Saraceno knew that it was a weasel, knew that the weasel knew it was a weasel, because Johnny knew it.

"Welcome back," he said to the empty carriage.

"Thanks. I feel like I'm going to barf. Like, ghost barf."

"That's... wonderful."

"I'm outta here, are you coming with? I mean... do you think you can make it out of here?"

Saraceno shook his head. "No chance. They know about me. They said I'm welcome to leave, but... I don't think I'm going to get the chance until Borne says so."

"Thought so, kid. I... you did good. Sorry about before."

"It's ok."

"No, it ain't. I know it ain't right what I'm doing," Johnny said through the hoss's lips. "Not in the, you know, always-walk-on-the-sunny-side-of-life leave-a-penny-take-a-penny kind of way. But right now, it... it just ain't as wrong as it could be."

"I'm sure we'll see it that way."

"Don't be like that, Corporal. What's done is done, but right now you're pushing me out again. Just give me a few more minutes, and with any luck you'll never see me again."

"That doesn't fill me with reassurance."

The spirit hissed in exasperation. "God dammit, kid, you know that ain't what I meant. You're going to see Bayside, you're going to see your friends, you'll probably even see that girl in the Circle you've been mooning over."

The hoss jerked. "What? How'd you know? You're not poking around in_my-...!"_

The scowl became a laugh in a flash. "I was just guessing, kid! Seems like all you Rangers have a thing for either the Circle, or the Scarf girls. You army types ain't changed so much. But if you want me to bring what you've learned back to Della, you better let me do a little looking around in here. Scout's honor, I won't look at nothing you don't want me to see. Just... think, real hard, about what you done today."

For a moment he felt the pressure rising behind his eyes, but it fell away again. He was too tired to bother fighting. "I don't know if it will help. It's what we knew, mostly. He's coming to take Bayside, take all of them, bring them into the fold, then... keep marching."

"Mmm hmm," Johnny said hurriedly, "and I bet he's a real sweet gal who cooks and cleans, too. Kid, there's some funny business floating around this here horde, and I know a big angry woman who's gonna know what to do with it. You thinking of it?"

"I'm thinking! I'm thinking!"

"Ok, let's see, that's... eugh. That's his family? Jee-zus."

---

The Rangers had their hands full the next day. Bayside had found a peaceful, centered calm over the last week, but that calm had shattered like a hurled bottle. Fights broke out over minor arguments. Workers in the fields, digging and hauling with manic frenzy, had started dropping from exhaustion. Tents had been set up by the Circle, filled with cots and heavy clay pots of cool water, for recuperation, but by midafternoon they were filled to capacity.

LaCombe had been the one to bring word from the curandera, slamming the simple note down on the heavy table that still took over hir precious library. "We're halting work!" shi snapped, a touch triumphantly. Shi tried to keep that note out of hir voice, but some of the eyebrows went up in a manner that seemed to insinuate shi hadn't been entirely successful.

"We're nearly complete-"

"We're complete enough, shi says. Shi signed it hirself. 'Quit digging in the damn dirt while there's still a Bayside left to protect. Come to the plaza at sundown. After that, go home. Be with your loved ones. And don't look at me like that, Geanna.'"

The hyena squeaked indignantly, snatching the note out of LaCombe's hand and scanning it furiously. Hir cheeks reddened as the other members of the Circle, and the braver menfolk on the Council, chuckled. "Does the curandera know how much work remains on hir sigils?" shi asked stiffly.

"Shi says shi does, and they're done enough. I can read the note to you again, if you'd like..."

The hyena just harumphed and slid the note back across to LaCombe. "Probably for the best anyways. The horde is moving faster than your little pushpins would have us think," shi stated, gesturing to the map as though proving it wrong would restore hir impugned dignity.

"Be here tomorrow afternoon, looks like," Hebert nodded. "A _little_ahead of schedule, Geanna, and one not likely to make a difference if they decide to stop early so they're fresh for us. Either way, we've planned for this."

"_Someone_planned for this," Geanna added. It was no secret that the Circle, and in particular their nominal leader, were somewhat miffed they hadn't been made privy to the entirety of the plan. "Dirgo?"

The wolverine slouched against the far corner, drawing the shadows around himself as though he possessed a shred of the Work and the Way himself. In his monstrous clawed paw he held a tiny book, flipping through it carefully. "Hmm?" he grunted.

"You're the hope of Bayside. Are your Rangers prepared?"

Dirgo wore his dress greens, two huge revolvers laying against his thighs and two immense swords hanging high and back on his hips, though they looked properly-sized on his frame. "We are always prepared," he said, not taking his eyes off of the pages.

Odella had explained, more than once over the course of the week, that for certain quite important reasons the fullness of the plan could not be explained to the public at large. That was, as shi said, the trick of the magic; if you knew how it worked, it didn't work. LaCombe knew more than half of it, Hebert a little more even than that, and Uncle Rico now proclaimed to know far TOO much of it, but he adamantly refused to 'open his damn fool mouth in case that nonsense comes out'.

Dirgo, apparently, had been made privy to the entirety of the plan, or at the very least the multiple different potentialities and contingencies that could play out. The majority of his week had been spent going over individual orders with his troops, the good young men and women of the Rangers, for what to do on 'the big day', as it was being called. The wolverine disliked the term; it reminded him too much of the holidays that seemed to come about with increasing frequency. Nonetheless, they knew their roles and their parts, their positions and their duties, and clutching their tiny piece of the puzzle they vowed to fulfill their orders to their last.

Geanna's fingers drummed angrily on the table, digging tiny furrows with hir blunted claws. "Splendid," shi muttered.

The Rangers' runners were summoned, and were tasked with passing along Odella's message. There was initially a great deal of confusion and concern, the long-legged messengers skittering and twitching with the terrific pent-up ebullience all those within Bayside seemed to suffer from, but when they were shown the note, in particular Odella's signature, they nodded eagerly. Geanna did hir best to fold the note to cover up hir own name, but LaCombe smoothed it out, quite by accident, shi was sure.

I'll be glad when this is done, one way or another, LaCombe thought when the meeting was adjourned, standing by the window and watching as, just down the street and beyond the edge of the Scarf itself, the amphitheatre was being prepared for Odella's announcement. Shi bounced arrhythmically on hir hooves, chewing hir lip furiously. I haven't had any coffee in two days, and I still feel like there's a sawblade in my britches!

- - - - -

"My people!"

The roar that erupted from the crowd caused Kenyon's ears to flatten against his skull, but Odella just straightened up even taller, which wasn't saying much. Hir husband's heavy paw braced hir lower back, allowing hir to stand on hir own two feet more or less under hir own power. Hir white robes rode high in the front, and one of hir spares needed to be hastily tied around hir waist to keep hir hermness more or less decent, especially important when standing on a raised stage above those whose respect you were dearly trying to keep.

The sun had been down for some time, the distant western horizon a clear ribbon of gold fading to lush indigo overhead. On a normal night there would have been a dozen gas lamps burning merrily away in the plaza, and a crown of smaller candles gracing the amphiteatre itself if there was to be a performance of some sort. Light would spill out of the buildings and businesses and second-level homes surrounding the great public space, giving the space the sense of being encased by an onyx cage studded with gold.

On this night the plaza burned with the light of day, such that even Odella's vast figure seemed to create no shadow at hir back. Every lamp and lantern, every candle and torch had been brought out of hiding, adding a legion of dancing motes to the two great bonfires that once again burned merrily away, flanking the statue of the curandera at the plaza's heart. The night itself had been pushed back by sheer force; darkness did not seem to exist within Bayside this night.

"In the distance, the horde stands on our doorstep. Their dust rose like a mountain in the light of the setting sun, and even now their fires outnumber our own!" Odella flung hir hands out, high and wide and, shi hoped, dramatically. "Many of you saw the whispers on the horizon, the darkness of the approaching conflict, but I say to you now... what do you think they see when they look to the North?"

A hundred answers blasted forth from a thousand throats, but in the absence of any appropriately accurate or perhaps philosophical response, most of the crowd simply cheered. The explosion of sound rolled over hir and shi grinned. Timura, you're a marvel, shi thought to hirself.

The stage had been decorated simply, with white bedsheets from the Scarf being repurposed into vertical hanging pleats that Odella felt looked rather striking. Colored and smoked glass had been added to the candle sconces, limning hir in rainbow light that shimmered across hir robes, particularly hir belly. Shi didn't need to look fearsome, shi knew, just impressive, and this was certainly... something.

"Tomorrow you face the greatest threat to Bayside in your lifetimes... the last great threat, of course, being yours truly!" This got a gale of raucous laughter, which reassured hir that Timura's enchantment was working. The joke wasn't especially funny, and indeed made hir feel a little ashamed, but it had seemed like the only time shi could acknowledge hir history to everyone at once. Shi knew shi'd have to answer a few more questions from the kits later, who knew just enough about the old Odella to be dangerous.

Shi didn't feel that shi was 'lying' to them, exactly. Shi could replay every single conversation in hir mind and find not one single untruth shi spoke, and untruths were the bedrock of lies, as Kenyon would say. Of course, he would then go on to say that omissions and exaggerations were the hills and valleys of lies, the greater and lesser extents of the entire vast panoramic landscape of prevarication, but shi figured no-one would notice a few valleys. Not right away. Probably.

"You've worked hard this week, pulling together like never before. Shoulder to shoulder, day and night, tirelessly, ceaselessly. You are not just a loose collection of homesteads, you're not just a town in the middle of the harsh and unforgiving desert... you're a family!"

Another cheer nearly dwarfed the first. Throughout the crowd shi could see arms suddenly being thrown around shoulders in a neck-rattling show of camaraderie. The bodies pressed forwards, and shi was grateful for the Rangers standing guard behind a short wooden fence, keeping the adoring fanatics at bay. I bet if Johnny were he here, he'd have one of his stories about when this happened to him. Yap yap yap, I used to be famous, and so forth.

Shi shared the stage with Geanna and Hebert, who were in turn standing behind Kenyon and flinching every time the audience roared. Shi'd invited LaCombe to come up, but the okapi had balked at the idea. Balking might, perhaps, not even be the appropriate word for it, but Odella was fairly sure the librarian knew half a dozen others that would be more suitable. As it was, the okapi's eyes had widened, showing whites all around, and shi'd instead stammered that maybe shi should watch the kits at the library, maybe teach them a few simple tabletop games.

"And you've allowed me to become more than just a... protector." Shi'd agonized over which word to use there, and LaCombe had given hir several options, some more historically accurate and less flattering than others. Kenyon had advised hir to keep it simple. "You've allowed me to call Bayside my home, as well. You've welcomed my family with open arms. You've... accepted me."

If it were possible for an entire mob to shuffle it's feet self-consciously at the same time, they would have done so. There were cheers, there were whistles, there were laughs and even a few tears. Odella chalked most of it up to the enchantment, which would peak sometime the next day, but it was still nice to think that underlying the hysterical emotional outbursts there was some honesty.

"Which is why tomorrow, as one CITY, as one FAMILY, we are going to GATHER, and we are going to MARCH, and with my FAMILY at my back we are going to SHOW the HORDE that there are things in this world that are not only worth PROTECTING, but CAN NOT BE DEFEATED!"

Without the ability to see that which was truly there, more truthful than what the mere eye could detect, shi felt shi still would have seen the explosive waves of energy rolling off of the crowd as their cheering reached frenzied levels. The Rangers staggered under the weight of the pressed bodies, fences creaking and flexing. Youngsters were hoisted onto shoulders in celebratory delight, and in a few precarious locations were joined by the elderly.

"They can probably hear this in their camp," Kenyon rumbled, planting a smooch between Odella's ears. He couldn't hear himself over the cacophany, but he knew his wife's hearing was as eerily sharp as ever. "Maybe this will scare them off?"

"I hope not," shi replied, leaning gratefully against his paw, hir legs already tired. Shi caressed the front of hir belly, feeling the jostles of hir kits within stirring in response to the crowd. "They've gone far enough. If'n there's no more room in the world for the likes of me, there's no more room for hordes, neither."

Kenyon nodded, not having caught a single word.

---

Only a single candle burned in the sitting space of their room at the Scarf. Odella had claimed the couch, as was hir right. Timura lay curled up on the floor by Odella's feet, hir feline muzzle drawn and exhausted. Hir arm was out of the sling, finally (curandera healed fast), and the burnt patches of fur were showing some new glimmers of white underfluff, but shi'd spent almost an entire week Hidden In Sight and that had eaten away at what few reserves shi had left.

Johnny, in the form of a gaunt and dirt-streaked feral jackrabbit, sat on the table surrounded by seeds and stems from the pile of grapes he'd been given. Juices slicked his muzzle but he was beyond caring. The jackrabbit himself was just happy to finally be done running, and so Johnny'd rewarded the mostly-willing host of his spirit by letting him be in control of the food.

After nearly twenty minutes, which had seen Timura fall asleep twice and snore hirself awake and Odella begin to pluck at the stray threads that had come loose around the widest portion of hir robes, the jackrabbit seemed to squeak, belch, sigh, and then rolled over like a sack of laundry.

