* * *
—
“WE’RE IN A bad stretch of land now,” warned Kitlan as we rode. “You see anything moving that isn’t grass or leaves, don’t go near. The Plains are rife with contagion. Worm pits and nests and hives abound. This whole bit of world wishes to eat you.”
“Are we allowed to be here?” I wondered aloud.
“Allowed?” Kitlan snorted contemptuously. “No one bothers to fence off these lands, Signum. You’d have to be a fool to traipse in thoughtlessly.”
I didn’t argue. We’d entered a strange part of the Plains, with giant hills rising on either side of us covered in tussocks of thick, yellow grass—the remains of dead leviathans, surely, felled by the Legion decades if not centuries ago. There were so many hills that I began to wonder why we still called it the “Plains of the Path” at all. Much of this place had to be of higher elevation than the rest of the canton.
More disturbing still were the flowers on the ground about us. None were alike. There were blooms shaped like cups and funnels and rosettes and bells; some were huge and pendulous, others tiny as fleas; and in the deeper parts of the hills, where the rainwater gathered, the blooms grew as thick as the stars, yet all were of different colors, whorls of pink and orange and purple.
The sights did not cheer me, for I knew the ground here had long soaked in the otherworldly blood of the leviathans. Dappleglass no longer seemed such an uncommon threat.
I started glancing over my shoulder toward the east every few miles, looking up at the sky.
“What you looking for, Kol?” asked Miljin.
“Flares, sir,” I said. “Just in case.”
He laughed roughly. “Warning flares? That won’t matter, lad.”
“How might you mean, sir?”
“I mean, if we see red or yellow in the sky, it won’t matter. We’re too close to run. We’ll just be dead. So look forward, boy, and not back.”
I did as he asked, counting the hills about us as we passed. I’d memorized the princeps’s map, but it hadn’t been totally accurate regarding the number of carcasses about. Yet I knew we were getting close to the ruins of the fort.
Then one of the Apoths cried out: “Scent! Got scent!”
Kitlan wheeled her horse around to him and demanded, “What kind?”
“Blood, ma’am.” The Apoth raised his face and sniffed the air again—his nose was large and violet-hued—and pointed south. “That way.”
We followed the Apoth until he stopped at what appeared to be an undistinguished patch of meadow. But he pointed down, and I saw a large splotch of blood resting among the rocks.
“Wet,” said Miljin. “And fresh. But is it Ditelus’s?”
“Don’t know, as we don’t have his scent,” said the tracker Apoth. He pointed south. “But I smell more that way.”
We wheeled about and headed south.
* * *
—
WE FOUND HIM within an hour.
He was easy to spy, a huge, shambling, shifting form just on the horizon, trudging south. Yet even though we were still so far from him, I could see there was something amiss.
The figure in the distance didn’t move right. He limped. Staggered. Hobbled along, like he’d broken many bones in his feet, perhaps.
Miljin sensed it, too. “Don’t like this,” he muttered. “Something’s wrong. Is that really him? Where’s he going? And what’s he running to?”
“Could have worms,” mused Kitlan.
“You goddamned Apoths always think it’s worms.”
“That’s because so many people have so many fucking worms.”
Kitlan and Miljin led the way, spurring their horses on but pursuing the figure carefully. When we were a quarter of a league away, Kitlan raised a hand for us to stop. Then she and her people pulled bizarre, complex helmets from their packs: the helms had glass bubbles for eyes and were conical in shape, giving them a wasplike appearance, and they ended in what looked like a small brass grate that was packed with moss.
“Warding helms?” I asked.
“Yes,” Kitlan said. “Uses suffused mosses and materials to filter out contagion. It will keep us safe as we approach.” Then she tossed one to me. “It buckles about the neck.”
I pulled mine on and buckled it. The world grew muffled and hot and dark immediately, and I had to squint through the glass bubbles to see. I hoped I didn’t wander off blindly and get lost out here among all the horrors about me.
Kitlan waved a hand and we proceeded, gaining on the distant figure hobbling across the wretched wilderness. As we grew closer I came to comprehend the size of the person we were following. He was enormous, nearly as tall as one and a half of me, and as wide as three of me standing shoulder to shoulder—and I was no small person. His black-clad back was as broad as a carriage, and his feet made tremendous thumps as he staggered across the Plains, his giant boots churning up the grass and mud before him.