“Not with Afa they didn’t,” said Heron. Her tone of voice seemed to imply that they should leave him behind for the sake of the mission, but Kira didn’t even bother to glare at her. She did shoot a glance at Afa, though, mostly asleep tied into his saddle, head bobbing in and out of consciousness as the painkillers warred with uncomfortable sitting position.

“We could build a raft,” Kira said. “There are plenty of trees, and if we want to brave that sunken city, we could find planks and boards all over the place. If we build a raft big enough, we could ferry the horses across, and Afa with them.”

“The current’s a lot stronger than it looks,” said Samm, but Kira cut him off.

“I know,” she snapped, more harshly than she intended. “That’s why we haven’t tried crossing it before now, but what are our options? We’re on a tight schedule as it is, even before we took a two-day detour in the wrong direction. We need to go west, so let’s . . . go west. It’s that or head south for another couple of weeks.”

“You’re right,” said Samm, “but we don’t build our own raft unless we have to, and if we get to the point where we have to, we’ll know we’re essentially doomed. Look at that town over there—these were all shipping towns, using the river to haul freight back and forth in the old world. All we have to do is find a boat that still floats and use that.”

“So far all the big towns have been on the far side,” said Heron. “Unless you want to head back north two days to Moline. I don’t remember any convenient barges lying around up there.”

“Then we keep going south,” said Samm, and angled Buddy farther down the road. “We’ve come this far, we may as well keep going.”

“Is that a good reason to keep going?” asked Heron. “‘We’re getting really good at failure, we may as well stick with it?’”

“You know I’m not very good at sarcasm,” said Samm.

Heron snarled. “Then I’ll put it more plainly: This is stupid. Kira has her own reasons for coming out here, but I’m here because of you. I trusted you, and I’m trying as hard as I can to keep that trust alive, but look at us. We’re in a swamp, lost in a dead country, just waiting for the next attack, or the next injury, or the next little stretch of muddy road to just fall off into the river and drown us.”

“You’re the best one of us,” said Samm. “You can survive anything.”