Fires dimmed to embers as the camp below drifted towards sleep, one man at a time until only the two guards remained upright and watching. Now Chaitton breathed and slipped away into the dark without another word, moving like something the mountain itself had grown rather than something that had climbed onto it. Ezra and Ayanna waited, counting silent minutes that stretched longer than any minutes had ever stretched in either of their lives, waiting for a signal that would mean the high guard was down, and the next impossible piece of this could begin. came at last, a soft owl call twice from the direction of the high rock. Not a real owl, close enough, though in the dark to fool anyone not specifically listening for it. "That's it," Ayanna whispered.
"Go," she melted into the shadows toward the corral's far side. Ezra started down the western slope, moving as carefully as 11 years of memory. And one long, terrified knight had taught him how to move. He was close enough to see the ground guard's face. Young, younger than Ezra had expected, barely out of boyhood himself.
When everything went wrong at once, a twig snapped under his boot. Small sound, impossibly loud in the dead quiet of the sleeping camp. The guard's head snapped up. "Who's there?" he called, rifle already swinging toward the sound. There was no more time for careful plans.
Ezra broke from cover, sprinting hard toward the corral, and behind him he heard the guards shout, "Rip" through the valley like a struck bell, "Raid! We're being!" The rest of it dissolved into chaos as the camp exploded awake all around them. Men stumbling from tents half-dressed, reaching for rifles, shouting names Ezra had no time to learn. Somewhere in the confusion, he heard Ayanna's voice, sharp and clear, and the groan of the corral gate swinging wide. 200 horses, suddenly free, suddenly terrified, surged forward as one enormous, unstoppable wave.
"Move!" Anna's voice close now, urgent. "Get clear of the herd, or they'll trample you where you stand." Ezra sideways as the wave broke past him. hoops thundering close enough that dust and gravel kicked hard against his legs. He came up running alongside the stampede instead of in front of it, trying to bend its direction north toward the canyon mouth Chaitton had promised was clear. Gunfire cracked behind them. Wild panic shots fired by men still half asleep and fully terrified, more likely to hit each other than anyone actually fleeing.
Ezra didn't look back, couldn't afford to. He caught sight of Ayana ahead, guiding the herd's leading edge with quick, precise movements and for one strange suspended second, watching her move through chaos like she'd been born specifically for this exact moment, he thought clear as a bell through all the noise. I could love this woman, which was an absurd thought to have, while 200 horses stampeded through gunfire in the dark. Which he filed away immediately because now was decidedly not the time. They broke free of the camp's immediate chaos.
Within minutes, the herd's momentum carrying them hard toward the canyon's northern passage. behind them. The shouting continued, but distance and darkness were already doing their work, swallowing the raiders confused pursuit. "Where's Chaitton?" Ezra called over the thunder of hooves. "He'll catch up?" Ayanna called back, though something in her voice carried an edge of worry she couldn't quite mask. "He always does." They rode the herds momentum for what felt like hours, guiding 200 exhausted, terrified animals through canyon corridors barely wide enough to hold them, until the passages finally opened into a broader valley, where the horses, sensing safety at last, began to slow of their own accord.
Only then did Ezra allow himself to stop, to breathe, to look back the way they'd come, searching the darkness for a shape that should have caught up to them by now and hadn't. He's not here, he said. Ayanna had already turned her horse back toward the canyon mouth, expression gone tight and pale in the moonlight. He should have caught up before now, she said. He always catches up.
They waited. Minutes stretched into something worse than minutes. Something that felt like hours compressed into unbearable seconds. The herd grazed, exhausted, indifferent to the terror building between the two humans who'd risked everything to free them. Then finally, movement at the canyon mouth.
Figure stumbling alone. Not Chaitton's confident silent stride. Something wounded. Something wrong. Ayanna was off her horse and running before Ezra had even registered what he was seeing.
Chaitton. The figure collapsed before she reached him. And Ezra's stomach dropped clean through the floor of the world. Because even in the dark, even from this distance, he could see the dark stain spreading across the man's side. Could see the way his legs had simply stopped agreeing to hold him upright.
He's alive. Ayanna called back, voice cracking with something that wasn't quite relief yet. Not fully. Ezra, he's alive. But Ezra reached them at a dead run, dropping to his knees beside Chaitton's crumpled form.
Blood, dark, and slick, soaked through his shirt just below the ribs. His breathing came ragged, shallow, each inhale costing him visibly more than the last. "They caught me," Chaitton managed, words slurred with pain, coming down from the rock. "I thought I was clear. I was wrong.
Don't talk, Ayanna said, already tearing strips from her own shirt, pressing them hard against the wound. Save it. There's more. Chaitton gasped, gripping Ezra's arm with surprising strength for a man bleeding out on Canyon Rock. They know now.
Crane knows someone's coming for him specifically. Not just raiders being unlucky, someone hunting him. How do you know that? Because I heard him. Chaitton's grip tightened, urgency overriding pain for one crucial second before I ran.
Heard him shouting orders. Move the herd. No, wait. The herd's already gone. He means the men.