"Thank you," the tiny muzzle said at last. "It would have been torture for him to just sit back and watch ME eat. He's a good boy. Found his warren right on the edge of where the crusade camped. Would'a run right over him in the morning."

Odella snorted. "Crusade?"

"S'what he calls the thing," Johnny continued with a faint buck-toothed lisp.

"Is Saraceno all-"

"He's fine. He's a guest, to hear them talk. He's gonna be marched right up to you tomorrow, Della, and he's gonna be their bargaining chip. Rather than have Borne talk to you, he's gonna have Saraceno do it for him."

Timura frowned. "To what end? Sure he's not convinced the hoss that they're RIGHT!"

"It ain't as simple as that. Borne... that's the human, by the way... he's told Saraceno his whole hard-luck story. Humans, whole big piles of them, living underground, under a mountain, living off of mold and slime, in the darkness, ever since the nuclears went down. Folks like us lived ON the mountain and killed them if they came out."

"Where is this mountain?"

The jackrabbit gestured vaguely with one leg. "East. East so far you wouldn't believe it, Della. He's been on the move for years. At first he was just part of some kids that got kicked out of the mountain. Too many mouths to feed, not enough slime, you know? When there's too many, they kick the surplus out, to see if they can survive on the surface. Not many did, you can bet. But he... he's a different one. Started fighting from the mountains, picking them off, setting traps, making them scared. They started telling stories about him. Called him a ghost."

Kenyon's snores could be heard from the bedroom, where the huge fox was curled up with the three kits. They'd insisted that they weren't tired, and were eager to teach their mother the card games that LaCombe had shown them, but the second their heads touched their pillows, eyes had rolled back and tails went limp as week-old celery.

"And that's when he figured out how to get everyone away from the mountain," Odella murmured, plucking one thread and clucking in dismay when it opened up another gap across hir belly.

"Not quite. Wasn't until a curandera showed up."

Timura and Odella sighed together, the ringtail rubbing at hir still-healing wrist. "Ah," they said.

"Figured out that whatever it is you curandera have, whatever it is that makes you different... it don't work on him. Shi couldn't find him, couldn't hear him, couldn't pick up his trail, even when he was right in front of hir. So he walks right into one of their camps one night, walks right up to hir, and challenges hir, and... well, I don't know for SURE what happened. I couldn't get into his head. But I got into the head of someone who was there, and he didn't see how it all went down. He just saw when it was... all done."

Timura nodded slowly. "They started following him."

"Started calling him Unkillable. Started calling him a Prophet. Started coming up with stories that he was leading them, not AWAY from somewhere, but TOWARDS."

Silence crept in around the shadowy corners of the sitting room. Where Bayside had been a blast furnace of sound earlier in the night, beyond their walls the region sat as still and quiet as a tomb. Timura's enchantments, worked bit by bit in the trenches, magnified by the nascent earthen sigils filled with hard-working souls, had coaxed even the most severe and taciturn Baysider into a wild-eyed, bellowing champion of justice. Hir last bit of influence, though, ensured that there wasn't a single sleepless inhabitant for a mile in any direction. Even the Ranger patrols, stepped up on this night of nights, were slumped over and snoozing at their posts, or sometimes sitting back-to-back in the scrub desert.

"We're in his way," Timura muttered.

"Oh, it's worse'n that," Johnny whined, the rabbit twitching in response to the guest spirit's emotions. "It's been getting worse for a while now. Some of 'em, the old ones, the ones who've been on the road the longest, they're waiting for their fight. They're seeing it as the last great... great hurrah before they get to whatever damn fool place they think it is they're going. Borne's given them guns, more guns than you've ever seen in your life, Della. He knew where the old humans, the ones before, had stashed 'em. He had books about the world before, knew where their armies stationed up when they weren't being used. Everyone who joins up with him, they get a gun of their very own."

More guns than I've ever seen, Odella swallowed. And you know how many I've seen...

"Then what-"

"They got no bullets."

Timura's jaw dropped. "You can't be serious."

The jackrabbit shook. "Them bullets, they're filled with gunpowder. Odella knows all this. Gotta keep that powder safe, gotta keep it dry. All the ammunition Kenyon's pulled out of the ground has been good just because that city down there is warm, and dry, and protected. Ain't even been a gentle breeze down there in thousands of years. But Borne, he hardly found any that still worked, and half of what he does have left won't work if they try. They got guns, they got enough guns to make a line from here to the moon, but they got hardly anything to put in 'em. Only a few of the leaders know that. It's a secret. And it ain't even the worst one."

Odella's eyes widened as Johnny kept talking. He'd hopped into dozens of bodies, leaping around the horde and prying a few loose memories wherever he could. Most of what he'd learned wasn't particularly useful, but it came down to a few major themes that he relayed to the curandera. For one, they had only enough ammunition to match maybe a third of a guns that the horde possessed, and hardly more than a handful of rounds apiece. The bullets were apportioned out and some of the higher ranking members of the leadership were under orders to shoot them off periodically, just often enough to make it seem like ammunition was not a problem.

Perhaps worse, the food situation was similarly afflicted. The pace at which the horde had grown was not being matched by the supplies being raided. As it was, there was some panic amongst the horde's lieutenants that if Bayside didn't fall, and swiftly, they might just end up being starved out.

"They are a holy locomotive that's about to run out of steam, or as they used to say back in my day... 'they be fucked'."

Johnny had ridden his jackrabbit vessel hard for hours to bring this news to Odella, desperate to give hir time to mull it over and disseminate the information to the Circle and the Council and the Rangers and whomever else needed to be in on the plan. A sensible horde could be reasoned with, but a desperate horde, even if only a fraction of the guns were capable of lethal force, could still practically level the town.

Odella's eyes half-lidded, hir tail twitched spastically, but much to Johnny's bemusement shi actually smiled. "Perfect," shi murmured, steepling hir fingers across hir bust.

Timura nodded. "Couldn't have gone better if I'd planned it. Which I did."

"Oh, you hush, you crazy old woman. You didn't plan this."

"As if you'd come up with something so devious?"

"You didn't plan they'd run out of FOOD. That's just a nice little carrot to dangle, so to speak."

"Says the woman who believes you can catch more flies with blunt force trauma than with rotting fruit."

Johnny's lapine muzzle quivered. "It's 'honey', actually, and... what in the high holy hells are you two on about?!"

"Nothing, Johnny, nothing. You... you are a hero. I'm going to make sure they get a statue of you to go up right next to mine. Maybe a little... smaller. And behind mine, of course. And we'd have to figure out what sort of animal you'd be, but..." The coati stifled a yawn. "A statue. Definitely."

"Eat your grapes," Timura added, waving a paw diffidently while shi, too, yawned with jaw-creaking force.

The jackrabbit's tiny eyes flicked back and forth between the two herms as though it couldn't decide which predator to be more scared of. "You're going to fall asleep, aren't you?! You're going to let me spill me guts and without so much as a 'thank you' or 'would you care for a little bit of cabbage', you're just going to sleep?!"

Odella honked once, which could have been either a negative or an affirmative. Hir eyes were closed and gave no clues. The ringtail, curled up on the floor like a colossal lump of coal, just buried hir muzzle deeper between hir expansive bust and hir forearm.

Johnny's ears flattened. "I should just bite you both," he muttered, weakly pawing a grape over to his host's exhausted mouth. His eyes climbed the walls, already feeling more than sensing the curandera's presence shifting. "Serve you right."

---

There they are, my little ones, Odella thought aloud. The kits were tiny blazing stars of luminosity, Briar in particular flickering with unpredictable and irregular bursts of inner flame. Kenyon was visible as an ember-red glow that seemed to envelop the smaller but far more intense half-foxes curled up against his bulk. Their physical bodies were little more than dark grey outlines against the total blackness of the dream's eternal night. Shi'd always been told that everything here, the totality of that which was real and unreal, was still nothing more than a representation, a figment, an idiom, and would appear different to each individual perspective.

To hir, the Universe seemed to be made of blown glass, crystal membranes thinner than an eyelash, each filled with that precious fluid of life.

Sleep well, dear ones. Mommy has you.

WOW, YOU REALLY THINK THAT WAY.

Odella couldn't spin around. In this place, which wasn't a place at all, shi had no body and could not whirl, as much as shi wished shi could. Hir awareness expanded around the center of hir consciousness until it included the wispy, bloated cloud of Timura's presence in the dream world.

BLOATED?!?!

I just picked a word at random. It's not nice to listen in on other's thoughts.

I CAN HARDLY HELP IT CAN I? YOU LOOK LIKE A HEAD OF BROCOLI!

Odella wasn't aware of what HIR presence in this place that was not a place looked like, and even if shi was shi knew it would be different from what Timura saw. Without actually seeing, of course. Shi often wished shi were like LaCombe, master of words and able to bend the language to hir will. Shi was more the type to beat speech and prose until they gave up.

Shi looked 'down', as it were, and saw Johnny's little angry blue electrical arc of a spirit, dancing erratically around the faint white light of the jackrabbit. Shi saw Timura's vessel, filled to the brim with swirling white and red energies and tethering the bloat-... the impressively large cloud that marked the curandera's awareness.

THANK YOU.

You yell even here.

NOT MY FAULT.

Shi would have swallowed nervously if shi had a body (and, true enough, Johnny noticed Odella's still and sleeping body frowning and whimpering faintly), and expanded hir awareness to include hir own vessel.

And was nearly blinded by the twin blazing motes within hir belly, far outshining hir own inner light.

So fragile, shi thought, or spoke, or something. There was no real boundary between them, here. So small.

Hir presence, hir awareness, was tethered by a spiritual umbillicus shi could only just barely detect, but it was hir fervent hope that shi was metaphorically distancing hirself from hir unborn by venturing into the dreamworld. Shi wouldn't be affecting them with hir night's exertions.

WOULD IT BE SO BAD IF YOU DID? THEY'RE NOT LIKELY TO COME OUT WITH THREE HEADS AND NINE TAILS AT THIS POINT. I CAN SENSE THEM, THEY'VE GOT THE NORMAL NUMBER OF EVERYTHING.

Odella thought of Briar, and the tiny herm's invisible friend, Tea. Tea existed largely down in the obliterated city beneath their homestead, and had apparently lived there since the events that all but removed humans from the face of the world. To hear Briar describe it, Tea slowly... coalesced from the swirling energies down in that lightless tomb. It had no goals, it had no desires, and it had no presence that Odella could discern. It only interacted with Briar, and even then to do little more than pester hir with questions.

Except for that one night where Tea saved little Briar's life, and made itself known to Odella just long enough to impart unto hir the tiniest and simultaneously grandest secret of the nuclears.

That sort of power frightened hir more than the Work and the Way ever had.

There's worse things than that, was all shi thought to Timura, but the drifting orange presence had picked up more than a few of Odella's thoughts, spiked as they were with anxiety and fear.

YOU GONNA FLOAT HERE ALL NIGHT LOOKING LIKE BROCCOLI? WE HAVE A JOB TO DO.

Odella expanded hir awareness, pushing it beyond the boundaries of their tiny room at the Scarf. It grew to envelop the entire building, then the surrounding buildings, then the plaza beyond. Soon, straining, shi was aware of the entirety of Bayside, thousands upon thousands of glimmering quartz dolls glowing with the elemental luminescence of life. The youngest were blinding specks, the oldest brick-red and comfortably warm to behold, but on this night they sputtered and sparked.

You do good work, Odella thought.

IT'S MY SPECIALTY, WHAT CAN I SAY. WE CAN'T ALL BE FIGHTERS AND LOVERS AND, I DON'T KNOW, FARMERS, WHATEVER IT IS YOU DO UP IN THOSE HILLS.

Working Behind the World, invisible to most mortals but more Real than they could ever know, Timura had planted the seeds of what shi liked to call righteousness, but Odella preferred to think of as fanaticism. Normally-dull farmers found themselves recalling the heady, spirited nights of their younger days, when romance filled the dreams that punctuated lives that had a tendency to be nasty, brutish and short. Similar to how adrenaline flooded one's flesh in response to danger or excitement, Timura had flooded their minds with all of the passion that had once dwelled there, bringing long-dormant fissures cracking clear to the surface.

And tomorrow, all of that pent-up energy would be released in a single cataclysmic blast.

As both curandera continued to expand their awareness, the horde crept in at the fringes. It soon became obvious there were _more_lights there, more spirits, more vessels, but if anyone in this world could be said to know it, the curandera knew that size wasn't everything.

Best wishes, Odella thought.

YOU TOO! Timura responded, the swirling ochre cloud drifting on the windless void towards the lights of the horde.

With Bayside spread out below hir like an illuminated map, lights gathered in roughly flattish, square clusters indicating tents and buildings, Odella began to trace fleshless fingers between them. Wherever shi 'touched', tiny filaments like spidersilk followed, leaving tracers in the dreamland's eternal night.

A spiderweb that connected thousands of minds.

Good evening, my family, shi whispered, setting the filaments to humming. I have a very special dream for you tonight...

