The caravan kicked into a desperate run when Kaye and Hogog brought the news. Coachmen whipped the camels; those on foot ran ahead; some were abandoning luggage to lessen the carts’ weight. Kaye was watching when two bare-chested men pulling a cart let go of the drawbars. Another ran towards them, raising his hands to the air and shouting, demanding they continue with their job, saying their payment would be reduced for this. The two men shouted back, but didn’t stop walking. The third one tried to push the cart, failed, rummaged through the goods, grabbing some sacks and boxes before trying to catch up, leaving the cart and everything else it carried abandoned on the road. Not ten paces ter, the man let half of what he had picked up fall behind him.

  Amidst the caravan, Kaye drew to a halt, turning. Hogog did the same, gesturing for her. People were bumping into them.

  “What are you doing?”

  “The stragglers!” Kaye said.

  Hogog pulled her by the arm, and she resumed her pacing alongside him.

  “The Headhunters will get to them first. We have to do something,” Kaye said.

  “We can’t! We have to outrun them.”

  Aien came up to their side. “Get away from here! You’ll be run over!”

  It took a while for them to manage to shamble past the crowd. Some stuck to the even road, running in the dust, while others followed them to the roadside, still moving forward.

  “Shoshin is going to get us all killed!” Kaye shouted. “We have to find a pce to fight!”

  She turned to Hogog, then Aien, saw incredulity and fear in their eyes.

  “We have to! We can’t keep running like this!”

  Aien was the first to slow down. Kaye and Hogog did the same.

  “I’ll deal with Shoshin,” saying that, Aien rushed ahead.

  Kaye gnced back again. Another cart had been abandoned. The stragglers were only now getting past the first cart, and they had to slow down to go around it.

  Kaye halted. “We burn this cart.”

  Though he protested, Hogog followed her. They had learned how easy it was to light fires in dry Saldassa, and soon they were both on their knees, snapping flint and steel on top of a bundle of hay they took from the cart and threw beneath it. When the stragglers ran past them, the fire was starting to spread in that bundle, and hopefully it would fully catch on soon.

  “At least it’s something,” Kaye said, more to herself than to her uncle. It didn’t feel like much.

  Turning, they resumed running. Kaye couldn’t keep from gncing back repeatedly. When the smoke became noticeable, they were already by the straggler’s side.

  “Keep running!” Hogog shouted. “Forward! Forward!”

  He continued screaming at them, like some sort of herder animal guiding the others to safety. Whenever someone slowed down, Hogog shoved them forward, the momentum keeping their legs moving.

  Kaye left them behind her, making for the next cart abandoned on the road, then the next. The stragglers and Hogog didn’t catch up to her. She moved even farther ahead, catching up to the bulk of the caravan. If Aien didn’t manage—

  They were stopping, and when Kaye reached the head, she saw that the foremost wagon was moving away from the road due west. Shouts reached her ears. “We fight! We fight!”

  Most but not all of them followed the wagon. There was no time to think, and a chunk continued forward. A few more, seeing this, gave up on following the wagons and made it back to the road.

  The path they were on went down into a field of boulders and sand, the wagon wheels leaving deep imprints in the soil. Ahead, they were driving through an entrance and into a long depression. The Headhunters would have to funnel through if they wanted to enter that way, and as Kaye found out when she stood on a boulder overlooking the recess, the south side of it was mostly open. The Headhunters would see that, and that’s where their attack would come from.

  Catching her breath, Kaye turned towards the road, but she wasn’t high enough to see it. The stragglers were only now leaving it, coming into view. Hogog was the st to appear, way behind the others but still shouting, and her heart skipped a beat. Then, she recognized what it was. He was carrying someone.

  Her uncle could barely breathe when he reached her, heaving with every step. Kaye helped support the weight of the man whose name she didn’t even know, and they brought him into the crowd.

  “They’re on the road,” Hogog gasped the words. “The fires helped… I think… but they’ll be… here soon…”

  After they delivered the man into the arms of others, Hogog slumped to the ground, gesturing for her to continue.

  “Thank you,” Kaye told her uncle before moving away.

  The wagons were being driven to the left. It took Kaye a moment to realize they were looking to make a wall to block that side, but the camels were bellowing, too close to one another and undoubtedly hurt and scared of the cacophony.

  If they couldn’t set it up, there would be no chance of fighting. The moment the Headhunters invaded the clearing some would flee, and hell would break loose.

  Kaye went around them, approached the first wagon she saw, and with a plead for sorry jumped into the coachman’s seat, kicking the man screaming away. He brought his whip down with him. She ignored the curses, ignored the desperate cries of people around her to stop, and hopped out of the wagon, following the bright confidence she summoned from… somewhere.

