Time
slewed back to normal. It was Marcus, the captain of the column’s final third.
There are only two others of that rank – his brother Julius in the center, and
Jerem Cozak himself, who leads the van. How he had reached me in that time I do
not know. He had been marching six squads forward.
He
grabbed my left arm, shifted it back and forth. My screams did not discourage
him. “Two or three ribs,” he said. “Shield-arm broken. You still have the
other.” He frowned as the wind picked up, nodded. He took off his cloak and
tore from it a bandage for a sling. He rose when he had tied it off. “Keep the
pace,” he said. “Or you’ll kill us all.”
Meno
stayed where he lay. The crunch I heard had been his head hitting rock, with
all the force of the smilodon’s leap behind it. He sprawled at my feet, guts
pouring from his stomach. On its turn, the cat’s rear legs had also
disemboweled him. Beside me, Marcus bawled an order. As one, the Never-born
turned and started up their distance-eating trot. No one picked up Craytus
either. I turned with them, and sped.
The
rest of our march, I mostly do not remember. We could not have gone far. The
Historians of my city used to say that there are both machines and chemicals
inside our blood that dull the pain of illness and injury, but that the effect
is temporary. I never thought it would actually matter.
The
smilodon did not return, though I often glanced above or to the rear. Thrice I
tripped and fell – which meant that the Never-born had to pause and help me up.
Their hands held with grips of steel. We kept to the boulders the whole way,
crossed glacial rivulets from further up. Down, and down, and down, into what
seemed a bowl. We must have passed scrubs and smaller trees as we neared the
timberline, but I did not know it. The afternoon sank swiftly into dusk.
When
the boulders stopped we came abruptly into a copse, a small forest never cut by
men. Any of these evergreens I could have wrapped my arms around three times.
Their boughs hung strangely low and thick, nearly touching the ground, heavy in
the swiftly falling snow. Soon we came to three or four glades, meadows large
enough to host all the Never-born, but still sheltered by that living wall of
pine.
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