- - - - -

The day stretched out, oven-hot hardpan shimmering. At the right angle, Saraceno liked to think that it gave the impression of a thin layer of water covering the entire world. A fruitless hallucination, to be sure, but it amused him, and occasionally reassured him.

It was certainly not having either of those effects on him at the moment, walking slowly and stiffly between two huge, heavily-armed bovines. The steer to his left stared out balefully beneath a shaggy mop of golden hair, the rest of the bulky soldier a uniform dust-covered black. To his right was an even larger chestnut bull who seemed to be walking with his tiny eyes clenched shut, rifle slung across his bulging forearms. They weren't actively being aggressors, and indeed the larger bull had offered him a hunk of bread while they walked; it was just an inescapable fact that they were under strict orders to ensure he didn't wander away from the tiny convoy, and they'd made no bones about the fact that they intended to use whatever force necessary to obey those orders.

Not like there's anywhere to escape TO, he thought dryly, watching the distant tent growing larger as they strode through the illusory wetlands, kicking up puffs of dried-blood dust in their wake. Borne walked behind the trio, and he was backed up by a further wedge of well-armed acolytes, all wearing the identical white jerkins. Saraceno, walking at the head of the procession, felt like the carrot being dangled on the end of a stick.

Or the bait on the end of a hook.

They'd been walking for a quarter of an hour, and he knew that, back at the horde's camp (or the crusade's, to ask them directly), several thousand determined and ever so slightly desperate men, women and youngsters were being given the sorts of weapons that the Rangers were lucky to possess. The chatter had been unavoidable, even considering his position as tacit prisoner. Rumor had it that, at long last, the drifting and homeless tribe would be forced to resort to lethal measures to ensure their survival and prosperity, to reach that ephemeral paradise that lay just beyond the horizon. There was excitement in the air and trepidation on the lips of everyone Saraceno could see through the carriage windows.

But first, Bayside was being given the perfectly diplomatic and peaceful opportunity to surrender. The horde's spotters had picked it up shortly after dawn, casting a tremendous shadow across the dessicated plain.

What are you doing, Odell-... curandera?

The tent was huge and white and was larger than his dorm hall back at the Ranger's barracks. He supposed it belonged to the Gossamer Scarf; he could just barely remember a similar tent being used for weddings in previous years where the Rangers had been called upon to perform honor guard and to witness one of their own being bound by matrimony. It would have been impressive enough, but it now sat atop what could only be described as an impromptu mountain. A squat, flat-topped pyramid of hard-packed desert soil rose above them like some great but low-budget sacrificial temple, with a broad ramp sloping up from the direction of the horde.

Subtle.

"Hey, it's me, I'm back," he whispered to himself, startling himself with his tongue's sudden movements. He stumbled, just once, and knuckles tightened around rifles like the sound of floorboards settling in a sudden chill.

He blinked, forcing himself to walk steady even as his heart started to slam against his ribs.

"Johnny?"

"Yeah. Sorry, not an easy way to warn you. I've spent the entire morning teaching farmers to sing Broadway show tunes. Look, things went well, as far as I can figure. Odella's gonna say some crazy shit, and I need you, NEED you, to play along."

The procession reached the bottom of the ramp. It rose maybe twenty five feet ahead of them, and was just long enough for them to march two abreast. He didn't know how all of the earthworks had been mounded in such a fashion in one night, but he supposed nothing should surprise him anymore. There was a human walking not a dozen paces behind him, and another one, this time dead, controlling his tongue. What was peculiar anymore?

"What's going on?"

"Just agree with hir. Please."

"Can't you just talk for me? I'm not a good liar."

"If the last few days taught me anything, it's that you're probably going to kick me right the fuck out of your head the second you hear what shi has to say, and then you'll need to be Marlon Brando all by your lonesome."

"Who?"

"He was... look, it doesn't matter. Act shocked, or hell, don't even act, you probably won't need to, but don't say shi's wrong!"

The pressure was just starting up behind his eyes when the presence disappeared and Saraceno found himself in full control of his own skull once more. It made sense, he realized all too quickly; if there was bad news waiting for him at the top of this ramp, he no doubt would suffer another bruised psyche, as he had back when he and Johnny had first walked through the heart of the horde.

What is shi about to say?!

Finally cresting the long approach to the apex of the dirt-based ziggurat, he was confused anew to find it almost disappointingly empty. A half-dozen Rangers stood, weapons holstered, on the far side of the plateau. That insufferable okapi was leaning against a small wooden desk at the approximate center of the open space, looking equal parts smug and terrified. Just to hir left was a bed, an actual bed, upon which lay Odella hirself, draped with lace-trimmed black sheets and wearing some sort of onyx-colored nightie that, were Saraceno a little more worldly, he would have classified as lingerie. The overall effect, once he allowed himself to properly process what he was seeing, was a mixture of almost unbearable sexuality and sultriness, and a level of grumpy frustration that Dirgo himself would have been proud of.

Standing just behind Odella and fanning hir gently with a flower-print square of cloth, was Kenyon. Out of everyone present, the colossal fox seemed the most out-of-place, and he dearly looked as though he would rather have been literally anywhere else.

Sacareno walked towards the trio, glancing to either side at the desert scrub spread out around and below them for miles. Far to the east he could make out the brownish-grey lump of the Bloody Foot Hills through the haze. To the west the Dust seemed to fade smoothly from land to sky. Beyond the Rangers, his former comrades, he could make out the winding, twisting, overlapping ditches that the Baysiders had been furiously digging, and just beyond them, Bayside itself.

He saluted the Rangers. They returned smartly, fists thumping against their hearts.

"Impressive," Borne said grandly, stopping just a few paces beyond the top of the ramp, his armed escort fanning out to either side. They were clearly trying to keep an eye on the Rangers and the surrounding terrain, but to a one the men and women assigned to protect the human kept glancing at the considerable expanses of Odella's dun-and-copper fur on display. Many brows rose in frank disbelief at the sheer scale of the belly that the black sheets tried to cover, but could never completely mask. It was obvious that the curandera, for the three-breasted coati could be nothing else, was improbably, achingly pregnant.

"Thank you," Odella replied blandly, stretched out on hir side and looking as though shi considered the entire situation rather boring. "Pleasant walk?"

"Quite."

Six Rangers, Saraceno thought. Thirty horde soldiers. No-one else in sight. He peered beyond the low edge of the free standing tent, looking for some sign, any sign of Bayside's forces mustering in the distance. There were just the berms and ditches, the abandoned huts and lean-tos of the workers, and the huddled, faded buildings on the horizon.

No wonder Johnny had to warn me. I'd have thought the curandera mad!

---

"Of course," Odella smiled pleasantly, "you realize that you came all this way for nothing."

Hir first sight of the human left hir... expectant. Shi'd heard LaCombe, and of late Pueblo had joined in, describing the humans of the Time Before in breathless, reverent tones. The brilliant works of science and art that spanned the globe, the devices which converted energy into work and food and leisure and pleasure. Buildings that scraped the sky (a few of those existed in the caverns below hir homestead, and they scraped nothing but mottled, organic-looking sandstone). Self-propelled wagons by the millions, by the millions, that heralded families to and fro. Humans had bent the elements, the very fabric of the Universe, to their whims.

Shi'd expected him to be taller.

Borne just chuckled, ruffling his sweat-slicked, pinkish-brown fingers back through his peculiar, sharply-bordered mane of hair. "I must say, I had thought some of the stories I'd heard were pure fabrication, meant to frighten or confuse the simple-minded. Surely, I thought to myself, such... fantastical tales of the curandera of Bayside couldn't be true." His eyes roamed hir body, but shi had to admit that there was an efficient, mechanical path to his gaze. He wasn't admiring the show shi was putting on. He was sizing up an opponent.

"I assure you, I've spent a great many years putting a stop to the retelling of the stories that would put what you must have heard to shame," shi smirked, adjusting hir top. Kenyon had, for whatever reason, packed quite the variety of hir clothes, and shi'd found more than one of hir saucier outfits in the trunk. It was certainly having an effect; the soldiers forming a nearly solid wall of fur and gunmetal seemed to be averting their gaze with painful dedication. "You have caught me at... not my best, and for that I apologize."

"You are with child, of course," Borne smiled, bowing slightly at the hip, more to hir belly than to hir face. "I am impressed that you are here, in light of what must be difficult times. As you must certainly know, it is never my intention to cause harm to anyone, and I would certainly not disturb anyone who was in no position to travel once it was time for my people to move on."

"You are gracious, for true," Odella responded, actually hearing Kenyon's toes curl in his boots. Shi could feel the anger coming off of him, the normally loose and slouchy fox as tense and rigid as sprung steel. "If it pleases you, then, you are free to move on now and there need be no more fuss about little old me."

Saraceno glanced back and forth between the two of them. Odella had ordered Johnny to warn the hoss that there would undoubtedly be some confusing and perhaps startling revelations, but shi knew there was a noble streak in him that wouldn't break even in the face of certain death. With any luck, though, it had enough bend for them to get through this little talk in one piece. In one peace, shi thought with a faint grin. Hah, I'm funny! I need to remember that for when I'm telling this story later...

"You smile at what must surely be a joke at my expense, ma'am," Borne said, his own open and honest visage not flinching one iota. "We are moving north, and we have a great and wondrous journey to undertake. The mountains to the north of you, they surely mark the boundary between this interminable desert and some land beyond."

"Aye, more mountains." Odella glanced over to LaCombe. "Correct?"

The okapi twitched, hir gaze transfixed by the human, the real live actual human standing in front of hir. He was taller than shi, but not by much. His face looked much more... expressive than shi would have guessed, going on the basis of the various skull ideograms shi'd come across. There were portraits of real humans, of course, but without the benefit of dimension, of depth, of motion, they always seemed peculiarly assembled collections of miscellaneous bits and pieces, eyes and ears and noses and whatnot. This was a real one.

"Ahem?"

LaCombe jerked. "Yes!" shi snapped, reaching into the single open shelf beneath the desktop. A chorus of clicks and snaps filled the tent as better than a dozen rifles swung around to bead directly on hir huge, trembling dark eyes. Moving with a surgeon's precision, shi withdrew the rolled-up map, removed the waxed string, and slowly spread it out on the desk. Fingers trembling, shi withdrew a few small paperweights from hir decolletage and used them to pin down the corners of the map. "There's... you see... well, look here!"

Borne frowned and walked over, one paw (hand, Odella corrected hirself) resting on the pommel of a huge revolver, the other stroking his muzzle (chin, darn it!) He stared at the map, scanning for reference points, and slowly moved in a semicircle to orient himself in a more familiar fashion. His hip nearly brushed against LaCombe's, but he stopped himself just short. It wouldn't have made much difference; LaCombe yowled something soft and unintelligible and scampered out of the way.

"This is us," he said, gesturing to a black circle filled in with red.

"V-very good," LaCombe managed.

The human glanced sideways, eyeing up the librarian a little more critically than he had Odella. "An acolyte? A curandera in training?" he inquired, eyes twitching just once to the overstuffed denim shorts shi wore.

LaCombe's jaw dropped, just for a moment, and closed again with a click. "Librarian, actually," shi retorted, straightening up and losing what anxiety shi'd seemed to have. "Some of us can get by in this world with our brains and a few good books, you know! I don't have to-"

"LaCombe," Odella sighed tiredly, recognizing that the okapi's berserk button had just been trodden on.

Hir brow furrowed, hir cheeks clenching, but shi managed to keep silent. "Yes, that's us," shi muttered. "And that's Bayside, and that's the road north, and about four days beyond that there's the foothills, then there's the Granite which is nothing but cracked tabletops and sloughs, and then the roads scatter into the few settlements at the base of the mountains, and then that's it._Right now those few hamlets are probably groaning under the weight of the hungry mouths you've driven ahead of you, like rats fleeing a _plague, and you know why the roads stop there? Because there's nothing past those mountains!"

Borne stood placidly while the okapi's ire built, until he was very nearly being shouted at. His escort, good men and women one and all, tightened their fingers on their rifles once more. "Of course there is," he said. "The world is not flat, my dear creature. There's no sudden dropoff into the void of space. There must be _something_beyond those mountains... it just remains to be seen quite what. Your maps, I feel, maybe be... inadequate."

And then he goes grinding his bootheels into it, Odella thought sourly. The man... if you can call it a man, I mean LOOK at it... knows what he's doing. "The maps end there," shi explained, surprising hirself by actually sounding patient and knowledgeable, "with scouting parties reporting ranges of mountains beyond every other range of mountains, passes only marginally less fatal to travellers than the peaks themselves, and the complete lack of support or assistance should anyone attempt to push the roads through them. You think it's difficult for a team of prepared mountaineers and surveyors to get a dozen miles into that range and return to tell the tale? Try hauling a wagontrain full of children. Because you'd have to."

Borne wasn't listening. He stared at the edge of the map, where the mountains, jagged black diamonds scrawled with a clearly frustrated charcoal pencil, were bordered by an even thicker, meandering line. That boundary occasionally jutted inwards, creating small peninsulas of tiny peaks. "And this is the edge of the ocean?"

