They waited for a long time. The sun rose and passed its zenith, drawing steam from the valley's hidden places, which drifted and eddied on unseen draughts. Ravens floated down from the north, out of the hills and into the valley that petered out into plains just visible to the south. They circled Ramus and Lulah for a while, until Lulah loosed an arrow in their direction. Then they soared down into the valley, crying their upset at the sun, and some of them settled on a large dead thing by one of the streams. Ramus concentrated, but he could not make out what the dead thing was.

“Too far away,” he said.

“I see it well enough,” Lulah said. “Mountain goat.”

Maybe my eyesight is fading already, he thought. He looked elsewhere in the valley, seeing blurs where perhaps he should have defined trees, but he commented on it no more.

Mid-afternoon came and went, and Ramus began to fear that the others had somehow passed them by. He consulted his map again to check. If they had taken a different route it would have added at least a day to their journey, and there was no reason for them to do that. They would have nothing to fear from Ramus and Lulah, after all.

“I'm stiff as a corpse,” he said to Lulah. “I need to walk. I'll be gathering some stuff, back there past where the horses are tethered. If they appear, please come to get me.”

“What are you planning?”

I trust no one, Lulah had said. And yet she came with him, hid with him, waiting for her old comrades, asked after the pages he had and what they meant. And it was not even that he could promise her more pay than Nomi had offered. She felt some link to him, and whether she trusted him or not, he would have to respect that if they were to carry on together.

“I'm going to poison their horses,” he said. “Slow them down for a day or two, and that will give us the head start we need. After that we ride hard for the Great Divide. Camp only at night; during the day we even eat as we ride.”

Lulah nodded slowly, weighing what he had said. “They'll buy more horses at the border.”

“Maybe. But we'll be well ahead by then.”

“You know I can't help you harm Nomi?”

“I know that,” Ramus said. “I don't want to harm her.”

“Why?”

The question, blunt and brutal, surprised him. And he could not answer. Because considering a response confused him even more, and melted away the comfortable afternoon sun that had been soothing his nerves. Ramus wondered whether, come dusk, his anger would rise again.

HE CHECKED ON their horses and then passed them by, clambering up the slope and looking for signs of rock ants.