Chaitton looked at his sister. Something passed between them without words. The particular language of siblings who've survived things together. My sister should not have come alone, Chaitton said finally. This is true, but she is here and you are here and none of us returns to camp with 200 horses by standing in the dark arguing about whose fault this is.
So what are you saying? Ezra asked. I am saying three fools together survive better odds than one fool and one furious woman traveling separately. Chaitton's mouth twitched almost a smile gone before it fully arrived. I am saying we go together or we all die separately arguing about it.
Ayanna's jaw tightened. I don't need protecting Chaitton. I did not say protecting. I said together. He held her gaze until something in her posture eased just slightly.
You have never once in your life needed protecting, sister. You have simply needed people smart enough to stay out of your way while you do what needs doing. That finally drew something close to a real smile from her. Small, fast, gone almost before Ezra caught it. But he caught it.
"Fine," she said. together. She turned to Ezra and for the first time since the arrow had split the dark, her voice carried something other than suspicion. "You understand what's ahead of us," she said. "10 armed men, maybe more, holding 200 animals that don't belong to them in country that swallows careless riders whole." "This isn't a story where the stranger rides in and saves everyone alone. If you're here for glory, turn back now.
I'm not here for glory. Then why? He thought about lying. Thought about giving her some smaller, easier answer. Instead, he told her the truth, plain as he could make it.
Because I know what it's like to watch everything you love get taken and have nobody willing to help you get it back. I couldn't stop that man 11 years ago. I can't undo what happened to my family. His voice roughened just slightly before he pulled it steady again. But I can stop him from doing it to somebody else.
That's the whole reason. It's not complicated. Ayanna studied him a long moment. The fire popped between them, throwing light across three faces that an hour ago had been strangers with weapons drawn. All right, Ezra Colton, she said finally, his name spoken careful like she was testing the weight of it.
Together then, but you follow where the ground tells us to go. This is our land, our people, our fight first. You are here because our fight happens to be yours too, not the other way around. Understood. And if you slow us down, Chaitton added, settling by the fire like the matter was closed.
We leave you for the coyotes. No offense, none taken. They sat through what remained of the night in something that wasn't quite comfort, but wasn't hostility either. A truce still finding its shape. Ayanna banked the fire low, insisted on taking first watch, though Ezra offered twice.
Chaitton slept sitting upright the way men do when sleep is a tool and not a luxury. Ezra lay back against the rock and stared up at a sky thick with more stars than redstone ever let him see. Town lamps always washing out the dark out here. There was nothing between him and the whole endless spread of it. He thought about his father's voice, about the boy who' hidden behind a water trough and waited.
That boy wasn't riding tonight. Not anymore. Somewhere out past the ridges. 10 men slept easy around campfires. certain nobody was coming for them. Certain the world worked the way it always had, that the strong took and the weak lost, and nobody rode three days into raider country over horses that weren't theirs.
They didn't know yet they would. Morning came hard and orange over the eastern ridge line. By the time the sun cleared the rocks, the three of them were already moving, following a trail only Chaitton and Ayanna seemed able to read it all. broken brush, a displaced stone, marks and packed earth that meant nothing to Ezra and everything to them. 10 men, Chaitton said, crouched low over a patch of disturbed ground. Confirmed.
Maybe 11. The horses move slow in this terrain. A large herd cannot travel fast through canyon country. How far ahead? Ezra asked.
Two days, perhaps less, if they push the animals hard. Ayana was already scanning the horizon. Eyes narrowed against the glare. They're heading deeper into Red Mountain. The terrain gets worse from here.
Fewer trails. More places to die. You've been through there before. Once something closed over her face, brief and sharp, gone before he could read it fully. It did not go well for the men who took me there.
She didn't explain further. Ezra didn't ask. Some doors you learn to leave shut until someone's ready to open them from the other side. They rode through the morning in near silence, the kind of silence that comes from people saving their breath for the trail instead of conversation. The land grew stranger as they climbed.
Red rock rising on either side like something ancient and half buried, canyons opening in the earth like old wounds that had never quite closed. By mid-afternoon, Chaitton raised a hand, signaling a stop. "Smoke," he said, pointing toward a notch between two distant peaks. "Faint, maybe 2 hours ride from here if the wind is honest about the distance." Ezra squinted. A thin gray thread rose against the pale sky.
Barely visible, easy to miss. If you weren't looking for exactly that, that's them. Likely Ayanna's hand drifted to the bow slung across her back. An old habit made visible. We don't move fast from here.
We move careful. One mistake this close and every advantage of surprise we have disappears. So what's the plan? She looked at him. Something steady in her gaze now.