LaCombe's lips moved silently. "Is that how you pronounce it? I've seen the word, but I always thought... but no, that's the edge of the Dust."

The human nodded. "Ocean. All right, so, that area right there would correspond roughly to... hmmm."

The assembled parties watched as he reached into his robe and withdrew a small metal tube. It was the Rangers' turn to flex their fingers towards their weapons, but they remembered their orders well and made no overt moves. Borne's wrinkly pink fingers worked the edge of the tube and unscrewed some sort of lid, producing a scroll which he unrolled against LaCombe's map, holding down the edges with his palms. LaCombe leaned in over his shoulder, pressing hir bust against his elbow, all animosity vanished in the presence of that most holy of things: new information. "Oooo, now _that's_a map! What does that say? I only recognize some of those phonemes, and that character is entirely new to me. And that one. What are the blue lines?"

The armed escorts and pregnant curandera forgotten, they both scanned the two maps and immediately found the similarities between the bays and inlets far to the north of Bayside. "Those mountains shouldn't extend that far down," Borne muttered. "There must have been some tectonic upheavals. The topography is all wrong, but the boundary lines... those still mostly match up. Which means there _is_a way around."

"Are you blind, human? There's no way AROUND, it's mountains driving right into the Dust itself! You'd have to... oh, crap," shi swore. "You can't drag THAT many people into the Dust! Children! The elderly! Your wagons wouldn't make it fifty yards, and anyone on foot would sink after a hundred! You'd never make it!"

Borne straightened, resealing his map, much to LaCombe's annoyance. "Nonsense. You're only saying that because no-one ever has. This has been very productive, thank you."

Odella sat up to resume the parlay, but Borne turned and walked swiftly back towards the ramp. His escort closed in around him like the folding petals of the flowers that so rarely bloomed in the desert. Shi reached out with hir Senses as much as shi could, as much as shi dared with the kits in hir belly as active as they were, but still found a strange nothingness where the human stood. Shi could sense the energies of everyone on top of the pyramid, and the Baysiders concealed in the distance, but there seemed to be a dip in the Universe itself where Borne was concerned. Shi could detect the absence, a conspicuous dark spot in hir mind, but nothing where _he_was concerned. "Hey!" shi snapped.

Borne glanced back over his shoulder. "I've returned your spy. He was a model guest, and I trust he will enlighten you. Depending on how the weather holds, we should be back this way in... two hours?"

"Two hours," the curandera said flatly.

"Yes. It does take a while to get that many people moving, you have no idea! The logistics are a nightmare. Mr. Saraceno has spoken with many of my lieutenants, though, and he should be able to describe our firepower and our resolve. Correct?" This last was directed at the hoss himself, who still stood somewhat dazed some distance to the side, away from LaCombe and hir desk.

"What? Oh... yes, I... he is not lying, Miss Odella. He-"

"Mrs."

"What?"

"I'm_married._ You call me Mrs. Odella. Except you don't call me that, either, just Odella."

Saraceno's lips worked, trying to stay a mere one step behind the conversation. "Odella. He outnumbers us. They outgun us. And their supplies are... low. They will have no choice but to attempt to conquer Bayside. The casualties will be enormous!"

"That's up to him," Odella grunted, gesturing towards Borne, who still stood half-turned, observing the exchange over one shoulder. "He can go around or he can turn back. OR, if he's let the sun cook whatever brains humans have in those little heads, he can throw his life away. Bayside will not be threatened, Bayside will not be subjugated, and we certainly won't be conquered."

"You can't be serious!" LaCombe snapped, aghast. "He's a human! They killed the world! You think he'd turn back just because we'd resist? To our dying breath?!"

Easy, grrl, the curandera thought. This is not your strong suit. "He's just one human, LaCombe, leading a horde of more sensible folk. The world will be better when the last one's gone."

Borne's eyes twitched, his lips curling up in a sick imitation of a smile. "He's not the last one!" Saraceno cried. "There's a mountain FULL of them! Thousands upon thousands!"

"Bah, they're fine there," Odella sniffed dismissively.

"Dear!" Kenyon stage-whispered , tail whirring anxiously. "We're trying to prevent a war, not guarantee one!"

"It's only a war if _he_makes it one!" shi replied, gesturing to where Borne was more red than tan now. "He whipped some poor souls into a frenzy and raided a few towns and suddenly he thinks he's king of the world. Call yourself emperor of the galaxy for all I care, but you will never take our people nor possess an acre of our land."

Borne twitched, turning fully to face Saraceno. "Is this true?" he hissed. "Are your people really so willing to die for a scrap of dead land?"

Odella watched the gears turning behind the hoss's eyes, and shi wished shi could sense if Johnny was present or not. The air around hir practically shimmered with tension shi didn't need the Sight to see. Kenyon's fanning was so fierce hir curls had blown over hir eyes, but shi didn't care. Come on, you can do it...

"Yes," Saraceno whispered sadly. "They... _we..._will never join you."

Despite the strange, smooth, shiny exterior, Borne began to growl in a way that reminded Odella of Commander Dirgo, complete with the twitching muscles in his neck. "So be it," he intoned. "It can not be said I did not try to end this peacefully. When we return, tell all of what you have seen here!" he ordered his escort, forcing his way roughly through them and storming down the ramp.

The wind picked up, bringing a swirling veil of reddish dust through the open-sided tent. Saraceno's tail drooped sadly. LaCombe's thick fingers tapped and rattled against hir desk. Kenyon realized he was fanning hard enough to knock his beloved over and forced himself to relax, twining his paws in the fabric.

"Yeah," Odella smiled, beginning the long process of sitting up. "That went well."

---

The Rangers disassembled the tent in short order, but Odella left hir bed in place. If shi was going to be facing down an army, shi wanted a comfortable seat and a good view.

Saraceno stayed with the curandera, frantically relaying everything that he'd learned. Johnny had picked up a lot of the major points while rifling through his memories, but the complete history, the _narrative_of Borne's crusade remained to be told. Odella sat politely and listened to the breathless recitation, describing in detail the photographs he'd been shown. LaCombe interrupted frequently to ask about the technological devices and the new words, and he did his best to answer hir questions while remaining on topic.

"I don't think he can stop! I don't think he KNOWS how to stop! He's been moving along for years, and they've never had real resistance! They ran into a bandit outfit last year, armed and armored, and it was all over after one volley of bullets! He's killed curandera himself, with his bare hands!" Saraceno was twitching now, and Johnny had been ejected from his head twice in failed attempts to calm him.

Odella's muzzle clenched, but shi nodded. "I'm not surprised. The Work and the Way operate on their own strange set of rules... and those rules don't seem to include humans. I see what Timura meant now, and I think I know why. I think I understand. Timmy?"

Saraceno's ears perked up. "Uhm... who?" he asked, glancing at the only other two occupants of the pyramid.

"One moment."

LaCombe was ready this time, and shi hastily cast hir eyes down when Timura stepped out of Walking Above The World, light and shadow twisting interchangeably as shi seemed to draw mass and depth from thin air. With a final faint 'pop', the black-clad ringtail appeared, holding onto Briar's tiny hand. The youth's green necklace sparkled, the only splash of color against the greyish-brown fur and the greyish-brown travelling clothes.

"Hello," shi smiled, waggling hir fingers. "That was awesome."

"Hrofl," Saraceno managed, swaying on his feet and trying to uncross his eyes.

LaCombe was at his side in a flash, gripping his elbow. "You're not supposed to _look_when a curandera does that," shi said in a gentle, teacherly manner. "The nausea will pass."

"Yaaarg."

Timura led Briar over to hir mother. "You did very well for your first time," Timura said fondly. "Shi's a natural, Della."

That did not seem to please the coati, but shi let it slide. "You two Saw everything?"

"It was wierd," Briar said in hir high, tiny voice. "Everything was inside out and backwards, but I knew what everything was. It was easy to see YOU, Mommy," shi giggled, poking Odella's tummy.

"Yes, yes, you're very astute. Did you See the human?"

"Not as such," Timura said, frowning, at the same moment Briar piped up with "Yup!"

The older curandera stared at the neophyte. "What?" they chorused, but Odella had the twinkling in hir eye that denoted a plan coming together.

"Yeah, he was different than the other ones, but I saw him. He was inside-out, too, but inside-out compared to everything else that was inside-out. But not right-side-in, either." Shi frowned, the language failing hir retelling. "I know what I mean, but I don't know how to-"

"That happens a lot," Odella chuckled. "You'll get used to seeing things and doing things that you can't tell people about, because you literally can't tell people."

"Everyone else has these lights inside of them, like a fireplace, but he had light going INTO him, like all of the streams flowing into the pond back home. The streams came from everywhere. It was kinda neat. It was kind of like Tea, actually."

Bingo, Odella smiled to hirself, feeling something important click into place. Shi didn't know quite what it meant yet, but there was a path forming, a story. The humans, the city below hir homestead, the entity known as Tea, the nuclears... there was something.

"They're on the move," Timura noted, nodding to the south. "The lot of them. Can see _that_fire from plenty far away without trying. You wanted a big, dramatic moment, Della, you got it."

"The drama's the important bit," the coati grinned, feeling, however briefly, like hir old self. "You can't work magic like this without the drama."

"I think you're enjoying this just a little bit too much," LaCombe scolded. "We're _about_to be caught in the crossfire of a... hey! I just got that term! HAH! One second..."

Everyone stared at LaCombe as the hourglassed okapi pulled a notebook out of hir cleavage and jotted down a few quick notes. "Crossfire... standing... location... _between..._guns... so obvious!"

"A-a-anyways," Saraceno said slowly, turning his attention back to the curandera.Four herms, three of them witches, and me. This is not how I planned my last day."There are two heavily-armed forces converging on this location! I... well, I assume the Bayside forces are converging. The city is poorly laid out for a defensive position, especially given the approaching firepower. Should Commander Dirgo be here? He will surely-"

"He's got his orders," Odella said brusquely. "And now you're about to be getting yours. There's NO heavily-armed forces converging on this point, but right now there's only a few of us know that. You're one of them, now."

Saraceno's equine head swivelled around to stare at the approaching dust cloud of the crusading horde, and then back to the north where he half-hoped to see a similar sign of reinforcements, but there was none.

"What?" he managed.

"There ain't no big shootout. The Baysiders don't have guns, more or less, and the horde ain't got no bullets, more or less. What there's _about_to be is a line getting drawn in the sand, and anyone who crosses it is going to be dealing with me directly. You follow?"

"I... no!" he shouted, directly into the curandera's face. "I don't!"

Timura brought hir paw up to hir muzzle, impressed and a little nervous on Saraceno's behalf. Briar's back stiffened, hir stripey tail puffing outwards indignantly. LaCombe's jaw just dropped. "And I thought _I_was new around here," shi muttered. "We don't have a lot of time for chit-chat, so either you trust in the plan and you stand by hir side, or you don't trust the plan and you try and get yourself a seat in the carriage again. Your pick."

"Thank you, LaCombe," Odella said, very softly, patting the okapi's knee absently. "Very... succinct."

"Daddy's almost back," Briar said, squinting into the distance to the south. "Are we really... you know... going to stop them?"

"WE are going to do our darndest, honey," the coati smiled gently, stroking hir daughter's coppery locks, so similar to hir own. "YOU, however, are going to stay behind your daddy when he gets here. I want my family at my back, but I _also_don't want my family gettin' holed by no sharpshooter with more luck than sense."

Timura looked offended. "Are you saying you don't trust me?"

"I'm saying... stay behind your daddy."

"HEY!"

"You DO have a plan, then?" Saraceno asked, a tinge of desperation to his voice. "If they're low on ammunition, you can't possibly think that's going to suddenly stop everything, and thousands of people will suddenly see the error of their ways! Some of the worst things I've seen, patrolling the edge of the Dust and the borders near the Rose, involved bandits too poor to own guns, so they had to resort to more... creative solutions."

Odella's jaw clenched and shi leaned forwards, opposed largely by hir own rather overblown curves. "You're young, my boy, so please believe me when I say you've dealt with brigands that were downright civilized pacifists compared to some of the bands I've encountered in my long and horrible career. You're not telling me anything I don't know. Suffice to say, there are some things in this world that a curandera can do and a curandera can't do... and I think the time of the witch is passing."

To the north, a steadily-growing shadow flowing along the road towards them eventually manifested into the outline of perhaps every Ranger in the land, marching stiffly six abreast and maybe twenty long. Saraceno had never seen the entire assemblage of the Ranger corps before; there had to be every new recruit too green even to be allowed firearm ownership in that column. Maybe even the civvies who just scrubbed the floors and painted the walls over and over had been conscripted into the day's battle. A few loose specks studded the great central mass, no doubt the Circle and those locals too eager to be kept away from the front lines.

And... that was it.

Six score and some farmers with more rust in their barrels than gunpowder. Saraceno swallowed. What has become...

