in less than an hour. He needn’t have hurried.
The farmhouse itself was razed, smoldering in its own charcoal. Beauty stood staring, weeping mutely into the rubble. He was at once majestic and beaten.
Josh walked over to the Centaur, his own anger and sorrow fed anew by those of his friend. There was shared grief, a new bond between them. And shared hatred, the strongest bond, perhaps, of all. They were compatriots, now, in the land of loss.
He told Beauty his story, what he’d found at home. Beauty told Joshua he’d returned to the farm an hour earlier and found… this. Rose was gone; no trace of Human remains in the ashes. The one thing Beauty had found, near the house, was Rose’s knife, sticky with blood.
“But it wasn’t Human blood, I know that smell well,” said the Horse-man. “It was vile blood.” He squinted back his tears, his venom.
Josh nodded. “Jack said one of the creatures was what sounded like an Accident.” They couldn’t look at each other.
Beauty held up Rose’s bloody knife. “A wounded Accident, now.” He threw the knife into the dirt.
Some feet away, beneath a broken board, Josh saw a Falcon feather. He picked it up, and they both stared at it with burning eyes. It was all that remained of Rose.
“I’ll take it for my quill,” said Josh. “It’ll give us power to find her, if I use it to write with.” He cut the tip into a quill point with his knife, and stuck the newly fashioned pen into his boot, replacing his old one with it.
Beauty did not believe in the power of Scribery as did Josh, but he knew that from this time on, whatever resources they could tap, whatever powers they could individually draw upon, they would need.
They looked at each other a moment, and the moment was theirs. Joshua set the record, marked it with his sign, and the two young hunters made a plan.
In Which It Is Seen That Time Is A River Which May Briefly Stop, Yet Then Moves On
THE hills of Monterey formed a promontory on the tip of a crooked finger of land that pointed southwest into the blue Pacific. The base of the peninsula curved gently back to a coastline that ran east, then smoothly south all the way to Port Fresno. From Fresno the coast turned east again, and then south once more down to Newport, near what once had been the Mexican border. Of course, since the last war there were no more borders; only frontiers.
Beauty’s farm lay in the southern meadows of a depopulated area that extended north to the Ice Country. The Ice Country itself was uninhabitable: a vast, frigid zone, the penumbra of a glacier that sat snugly on the top third of the world like a white electrocution cap. The glacier moved ten miles south every year, extending the boundaries of the Ice with imperial resolution. Monterey had grown accustomed to seeing the invader’s frosty designs as late as June.
South of Beauty’s farm were scattered ranches, settlers and trading posts. Population density increased farther south, until there were actually scattered cities – usually walled, self-sustaining centers where people and other animals gathered for companionship, commerce or protection.
Beauty’s farm was ideally situated. Cool and sparse enough most months of the year to be uninteresting to adventurers and soldiers and warmed enough by the Pacific currents to make fruit-growing easy. Beauty hadn’t ever considered leaving before, once he’d settled down there with Rose. Neither had Joshua.
So it was with considerable regret that they folded up their lives and slid them like wedding suits into the bottom drawers of their memories. They were hunters now, and a successful hunter can afford only one thought: the prey.
They set off in the morning as first light trembled. Beauty carried only his bow and a quiver; Joshua had his knives and his falcon-feather pen.
There was no trace of the Vampire or the Griffin, save a green wing feather from the latter – they’d obviously made their escape by air. But the wounded Accident left a fairly easy trail of blood, smells and sign, which Beauty and Josh tracked east from the farm for many miles into a woodsy marshland.
There the trail turned south.
Tracking became a bit more difficult through the marshy scrub, but Josh had a good eye, and Beauty an equine sense of smell. So they kept up a steady pace all morning and were silent, side by side, with senses alert. When their shadows were short they paused by the rim of a pond to rest and to eat.
“He is paralleling the coast,” said Beauty, flaring his nostrils into the wind.
Josh lay on his belly sipping from the pool. “He’s slowing, though.” Beauty nodded, shook his mane back and forth, pawed the ground. Joshua stood up. “Be still, Beauty. Thoughtful rest is the hunter’s friend.”
Beauty snorted, “Spoken like a Scribe.” He stood at the edge of the cool water and watched his reflection dance in the ripples that still ran from the spot where Joshua’s thirsty lips had touched. Beauty scorned the Human religion of Scribery. It elevated unreal, meaningless scratches to something they were not and turned them into powerful tokens. It promoted false patience, false hope, false priority. Beauty shrugged as it was but one more Human enterprise that remained cryptic.
Josh squinted into the south. “We’ll find our people.”
Beauty turned his head, his lips thinned in smile. “It is good to hunt with you again.” He gave all his words equal weight, his meaning many-layered, alluding to much that had passed between them. First, it referred to the fact that he was born to the hunt, had always hunted, had missed the hunt these past few years on his farm. It referred also to ten years earlier, when he and Josh had regularly hunted together, when they together supported an extended family of friends and relatives on their game. It referred to the great Race War that had pitted Humans against all the other species and had divided Beauty and Joshua. It had even forced them to hunt each other. Until Beauty was wounded by a Human prince, and Joshua hid him in the woods, nursing him back to health with Rose’s help.
When the War ended, national boundaries were gone, and Kings and Popes went on waging their own personal wars for land and power, but Beauty put down his bow and swore to be a farmer the rest of his days and give part of his crop always to what was left of Joshua’s family.
So now he meant to tell Josh that it was good to hunt again, good to hunt with Josh again, good to hunt with Josh again, good to hunt with Josh again.
Josh understood and said so with his face.
A nearby orange tree provided the two hunters with a meal of the sugar-heavy fruit.
“Where do you think he’ll go to ground?” Joshua asked.
“There is a Forest of Accidents some hundred miles east and south,” said Beauty, “but I doubt the thing can last that far. Best just to stalk and corner.” He paused. “I only hope we catch it before it dies, so we can question it.”
Joshua nodded. “We need more information if we’re ever going to trace the others.”
“If it is slave trade this concerns, I know two places to nose about. One is a brothel, not more than half a day from here. The Accident