In Odella's bright, sparkling eyes, in Timura's angry little obsidian marbles, in Briar's shockingly green gaze, there was nothing but confident determination. LaCombe's dark brown stare was filled with the barely-restrained anger he was realizing was hir default state, but it was enough that for once it did not seem to be aimed at him. With enough soldiers to fill the Gossamer Scarf and a few young witches more used to dowsing wells and dancing nude, they would be the single defensive bulwark against a horde that had marched virtually unopposed for years, that had swept aside the Rockrose in a single afternoon.

The hoss shrugged. "They just better have my sabres with me," he grunted, standing and staring towards the approaching stormcloud of kicked-up dust. "And my dress greens. If I'm going to die, I at least want to look like I meant it."

Odella smiled. "That's the spirit. We'll make a Baysider out of you yet."

"What about me?" LaCombe asked.

"Are you kidding?" Timura grinned. "I'm surprised you're not running the place yet."

"Thanks?"

. . . . .

In the end, the entirety of Bayside's Ranger corps, Odella's Circle, and even half of the town's Council fit on the flattened top of the earthworks pyramid. Had any of them experience with bodies of water larger than Odella's pond, they might have been put in mind of rats gathering atop a singing ship (but they also would have needed the concept of a ship explained to them, and this likely would have taken quite a long time).

Odella's bed was moved to the front, such that hir belly hung far enough off the edge of the frame to sway a few scant inches above the ramp that led down to the dusty plain's natural grade. Kenyon stood by hir side, wearing the outfit shi'd hoped to never see him wearing again. Using some of his old mining equipment as a base, he'd had a suit of makeshift armour constructed some years before. Ostensibly it had been designed and built to keep him safe while exploring the more dangerous locations in the dead city beneath their homestead, more than once he'd brought it out when Bayside was threatened, although to date he'd never actually needed to use it. Heavy plates of mismatched metals were riveted onto the thick, inflexible oiled canvas backing. More rivets studded his forging gloves, his mining boots, and interlocking rings formed a grim grey veil hanging from his helmet. All in all, the suit took two strong men to lift, but Kenyon walked as easily as ever.

Standing behind their golem-like father, Pueblo, Zora and Briar peeked out from around his legs. The oldest clutched the bright yellow book to his chest; he'd read the entirety four times now, and depending how the day ended, he knew he had a lot of work to do with LaCombe and the Council. Assuming everything went according to plan.

"Everything will go according to plan," Briar said, baring hir tiny fangs. "Mom's not about to let some uppity horde ruin the twins' birth."

There had been some concern from the Council, from the Rangers, and from Kenyon himself, about letting the youngsters remain at the front of the line, but Odella had been insistent. Shi couldn't do hir best work, shi'd argued, if shi was worrying about how the little ones were doing, so if the little ones were right there shi wouldn't NEED to guess or worry. Kenyon, as always, had been the first to surrender to hir will, and staring up at the mountainous steel-shod prospector had robbed most everyone else of the desire for further discussion.

Kenyon shifted the huge sledgehammer from paw to paw. "You keep your heads down and stay behind me."

"_Everyone's_behind you."

"Are you calling me fat, Zora?"

"Not... exactly?"

The huge fox grunted. "I admit, this fit better the last time I had to put it on, but that's none of your business."

"Just more man to love, honey," Odella chuckled.

To the south, the horde seemed to stretch across the entire horizon. Over the last half hour the great central mass of the marauding little empire had bulged and spread, until now the soldiers to the east and west were nearly out of sight. It was a daunting sight, made all the worse by the arrhythmic sounds of heavy drums rolling across the parched plains. It may have been intended to sound like a heartbeat, but with the distances involved and the unreliable echoing effects of the lumpy foothills nearby the heartbeat was clearly feverish and faltering.

The Rangers shifted their weight uncertainly. Most of them had practiced field manoeuvers of this type, with row after row prepared to fire and then instantly kneel in order to let the ranks beyond them fire, over and over. The greenest recruits and the civvies were on hand, ready to spring up and down the lines with fresh ammunition and bandages should the need arise. There was a distinct difference between practicing against an advancing force of straw dummies and the real thing, and right now the real thing was outnumbering them more than twenty to one, at the spotters' best guesses.

"Steady," Dirgo called, his voice carrying across the top of the pyramid. As the only figure even close to Kenyon's stature, he was easy for the Rangers to spot at the front of the line, made even more impressive by the broad green hat he only wore when pressed into some sort of official service for Bayside. Most recently it had been used at the wedding of one of his better captains, and he'd removed it as soon as the ceremony seemed to be over. "Do not fire, at all, until signalled!"

The Circle were scattered through their ranks as well, as most of the young women were involved with at least one of the Rangers, in the way that such relationships tended to develop. Those that were the least attached were on hand to offer emotional support, and the occasional cheek kiss for good luck. With well-rehearsed, meaning-filled glances and modest gestures, information was passed back and forth between them, funnelling slowly to Geanna. The hyena was standing rather uncomfortably next to LaCombe, the both of them positioned just behind Odella.

For the time being, all power in the region seemed to be getting routed directly through a small, badly overburdened day bed and the pregnant coati lounging atop it.

"Getting awfully close," Timura murmured, acting as a buffer between Dirgo and Odella. "What's the, whatcha callit, range, on those guns?"

Odella blinked. "What? You're really asking that now?"

"Well, I ain't never used them before! That was always YOUR thing, not mine! I mostly seen em used close enough for a well-thrown chair to be just as effective, but I've seen holes put in buildings, and folk, who were more'n half a mile away from the scuffle."

"Let's just assume half a mile then, but I don't think you're gonna be needing them that far out. They're gonna wanna get close, they're gonna wanna start this with talking, a-gain," shi sighed, seeming more put out by the expected speech than by gunfire.

When the horde's own scouts and spotters realized that the entirety of Bayside's defences seemed to have presented themselves as not just an easy target, but the _only_target, for many miles, the swath of rifle-toting crusaders began to curve inwards, filling fully half of the horizon now from east to west.

No-one was quite sure whether or not to be relieved when a small detachment split off from the central bulge of the horde and approached the pyramid. Odella smirked, but was a little put out that no-one seemed particularly pleased or impressed at how accurately shi'd called the situation. "Now they're going to shout some demands, give us an ultimatum. As though we hadn't heard that pink skinny thing already once today," shi muttered, loudly. Kenyon's weight shifted, his armor creaking and his boots now sunk fully an inch into the packed earth, but he said nothing.

The kits had lost their nervous energy, however, and just seemed nervous. Briar was shrunk back against Pueblo's side, hir big brother resting his forearm across the top of hir head in a manner that could be considered just sibling roughhousing, but Odella could tell it was protective. Zora peered out from their father's other leg, but with as much of her face as possible behind the thick metal plates. LaCombe had surreptitiously slipped behind Geanna, who seemed to be trying to make hirself seem shorter for the first time in anyone's recollection.

Only Dirgo and Timura stood unflinchingly against the darkening bruise of the horde, their eyes all but daring the opposition to open fire.

"If I'd known it was going to be this kind of a party, I would have brought punch," chirped a small voice from high above.

The high, musical sound seemed to cut through the impending doom, and a dozen pairs of eyes were dragged up to the fledgling takaoka that was perched atop Kenyon's helmet. Kenyon glanced to either side suspiciously, then down to his wife with confused eyes, but he quickly inferred where everyone else's attention was held. The bird's feathers were still smooth-edged and shiny, and it gleamed in the afternoon light, though the pitter-patter of grossly oversized talons against beaten bronze somewhat dampened the cuteness.

"Johnny?" Briar asked.

"Yeah, sorry I'm late. This was the fastest way to make sure everything was ready, and... you know." Normally brash and gruff, the tiny predatory avian seemed a strangely appropriate form for the spirit.

Odella nodded kindly. "You're a good man, Johnny, I don't care what the ladies down at the Scarf say about you."

"What do-... HEY."

"Everyone's ready?"

"Are you kidding? We could start this war right now, shirts and skins, and I'd still bet on us to win."

"They've only got one with just skin," Odella pointed out.

"No, see, it's a saying, it means... well... ok, it might have made more sense back when EVERYONE just had skin. Shut up. Yes, they're ready. How do my feathers look?"

"Just aching to bathe in the blood of your enemies."

"_Sweet."_The tiny bird puffed up proudly and actually strutted to stand atop Kenyon's visor. "Everyone just stand behind me! I got this!"

The approaching detachment was an impressive sight, no doubt. Fifty of the horde's largest, most intimidating folk, wearing brilliant white tunics with the red skull emblazoned across the chest, stood a short distance away from the bottom of the ramp. Rifle barrels bristled like porcupine quills, and Odella didn't need to be psychic to know_these_ ones would surely all be loaded. Most strangely, the detachment looked to be just as nervous as the Rangers at hir back.

"They're expecting something... but they don't know what," shi mused. "This is the most resistance they've ever encountered."

"Yippee for us," LaCombe snorted, earning a rough smack from Geanna.

"You hush. Their brave leader has always handled the curandera before, but not this time. Humans might be... immune, or whatever, to the Work and the Way," shi sniffed distastefully, waving hir paw to mask the pain left behind from striking the dense okapi. "But they know they're _very_susceptible to the sorts of things a real curandera can do."

Odella's tail twitched, just once. "I can't do those things at the moment, Geanna, so I assume you're just referring to Timura."

"Er...yes, Mistress! Of course! I didn't mean to-"

"Oh, hush, I can't hear what they're saying." Odella inhaled, a sight that would normally have caused a sudden catastrophic increase in blood pressure to anyone within sight of hir, but fortunately shi was facing away from hir allies, and the detachment at the bottom of the ramp was too far away. "Speak up! Say that again, please!"

The leader of the hefty little regiment swallowed visibly, and raised his voice. He was a huge, boulder-shouldered bear, and his voice certainly carried the second time. "Lay down your weapons! Alert your citizens that there will be no armed resistance!"

"From you? We accept!" Odella shouted, lips curling up in a smile. "We're so glad you've decided to see reason!"

The bear blinked and looked around, and there was a faint buzz from the group.

Timura knelt slightly, stage-whispering into Odella's ear but not trying to prevent the others from detecting it. "He used to be a farmer. Sorghum and oats. He never held a rifle before three years ago. You're scaring him about as much as Borne used to."

"There will be no resistance from your citizens!" the bear attempted again, choosing his words more carefully. "Lay down your weapons NOW and prepare to surrender! You are surrounded, and outnumbered!"

"We have the high ground!" Odella called back. "That has to count for something, right?"

Kenyon's armor creaked. "Dear, you're antagonizing them rather... more than necessary, aren't you?"

"Just trying to back them into a corner, sweetie."

"They're pretty sure they've backed _us_into a corner."

"Well, it's not my fault if they're wrong, now is it?"

"This is your last chance!" the bear bellowed, a streak of desperation hitching his voice high at the end. "Surrender, or we will be forced to attack!"

"As you wish!" Odella cried out, struggling to keep from laughing. Shi could feel the motion within hir belly, the kits responding to hir strange elation, the energy coursing through the very air. This was where the old Odella, the Wild Child, had lived a great deal of hir life. "It's been lovely chatting to you!"

The detachment folded in on itself and retreated, the formerly confident group now scanning the horizon nervously as though it were they that were surrounded, and not the other way around. It scuttled back to the horde like a beetle, soon disappearing from sight.

"I think that went well," Odella said, smoothing hir paws against hir belly and stretching out hir footpaws to pat hir daughters' legs. "You doing OK back there?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

"I have to pee."

"You should have gone _before_we went to war, sweetie."

Perhaps it had built slowly over the approaching hours, and the defenders of Bayside had missed it the first time. There was no mistaking the sound now, however; with a long, low, reverberating thrum that was more felt than heard, the horde began to move once more. The flanks, curving out for a quarter mile in either direction, were slower to catch up, but it was obvious they were converging on the little earthen pyramid and the stubborn, suicidal force stationed there.

"That did it," LaCombe murmured. "They're committed."

"Yup," Odella replied, tugging at hir coppery locks.

"You've set us on the path, for sure."

"Them and us, both."

"You've really decided this is the way it has to be?"

Odella felt a shiver, just the faintest little tremor, pass through hir body. The curandera were dying out, it was true. There had been fewer and fewer over the last few decades, and now proof that this Borne had been killing them as he found them. The newer ones were more numerous, but they were weaker, far weaker; the Way was no longer being concentrated into tiny, brilliant motes of power. The humans, lost for millennia, had re-emerged and nearly wrapped the world up into another global catastrophe, under the guise of peace and protection and family.

Who wants to live forever? Shi thought, hastily wiping away a tear.

"This is the way it needs to be," shi said at last. "Timura, you're ready?"

"Been ready since they started moving," the ringtail huffed. "Surprised you can't feel it!"

Odella extended just the tiniest bit of hir awareness, and sure enough there was a tremendous energy in the air, surrounding the pyramid. It had pressure without weight, speed without substance, and it was kicking up little dust devils by the dozen around the base of the earthen mound.

"It's wonderful," Geanna gasped. "I can see what shi's doing! It's like the trick with the candle, but... gosh, it's so big!"

"Been a while since I've heard that," Timura grunted, eliciting twin snorts from LaCombe and Odella. Kenyon's tail wagged once, and was still.

"Everyone, get ready. Dirgo..."

The wolverine stiffened, if it was possible for him to stand any more ramrod straight. "Miss." It was a statement of acknowledgement, nothing more. He had agreed, under duress from the Circle and Council, all of whom with more experience dealing with the curandera than he, that he would follow hir orders for the duration of the encounter... but that didn't mean he was going to raise his voice in a subservient, questioning tone. He was merely acceding to the insights of a specialist for a very unusual situation.

"Await my signal. You pop early, and we're going to have a problem."

He bristled, resenting the insinuation that he might break the chain of command, but his response was another short, sharp, "Miss."

"And when this is all over," shi continued, hir voice slipping from honeyed tones to a steel-shod edge, "you and I are going to sit down with a bottle of whisky and we are going to come to an understanding."

"..."

"Dirgo?"

"Miss."

---

The horde moved like a single amoebic monstrosity, bulging forwards in the middle as the advance ranks sought to gain ground quickly. Orders were relayed sharply between the commanders, most often picked by simple virtue of being the tallest with the best hearing, shouted in short codes to one another and then barked to the individual regiments directly. The spread wings, meant to cut off escape or reinforcements, were slowly drawn back into the central mass as thousands of crusaders converged on the single, unmistakable target.

At the rear, the wagon trains hung back but still crept along. The elderly watched over the children, together nearly as numerous as the able-bodied men and womenfolk marching on Bayside. The largest children, those deemed still too young to be trusted with the firearms (of which there were still many unused), pulled the wagons along at a sedate pace.

Borne stood atop his carriage, several ranks back from the vanguard soldiers but still well towards the front of the pack, and surveyed all of this.

He didn't want this, not _this,_exactly. Bayside was supposed to be a simple knock-over, like the Rockrose but simply larger. It had no proper defences or fortifications, it had nowhere near a large enough army to defend itself, and although they had several hundred weapons scavenged from some remarkably intact stash somewhere nearby, they still couldn't possibly hope to withstand a full assault.

And why did there have to be an assault in the first place? It was simple, it was logical, it was obvious_that the path of least resistance was the best and only path. There would be no bloodshed. There would be no loss of life. There would be some upheaval, but then the populations would merge and the journey would continue, in to the north, to the edge of the Dust and the jagged promontory of the mountains, and then _around, the path not yet travelled. It had once been coastline, rich and green, with trees hundreds of feet tall, and green through the hottest and coldest seasons. He had books, so many books, describing this land of beauty and bounty that surely had to have survived better than the dead and blasted lands he found himself in now.

"Canada," he whispered to himself, mostly sure he was pronouncing the ancient, forgotten word properly.

The pyramid was close enough he could see the individual shapes with his naked eyes. There were several terrifying large forms, but he was not worried about mere size. While he himself towered over most of the strange animal-people he led, he had encountered some that made him feel even smaller. There was tremendous physical variety in the creatures that had risen in the aftermath of mankind's downfall, and although their accents were strange and their mouths wholly unsuited to it, they somehow spoke words he understood.

There were rats in the warrens where he'd grown up, and cats who lived off the rats, and dogs who kept the cats out of the upper levels and fed on the surplus. They bore only a passing resemblance to the rats and cats and dogs in his books, but it was easy to see the resemblance between those bony, feral creatures and the rodents and felines and canines who now prepared his meals and washed his clothes.

_What wonderful magic hath the nuclear fire wrought,_he thought for the millionth time.

"Rifles!" he shouted, the cry picked up almost instantly by his commanders and repeated staccato up and down the lines.

Thousands of gleaming gunmetal barrels rose into the air, turned, and were braced, as they had been taught. The newest recruits from the Rockrose were in the middle of the pack, so to speak, where they would see the forward ranks fire, and with any luck be compelled to fulfill their duty. It was awfully quick for such a massive influx of people to be brought into a combat situation, but there was nothing else for it. The supplies situation was dire, to say the least. Not just ammunition, which was already critical, but food and medicine. Bayside needed to belong to him, and his people. Their survival depended on it.

"Ready!"

The horde rustled like a half-mile wide bird unfurling its wings.

"Aim!"

This time the bird cracked sharply, the forward three rows bristling.

They continued to march. Borne's eyes ached as he scanned the pyramid for some sign, _any_sign of surrender. That damned curandera had to know there was no way out, even for someone of hir power. One witch was a terror, that he knew... but even they had their limits.

"Do it..." he hissed under his breath, squinting. "Do it! Stand down! Retreat! Just... do it!"

The defenders atop their strange fortress did not. They stood their ground. As though to drive home their immovability, a tiny bird was now circling the defenders as though looking for a pleasant place to land and soak up the afternoon sun.

Borne closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and steeled himself. He had given them every chance... but he had responsibilities. He had a duty, both to the present circumstances, and to the place of his birth some five years and more than a thousand miles away.

"FIRE!"

So great was the span of the horde that it was fully a minute before the command reached the furthest tips of the flanking infantry, the hail of gunfire a huge, tolling peal of thunder that stretched out forever. The vanguard fired, stepping aside and back and allowing the second ranks to pass and fire. Then the third in this manner, and the fourth, until the foremost ranks had folded in on themselves completely. The pyramid seemed to explode as slugs of lead and copper and brass tore into it. Choking dust rose into the air, a strangely swirling hurricane of dingy grey debris twisting up from the peak in an hourglass shape.

The horde stopped. Borne staggered as his carriage jerked to a halt, the brutish but docile-enough bulls towing it unable to take another lumbering step without stepping on their kin.

The scales tipped back and forth for several long moments, but eventually settled onto the side of victorious whoops erupting all around Borne. Guns were waved, hats were tossed, and good folk clapped one another on the backs. They were in the majority, a sense of pride and relief spreading through the horde as they faced their greatest challenge, the greatest threat to their way of life, and they overcame... but many were the faces cast down in sadness and shame.

But the whoops died, and the despondent eyes rose, when the wide-bottomed tornado dissipated, revealing the Baysiders in the distance, still standing at attention, eyes forward. To the spotters disbelief, they didn't appear to have moved at all. The pyramid was pocked and gouged, more of a messy pile than the straight-sided earthen edifice it had been, but the apex remained untouched.

Borne's teeth clenched and his hands gripped his revolvers tight. "Clever," he snarled. He inhaled to bark the order to disarm and continue marching, intending to take the fight to a more up-close and personal distance, but the orders to fire sprang up from his commanders.

There were a few smatterings of gunfire, but the vanguard ranks had not been reloading as practiced. The horde blurred as a thousand frantic, panicking paws struggled to draw their precious few remaining rounds from pockets and pouches, armsmasters dispensing the more specialized ammunition to runners who would courier them to their destinations. There was no more roar, no thunder, no crashing avalanche of searing metal, but a fractured, disorganized popping that sank Borne's heart.

"Halt! CEASE!" he bellowed, drawing his own weapons and firing into the air to draw their attention. It had very little effect. There was a yowl of pain as a weapon discharged directly into someone's foot. Some of the midranks began to backtrack, realizing they'd only been given the single round, their commanders intending for there to be just the single show of force. What else could be needed, ran the story. With one volley, all defences could be wiped away. It would be simple. There would be blood, but those shortsighted, closed-minded Baysiders had accepted their fate.

More and more cartridges were expended, the horde surging forwards with renewed energy. Those without ammunition spun their weapons around and waved them like clubs, while still others drew the weapons that no sensible frontier folk would dare be without in this day and age. Axes and knives, the occasional short sword, or sometimes just a length of wrought iron with a crowbill twisted into one end.

The carriage started rolling again, and for the first time in many years Borne found himself at the mercy of the mob.

---

"Anyone hit?" Odella snapped. "Anyone?!"

Dirgo scanned the Rangers, line captains reporting the all clear. "None. Miss," he added, with just the barest trace of a hint of respect.

"Stop saying that like you _expected_me to fail!" Timura replied haughtily, sweat beading on hir brow as shi worked. Controlling the winds was one thing; shi could summon the sort of gale to flatten half of Bayside without too much trouble. Corralling it into a nice, tight circle that left everyone within its influence alive and intact was altogether another matter.

"It ain't that I don't trust you, loosen your britches," Odella chuckled. "I've seen mere air turn aside a dozen bullets. But a hundred? A thousand? Two thousand? There's bad odds, Timura, and there's bad odds."

"Bah."

"Oh, bah yourself."

It was hard to hear each other over the wind, dust still being sucked up off the scabbed sides of the pyramid and creating an angry, omnipresent hiss. Pebbles pinged and bounced off of Kenyon's armor, making the kits smile. The Rangers at the furthest corners found themselves inching away from the slowly eroding edge of the plateau. Timura's shield seemed to be holding, however, and those endless volleys had struck no flesh.

"They're on the move," Kenyon shouted, gripping his hammer so hard the handle flexed.

"They still shootin'?"

"Not... as much," Timura grunted, arms quivering with exertion, though shi seemed to merely be waving hir paws in front of hir. "Popping them off pretty regular, but not like the first ones. That was a _wall_of bullets, let me tell you!"

"We're gonna have to send the sifters out here next week, pick up all the rounds. There's a fortune in metal just laying around here now!"

"Not the time, Odella!" LaCombe quavered, watching an ocean (shi was vaguely aware of that word now) of angry, heavily-armed crusaders charging their very exposed position. "NOT the time!"

"Oh, right, right. Dirgo, I believe we're just about ready. You have the timing down?"

"Yes, Miss."

"The timing's important, mind! It's just a drunken hollerin' if there's no beat."

"_Yes,_Miss."

"Watch your tone, young man."

Commander Dirgo, the most feared Ranger in Bayside's storied history, the man who had once halted a three-family two-marriage six-gun feud in the Plaza merely by walking out of the Gossamer Scarf at the right time, glanced down at the woefully-pregnant curandera and smiled.

"Saraceno?"

"SIR!"

"Give the order."

The hoss blinked, tugging at the dress greens, sabres and all, that had indeed shown up with his compatriots. "Sir?"

The hulking wolverine glanced over to him. "Did I stutter?"

"Sir. SIR! Yes, sir!" Saraceno turned to face the Rangers, feeling just the faintest glimmer of pre-massacre pride. "REGIMENTS, PRESENT ARMS! FORWARD GUARD, MAKE READY! TAKE H-AIM!"

The horde was close enough now that they could make out the individual faces, expressions twisted with anger or excitement or just downright desire, that bloodlust that lurked just below the surface far too commonly these days. The gunfire had virtually ceased... the battle was now taking place the old-fashioned way.

Saraceno inhaled, and barked the order to commence firing."

---

By Borne's count, the Baysiders had maybe two hundred rifles up there, tops. Reputedly they had enough ammunition to have periodic live-fire training exercises, but even if they single round was a kill shot, every single volley, they'd all need to reload at least a dozen times. Worst-case scenario. There might be some higher-capacity weapons, but it was unlikely; due to their complexity, many such devices had simply rotted away during the millennia, even with proper care.

The pyramid would be overrun by then, he was confident... but he still lamented the senseless loss of life.

He knelt, slipping off the roof of the carriage and onto the trunk ledge, when he saw those rifles raise into the air. These Baysiders might truly be stupid enough to try and pick him off, even though he was well back from the front lines . A lucky shot could-

The Baysiders' vanguard fired, and he winced, waiting for the cries of pain that never materialized.

Curious, he peeked up and over the edge of the carriage, heedless of the strange looks he was receiving from his fellow crusaders still surging past him. The defenders' weapons were raised, but they were far too high. A ballistic trajectory made no sense, even if they were sadistic enough to try and strike the children and the elderly lagging far to the rear. At that distance, the bullets would hardly be travelling faster than a thrown pebble. It made no sense!

The next rank fired a few seconds later, while the first knelt and began reloading with swift, sure, practiced movements. Borne shrugged off a slight paing of jealousy at their martial efficiency. He could still make out the curandera at the front of it all, lounging on hir divan like some bloated fox-whale, or whatever shi was. Shi was flanked by several feminine figures, no doubt more witches, and all bracketed by two colossal, hulking brutes. Manservants, he glowered. Of course.

When the third ranks fired into the sky, his confusion switched to suspicion."Magic," he muttered, feeling even his own hackles rise. "What are you up to?"

The fourth confirmed that the Baysiders were firing in a pattern, the exact same amount of time separating the volleys. Furthermore, not everyone from each rank seemed to be firing at a time. Maybe six or eight rifles cracked and boomed at a time, while the rest simply waited their turn. Was it some sort of signal? They couldn't have more reinforcements. EVERYONE had insisted there was nothing else to the north but sparse little clusters of homesteads nurturing tough crops of tubers. What could she be planning?

He got his answer a moment later, when the first faint stirrings of voices raised in song reached him over the clamor of his own troops. He clambered back up onto the carriage and stared in a mixture of awe and disgust at the horizon to the north.

Beyond the pyramid were the strange earthworks the Baysiders had been constructing. They twisted and turned and overlapped one another. They made no sense, made no pattern his scouts could discern, and were useless as trenches, being too shallow to conceal anyone unless they were already crawling. Most of the soil had been dragged to make the pyramid itself. Once Bayside had fallen, he'd planned to get the answers out of the curandera, or one of hir minions, but it seemed he'd been doubly fooled.

Marching out of them, and rightly enough brushing soil from their breeches, were hundres, maybe thousands, of folk of all shapes and sizes. His jaw dropped when he saw shapes that had to be children, and not a single rifle between the lot of them. They flowed over the piles of dirt where they had to have been laying for hours, hours, in the sun.

And for what?

To sing?!

"Madness," he breathed, watching the citizens, the _civilians,_the defenseless homesteaders stretching in a line that easily matched that of his own crusaders. They walked, unhurried, but to a one their heads were thrown back and they were bellowing their best in the sun-baked afternoon.

"Do you hear the people sing...?"

- - - - -

"Yes," Odella smiled, hir heart pounding the way it only did when shi was bringing new life into the world, or when shi stood on some impossible precipice to watch the stars spin above hir, or when Kenyon brought hir coffee in the morning while shi was still in bed. Shi couldn't see behind hir, couldn't use hir Sight to observe the culmination of hir ridiculous, insane plan, but shi could hear it, and that was likely even better.

A little over once every two seconds, Saraceno raising and dropping his hands like the orchestral conductors who hadn't existed for thousands of years, the Bayside Rangers fired half a dozen rounds to form the song's percussion section. Other folks had brought their own drums, and slowly they fell in time with the rhythm, doubling or quadrupling it to keep the measures steady.

"Singing the song of angry men!"

Thousands of throats, their spirits driven by a week of Timura's extra-sensory ministrations, were howling the same song to the heavens. Johnny had taught hir the words that shi'd imparted to the Baysiders in their dreams, and all morning the noncorporeal human had bounced from cluster to cluster, teaching them the pitch and cadence. It had been a 'show tune', he'd called it, the sort of song sung at the end of a play by everyone who had been involved with the production, even those who had died over the course of the story. Odella couldn't think of a more perfect or fitting song to sing.

"It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again!"

The strength, the energy, the sheer raw _power_of it buffeted hir, and Odella longed to lose hir awareness on the colossal wave of psychic vitality, but the kits in hir belly were hir wonderful responsibility. Shi could see the shapes the lyrics made in the fabric of the Universe around hir, bending the sunlight and revealing stars where there had been none before.

No, shi couldn't throw hir mind into that maelstrom of energy, but shi could... nudge it.

"When the beating of your heart, echoes the beating of the drums!"

Odella closed hir eyes and raised hir palms, forcing hir awareness away from hir physical body as much as shi dared while awake. Shi extended hirself, wrapping paws the size of the hills themselves around the song, twisting it, aiming it towards the oncoming horde.

"There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes!"

A thousand thousand memories rained down on the horde. The smell of a mother's apron, the first surreptitious lick of liquor, the sounds of the annual rain pelting the parched, dust-covered plains, the blazing purity of a sunrise seen after a first night of passionate, raw-toothed desire.

"Who will join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me?"

A cluster of homesteads drawn together for a wedding. A community banding together to build a town hall. The sharing of a season's bounty before the cold, dark winter, and the uncorking of the cellar-fermented wines with neighbors in the spring. A freshly-dowsed well, dug by folk who had been strangers the week before, pouring water for the first time. The nearly-universal awe and wonder at stepping foot in the Gossamer Scarf for the first time, and the blurry, brightly-colored memories at the traditional party held after a new citizen's first year.

"Somewhere beyond the pyramid, is there a world you long to see?"

The horde slowed, almost imperceptibly. Here and there, along the forward ranks and the rear guard, men and women staggered and stumbled, blinking away strange feelings that were familiar, and yet not their own. A tear fell. A muzzle crinkled up in a smile. Tails wagged. A laugh was stifled, but nearby another was not.

"Then join in the fight that will give you the right to be free!!"

The majority of the press of fur and flesh still raged onwards, reaching the base of the pyramid. Driven by the sense of their own impending destiny they clambered upwards, heedless of the guns that seemed perpetually to miss them, and of the marching reinforcements that seemed to be in no hurry to join the fray. Kenyon stepped to the front of the ramp, what of the slope that still remained from the partially-deflected gunfire, and planted himself firmly. Pueblo, mind whirling with thoughts he could identify but not quite elucidate, pulled his sisters back, behind their mother's bed.

"Do you hear the people sing? Lost in the valley of the night? It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light!"

Odella soared higher, one aspect of hir awareness on hir physical body and the helpless kits within, the other directing the searing inferno of raw emotion as though it were a weapon of incalculable destructive force. Wherever shi aimed it, the men and women of the horde tripped over their own feet, overwhelmed with a longing for something that seemed forever out of reach.

"For the wretched of the earth, there is a flame that never dies! Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise!"

Axes and clubs pinged harmlessly off of Kenyon's armor, his great arms swinging back and forth and knocking the horde back onto itself. He wielded the immense sledgehammer not to kill or cripple, but simply as an implacable barrier; when the horde piled up in their frenzy, footpaws sinking into the bullet-ridden soil, it was a simple enough manner to send them tumbling. To either side, the young, pretty grrls of the Circle were kicking and punching like maidens possessed, each one easily as strong as any man they faced.

"We will live again in freedom, in the garden of the Lord! We will walk behind the ploughshare, we will put away the sword!"

Kenyon cried out when he felt Odella's primal assault wash over him, but he managed to keep his boots beneath him. The same could not be said for the throngs he faced, most of whom simply crumpled with a mixture of awe and terror on their faces. He saw furres talking to themselves, shouting names he didn't recognize, arms outstretched and beseeching. It was difficult to remind himself that Odella was not doing this hirself, but was simply guiding the very spirit of Bayside itself into battle.

"The chains will be broken and all folk will have their reward!!"

Down below, on the red dirt plains, the horde charged headlong into the steadily-marching citizens of Bayside in a chaotic jumble. Teeth were bared, jaws snapping at one another, blades flashing in the sunlight, but rising above it all was the chorus that would not, could not be stopped.

"DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING? DO YOU HEAR THE DISTANT DRUMS? IT IS THE FUTURE THAT WE BRING WHEN TOMORROW COMES!"

The folk of Bayside had seen this moment in their dreams, and they were ready for it. They moved only defensively, shielding themselves from blows that had no strength behind them. Knives fell from nerveless fingers, clubs and axes fell soundlessly to the dirt. Battlecries became choked sobs, furious roars became fits of giggles, and one by one the invaders were gathered into the welcoming arms of Odella's choir.

"TOMORROW..."

They had been reassured while they slept that Bayside outnumbered the horde by a significant margin, and while they might have such things as guns and humans on their side, there was only so much harm those things could do together. One by one, for that was the only way an enemy could become a friend, the line between vicious assailant and stalwart protector blurred.

"... COMES!!!"

The Rangers continued to fire for another several minutes, while the song itself became more disjointed and mismatched. It did not matter anymore; all of their collective memories and experiences had been kindled, ignited, and thrown forth into the fray. Baysider and crusader alike, they found themselves feeling as though they were coming down from some tremendous height, ears pounding, fingers numbed. Those who had so recently been firing rifles now had their arms around the shoulders of a stranger, discussing events neither of them had attended.

My family, Odella thought weakly, hir awareness slipping back into hir body like a glove that didn't quite fit. Hir ramrod tail drooped, hir paws grasping at the empty air, yearning to feel the unfettered power of the song once more. Kenyon had sunk knee-deep into the decaying earthworks, shi noted with a wry chuckle.

"You're..." shi started to say, before hir eyes rolled up and shi sagged backwards, falling gracelessly to the ground at hir kits' feet.

---

There was very little sleep that week in Bayside, despite the ubiquitous claims of soul-deep exhaustion. Slowly the citizens put together the jumbled events of the Big Day, as it was being called (no-one was quite willing to call it a battle or a war... it seemed inappropriately violent). They realized the incongruously strong emotions they'd felt leading up to it, and the Circle carefully released the information that a friend of the curandera had been subtly tweaking their psyches.

When they looked around and saw that their homes still stood, their children still played, and their friends still smiled when they waved, they decided that perhaps it was an acceptable use of eldritch powers.

The holding cells at the Rangers' barracks were full to bursting; not everyone from the horde had stood down quite as easily as others. Originally designed just to deal with brigands and ruffians while situations were investigated, they had since become primarily for drying out new-rich drunks from the Gossamer Scarf and some long-term storage. Trunks full of bedsheets and raw wool had to be hauled out and stashed in Dirgo's office in order to fit all of the prisoners. As time passed, more and more threw themselves on the mercy of the curandera and proclaimed their sincerest apologies, and several found themselves part of the Rangers' supervised work and cleaning crews.

And there was an awful lot of work to do in Bayside.

Odella pushed through the heavily-reinforced door that had recently been added to the empty commercial space at the far end of LaCombe's library. With the barracks cells full, a special jail had been hastily built, with thick iron bars crisscrossing the large windows and nailed deep into the building's aged timbers. Kenyon himself proclaimed that it was pretty sturdy, and that had been good enough for hir.

Shi nodded to the two guards posted outside the door, and nodded again at the two guards within. They were Dirgo's sharpest, each armed with twin revolvers and twin sabres, a veritable fortune in modern weaponry.

"Miss!"

"Miss!"

"Boys," shi chuckled, turning to shut the door, but the taller interior guard, a mink that towered over the stocky fireplug coati, was there in a flash. "Thank you."

"Miss!" he saluted sharply, eyes like gimlets scanning the white-robed curandera and hir precious cargo.

We're going to have to talk about that, shi thought to hirself in amusement. Dirgo calls me that ONE TIME, and now it's all I can get out of ANY of them! And I had just gotten used to 'mistress', too...

The room was comfortably appointed, with some comfortable chairs, a writing table, and even a tiny pot-iron cook stove. A large trunk dominated the middle of the room, where the guards could keep an eye on it, and although there was a bed in the far corner, the sheets had been spread out in a rough rectangle on the floor next to it, with nary a pillow in sight.

Borne straightened imperceptibly, still staring out the window but clearly with all of his attention focused on his latest guest.

Odella walked, still with a hint of hir pregnant waddle, over the largest chair and eased hirself into it. Shi might have gotten most of hir powers back, but it still felt good to remember that shi had a very mortal shell to take care of, to say nothing of hir newest family members. Shi gently placed the large, high-sided wicker basket on the floor in front of hir and with only a modicum of difficulty, hir arms straining wide around hir trio of ponderously overfull breasts, scooped up Ewyna and Rollo. Shi cradled them one in each arm, still tiny and snoring into their clasped paws. With the senses all such creatures were born with, they wriggled their way towards the warmth of their mother, burrowing against the sides of hir outermost breasts.

"Good day," shi said at last to Borne's back.

"At last," he replied.

"You didn't think I'd forget about you, surely," shi said pleasantly. "I know you haven't been up on all the latest local gossip, but I _have_been busy."

"You've lost weight."

"And you've got a gift with the words," shi smiled, feeling a paw the size of a penny attempting to climb hir too-tight robes. It had fit perfectly well before hir baby belly, but hir milk had come in with a vengeance, clearly under the impression two miniscule kits needs twice the nourishment of one regular-sized one. "That's a handy skill, these days."

"You're going to kill me." It was not a question, and still the human, naked to the waist, continued to stare out the window. Outside, work details were marching back and forth regularly, raw materials being carted in from every homestead within a day's hard travel. Every rotting shed, every slanted barn, every decommissioned outhouse was being disassembled and used to build temporary, and soon permanent, lodgings for Bayside's colossal infusion of population.

"If I do, it will be because you did something to deserve it."

"And I haven't yet?!"

Odella scoffed. "It was a good horde! Really, one of the better ones I've seen in my time. You had guns, you had a good command structure, and you even had those awful uniforms, of a sort. The skull motif is a little much, personally, but all in all that was a _very_good try for a beginner. Well done."

Borne turned, shock plain on a face that was becoming pinker as time went by out of the sun. "You're jok-..." he started to say, before his jaw dropped at the sight of hir newest children.

"I believe you'll find if you ask nearly anyone in town, I am very, very bad at joking, which is why I don't even try anymore. No, I am not joking. Yes, you did some truly awful things, for some very dubious reasons, and you created something that got out of control and nearly killed everyone in this part of the world. However, I've consulted the town charter and LaCombe has been scouring every book on law shi has in hir little library, and there's nothing _specifically_that merits the death penalty."

Borne was still gaping openly at the curandera and hir offspring. "You... brought..."

"They're called 'babies', Mister Borne, and yes, I brought them. They need me! Poor little things can't stand being away from me for more than a minute, and I'm safe enough in here. Right, boys?"

"Miss!"

"Miss!"

"Darn right," shi continued. "So you just be lifting your eyes off my wee ones and keep them up, all right? You and I have a few things to discuss."

Eventually Borne settled into the smaller chair opposite Odella. Even sitting he was still considerably taller, and it was strange to see his muscles flexing and shifting with every movement. Shi'd seen some folks struck sick with the mange, fur falling out in great rashy clumps, and they'd somewhat resembled this human, but on him it seemed almost... natural.

"First off, and we're gonna get this in writing for you to sign later in front of the Council and the Circle, do you swear off any ill intent and future attempts to take over the world and kill everyone?"

Borne blinked, lips moving soundlessly as he repeated hir words. "You don't like to say things twice, do you?"

"No."

He stared at hir for a full minute, and true to hir request his eyes didn't wander below hir bustline (even though that did cover several feet in most directions). Hir robes looked painfully taut around hir bosom, and draped across hir equally oversized maleness in a manner that concealed absolutely nothing, but he managed to keep his eyes mostly on hirs.

"Yes."

"To both?"

"Yes, to both."

Odella nodded, as though shi'd expected such an answer. "Good. Now don't let that make you think you're off the hook or nothing, which LaCombe tells me is a saying that has to do with catching creatures that live in water. You're still a prisoner, though I've managed to get Dirgo to stop calling you a 'prisoner of war'. There's going to be quite a lot of discussion about what exactly to do with you, but me, I've got a pretty good way to get you out of everyone's hair for a good long time."

His eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?"

"We've dispatched some scouts, our best mountaineers and snipers, to the north," shi carried on, as though shi hadn't heard him. "With LaCombe's maps, and some of the scrolls we pulled out of your carriage, they've got a pretty good idea how to safely scale the Edge of the Dust and circle around those mountains you was talking about. See, not many people go into the Dust on purpose, what with it being certain death and all, but there _are_ways to traverse it if you know the tricks."

Borne sat back, fingers drumming on his legs. "The north? You mean-"

"You said there was a way around, and I fully intend to find it. A little knowledge goes a long ways, and from the records we've kept no-one's tried that route. Too difficult. Even a high mountain pass where the wind can freeze your blood is easier than trekking through the Dust. But... it's a possibility. A good one. They won't be back for, oh, two months at the earliest, and that's assuming things go well, but I'm sure a tough lad like you can handle being cooped up inside for two whole months."

"I was raised-"

"Yes yes, underground. That's the _third_thing. LaCombe?"

There was a rough banging at the door, and an audible sigh of exasperation from the mink guarding it. He unlocked the door and pulled it open, revealing the heavy-bottomed herm with hir arms full of books. Shi clomped through, hooves thumping like cinderblocks, and dropped hir cargo on the table with a papery crash. "Afternoon, Miss Odella," shi said, turning hir dour gaze to Borne. "Human. HEY! BOOK BOY!"

Borne twitched in surprise, shying away from the okapi. Shi wore hir traditional garb, shorts that left absolutely nothing to the imagination and a tight blouse that gaped between the buttons. Try as he might, he was still having a difficult time dealing with the extra genders that seemed to have cropped up in the world.

The guard was midway through closing the cell door again when a small metal-shod boot thumped against it. "Excuse me," Pueblo called, backing in through the portal and dragging a large crate that had two wheels and handle built onto it. He joined LaCombe at the table and smiled, panting slightly. "Afternoon... Miss Odella."

The coati glanced at hir son, but he was already focused raptly on LaCombe, or at least on one particular section of hir blouse. Even that couldn't hold his attention forever, though, not with a real-life human in the room, and he was soon investigating Borne as though he was a rare bit of treasure pulled out of the Hole. "Book Boy," Odella replied dryly.

LaCombe and hir new assistant started to sort through the books and sheets and scrolls they'd trucked in. "He's doing a good job, when I remind him to," shi grunted approvingly. "And he brings me coffee!"

Odella glared at LaCombe, just for a moment, but shi forced hirself to relax. Shi couldn't help who hir son seemed to have developed a crush on, but shi supposed there were worse choices in town. "Splendid."

"You can start talking, we're going to be a minute."

"Oh,thank you." The curandera shifted in hir seat, inching hir kits up a little bit higher. They were starting to fuss softly, and shi didn't want to nurse in front of the human. He'd had a rough enough week already. "Borne, with sufficient maps, would you be able to find your way back home? Where you came from?"

Every muscle on the lean, powerful body tensed simultaneously. "No," he said quickly.

"Really? That seems unlikely, given the maps we found in your possession. Particularly the maps that seem to have some transit lines drawn onto them, heading out East. In fact, a studious young fellow like yourself would probably have kept very meticulous records."

"I'll never tell!"

Odella blinked. "I feel you may have misinterpreted something here, young man," shi sighed. "If you want to go home, I feel that's something that we could make happen. Four or five can make the trip a lot faster than four or five thousand."

LaCombe was tacking maps up onto the wall, and Pueblo was opening books up to pre-marked pages and placing them about. He ran out of room on the table, and started using Borne's bed. "You don't mind if I put there here, do you?" Borne twitched, but didn't reply. "I'll just put them here, then."

"There's a lot of humans out there, as I understand it. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. Living under a mountain. Out of the sun. Eating slime. Raising families, growing old, and dying. Kicking the weakest ones out onto the surface where, I believe, you're told monsters are dwelling and waiting to devour the flesh from your bones?" Shi smiled, flashing hir pointed teeth. "I never got the hang of gnawing on bones, myself. I much prefer a nice pepper."

"I'm not going to lead you back to them!"

"Why not?"

"You witches might not be able to hurt them directly, but there's no way I'd lead them into a slaughter!"

Odella blinked, hefted Rollo who was sleepily trying to escape, and sighed. "And that's what you think I'd do," shi said sadly. "I defused your little apocalypse without harming a soul, and gave permanent homes to thousands of nomads on the verge of starvation. I put myself out in front of everyone, while pregnant, trying to get you to see reason, to see peace. I'm sitting here, in front of you, holding my newborn children_and telling you we're _going to find your passage to the north and prove you right, and you genuinely, honestly think I want you to show me where you were born so I can kill everyone?!"

It was a voice that Pueblo knew well, the gentle, dulcet tones masking a volcanic cauldron of rage; being Odella's first child, he'd heard it quite often. LaCombe was inching slowly away, and the guards by the door seemed to be shrinking into their collars.

For several long minutes, the only sound was the foot traffic outside the cell, snippets of conversation and laughter filtering through the windows. The newcomers were bunking two and three deep wherever they could find room, and many homesteads were now housing friends and distant relatives from Rockrose. Many of the folk from the Rose, once they'd recovered their senses, had drifted south to return home, but a sizeable portion had elected to stay once they'd gone to fetch the rest of their belongings. Regardless of the reasons they'd been brought together, Bayside's permanent population had effectively doubled, and the Circle had their hands full dowsing wells for what would be the busiest summer planting season ever observed. Fortunately, with a little bit of work, the 'eldritch earthworks' would be completed, expanding into a new outer-city irrigation system.

"Then why?"

Odella's face softened. "Were you happy, growing up that way?"

Borne didn't need to answer. The single grimace told enough.

"You survived the... frankly, the extinction of the world. Your war, with the nuclears, changed everything, killed almost everyone. My own home is built half a mile above a dead city that somehow sank into the very earth itself, a tomb that preserved it. A city of your people. I want to take you there to see it sometime, when you're ready."

"How did it survive?" Borne was staring at nothing now, tilted to the side and eyes unfocused.

"That is... something my daughter is working on," shi said carefully, remembering Briar's conversations with Tea. Shi had hir suspicions, but shi knew there was a connection between why shi couldn't sense Tea, and why shi couldn't sense Borne with any of the Way's tools at hir disposal. "Regardless, I thought that maybe it was time for your family to... see a friendly face."

Borne twitched. "You don't know them. They'll... they'll fear you."

Ewyna yawned and squeaked, and Pueblo giggled. "Do you fear me?" Odella asked, one coppery eyebrow arching.

"Yes."

Shi shrugged. "Well, we'll have time to work on that. You... tore a hole right across this world. Countless towns and homesteads laid bare, empty. Crops withering. Nailing up dead young men and women with your proclamations, hoping to cow an entire society with a single loss of life. You rationalized it, and your followers rationalized it, and who knows... it may be the only thing that really is keeping you alive right now. Do you know what Timura's plan was? The ringtail who's arm you broke at Rockrose?"

The human flinched, wondering if that really had been the same witch he'd seen walking past his window more than once. "I... I meant to-"

The coati waved him into silence. "You meant to kill hir. THAT has been your hallmark for quite some time, to hear your followers speak. You, the human, unarmed, killed the curandera. We have the Work and the Way, oh yes, we can see the forces that tie these universes together, we can See without eyes and Hear without ears, but you humans, you are beyond us. The energy that's kept this dead world alive for thousands of years came from you, from the_billions_ that died, but it's fled those of you that remained. It's made us powerless against you. Do you know what hir plan was, if shi couldn't smite you directly?"

"What?"

"There is a beast. Well, I say 'a beast', but there was more than twenty of them by the time we were done. Tentacles, dozens of them, all sprouting from a central mass that's more eyes and teeth than everyone in this room put together. Cut off a tentacle, it grows another one, and the one what got lopped off starts to grow a new body. It don't burn, it don't freeze, it just rolls and climbs and eats, oh yes, it eats. A little gift from your ancestors, I think. Long story short, it's got eyes, and it can't see nothing... but it hears. And that's how it woke up one day, woke up in the Dust, and came looking for food. Some miners were taking down a rock face, woke it up from a good thirty miles away."

Borne's eyes widened. His army had faced some of the abominations that stalked the land, but nothing quite like what Odella described. "The Rose," he said. "Some people spoke of a creature that attacked, in their grandparents' time."

"Aye, musta been ninety years ago now. Anyways, we figured out it was a listener when I was cussing it out. I wasn't always so gosh-darn ladylike, you know," shi grinned. "Lured it back out to the Dust, yelling the whole time, and then just went quiet. It lost me, went quiet, fell asleep. Sank, right into the Dust."

Odella leaned forwards, robes creaking. "After a little rest at my home, Timura was gonna go wake that beastie up and drop it in your lap. All your guns, all your fancy books and pretty words and well-meaning speeches about finding a promised land would've been for nothing because you'd all have been tentacle food."

Hir grin turned positively diabolical. "And you're looking at the grrl who managed to talk hir into trying a sing-along instead."

LaCombe and Pueblo were putting the empty boxes and map cases back into the crate as quietly as they could, not wanting to disrupt the curandera. They made to head for the door, pausing when Rollo started to squall. "Hold on, there, kids," Odella sighed, standing up with a tired groan that was echoed by the chair suddenly freed from hir weight. "I'm coming with you. The little ones haven't eaten in, oh, twenty minutes, it seems."

Shi knelt, a sight that defied all logic and nearly made Borne go cross-eyed, and tucked the weakly flailing little kits into their basket. "You've got a lot of thinking to do," shi said gently, gesturing to the open books and the hanging maps. "Read. Consider. I'll be back in a little bit."

The human started, glancing around at his cell's new decorations. "You're just... leaving the books?"

"You gonna burn 'em?"

"What? No!"

Shi nodded. "Then of course I'm gonna leave 'em. You think about what I said. I'm hoping you'll try giving us a second chance... if we end up giving you one, that is." Hir smile seemed genuine, but his mind was so heavy with worry he couldn't be certain.

Odella caught up with Pueblo and LaCombe at the door, the guards holding it open but keeping their eyes on Borne. "Miss. We'll make sure he doesn't damage anything."

"I trust him," Odella replied, patting the mink's arm.

"Really? Miss?"

"Well, as far as this room goes. After that... we'll see."

Standing outside once more, traffic flowing around them even as dozens of folk bowed and scraped and curtsied to the curandera and hir newest kits, shi finally allowed hirself the luxury of rolling hir eyes. "That is one stubborn man," shi grunted. "He's gonna see enemies everywhere for a long time."

"He'll come around," Pueblo said, taking his siblings' basket.

"Mmm? And how are you so sure?"

"_Shi_did," he chuckled, jerking a thumb at LaCombe.

"HEY!"

He hoisted the basket up and stuck his face right up close to his new brother and sister, wiggling his muzzle back and forth and flapping his tongue. "Hey, you two! You're gonna grow up big and strong, ok? And hurry up, you're scaring Mom."

"I'm not scared," the curandera sniffed. "Just..."

"You used a lot of your powers on the Big Day."

"I was careful! I kept everything safe, and... at a distance. As well as I could." Shi frowned, feeling as though shi should be even more concerned about Ewyna and Rollo's health, but by all regards they were perfectly normal twins. Ewyna had inherited her mother's dark, contrasting colors, while Rollo was a ruddy red ball of fluff definitely reminiscent of his father. They shared the same puffy, stripey tails and black-fringed ears as the rest of the half-coatis, however, and shared the same striking blue eyes as Zora.

Shi took the basket back from Pueblo and smiled down at them. "You're fine," shi murmured, heading back to their own temporary home at the Gossamer Scarf and already feeling hir milk starting to leak a tiny bit in anticipation. "You're perfect."

In their blanket-filled basket, Ewyna's paw found Rollo's, and the twins shared a yawn.

~Should we tell hir, brother?~

~Nah. It would just worry hir. Shi'll figure it out eventually, sister.~

~Eventually.~