  When she first tried to reach for one of the camel’s reins, the animal grunted, moving away, but in the second time it did as she expected, and allowed her to rest a hand on its oily, sweaty hair. She did the same for the one tied close to its side. When she gently tugged at the bridles, both followed her. Moments ter, she got the first wagon into position.

  People had stopped to watch by then, and Kaye gnced around, noticing they were the only silent gathering among the caravan.

  “Release the camels. Take them away,” Kaye told the coachman who she had thrown out, then turned away without waiting for a response.

  The other coachmen stepped away when Kaye approached each wagon. She did the same for all of the camels, pushing back the questions in her mind about how she was doing it. There was no time for it.

  When Kaye was done, several of the wagons were positioned in a rough semi-circle, two rows of them. It was far from being a fortress, but it was something. Other wagons were in the opposite end of the pce they had chosen to fight, including, she noticed, the one with the sves.

  By the time she reached the midst of the caravan again, her confidence had waned, the light gone. There were not weapons around for everyone. At most half wielded daggers, swords, spears or bows, while the others would have to make do with sticks, pnks and pots, not counting those who held nothing in their hands but each other, the old and the young.

  From where they were standing, it was possible to continue going down west through uneven terrain, although that would eventually lead into a far more open area.

  Shoshin, at the very least, had decided to fight. He went around with a sword in his belt, and his guards were attempting to make some sembnce of a formation out of the scattered caravan. Kaye didn’t fail to notice that the better armed were farther in the back, all around the master.

  A hand on her arm brought Kaye around.

  “We make it through,” Hogog said, pulling her closer, stern eyes looking down at her. “You know we can’t win this Kaye; we can’t save all these people. You don’t have to say anything, but you know we’ll have to leave. You know it. No matter what, we make it through. Understood?”

  Kaye grasped his arm back, but didn’t say anything. Couldn’t say anything. At least he was still there, was doing this for her, and as long as they remained, she would do everything she could.

  When they released each other’s arms, Kaye moved to the closest wagon. Pnting a foot in the back of it made it easy to propel herself up, to reach the top and climb to the wooden roof.

  Figures were now leaving the road from the same spot they previously had. Though they were moving slower, she couldn’t be sure of their numbers when undoubtedly some were still hidden by the rise. They were all armed, however, and among them plenty of green spots reflected the sun’s light. Headhunters.

  Kaye loaded an arrow, crouched and waited.

  Their approach slowed, far more coordinated than the caravan’s haste. As Kaye expected, they split into two groups, one making for the entrance they had driven through, the other making their way around to approach from the direction of the wagon wall. The caravan was cornered prey and the hunters could afford to take their time.

  A single archer watching an entire approach, and more of a hunter than an archer. She knew how little difference it would make, but that did not stop her. At least, she was gd the Headhunters and the armed Sarak men carried no shields.

  The group coming her way increased their pacing, started running.

  Now that it was too te to leave, it was easier to block out the part of her mind warning of the stupidity of it all.

  Kaye raised her bow, pulled the string and loosed her first arrow.

  The whole world seemed to burst into the sounds of battle the moment it hit. In through a neck, out the other side. Metal cmored around her. Another arrow, through an eye, stopped by the inner side of the skull. She didn’t know people could scream so loudly. Below her, men were packed so tightly they seemed to blend into one another.

  They reached the wagons, seeming to sm against the poorly armed people on Kaye’s side. There was a brief moment of resistance, in which she released another arrow to drive into a man’s shoulder, then half the line crumbled, pushed back and down by swords wielded by people who actually knew what they were doing. The only thing that kept the tter half from fleeing were the people behind them, and for a moment Kaye paused to watch, expecting the moment they would be run through.

  She snapped out of it by the next heartbeat, loaded another arrow, but didn’t loose it immediately. She followed the path of a Headhunter, watched his bde slice cleanly through an arm. He pnted his feet to defend from a blow, and she shot the moment he stopped moving.

  The Headhunter reeled back when the arrow pushed into his midriff. He staggered for a moment, and someone brought a hammer down into his face. He crumpled like a doll.

  A shadow appeared in the corner of her eye, and Kaye ran without checking what it was. She jumped out the wagon as high as she could and managed to keep her bance as she nded on top of the next one.

  Turning, she saw that it had been a Headhunter. Kaye hadn’t thought that the wagon was close enough to the incline to be reached that way.

  In her surprise, Kaye took too long to aim and shoot, but the man was forced to throw himself out of the way. He fell to the opposite side, disappearing from view.

  A quick gnce down told her why. The line between the caravans was nothing but corpses now, and the unmasked attackers had retreated to give way to the Headhunters. Tens of them were rushing her way.

  For how long did we hold? Two minutes? Three?

  Kaye half leapt, half slid from the wagon, losing some of her bance to the rounded roof, she fell awkwardly and smmed her back against the ground. Grunting at the pain, she pushed herself up, retreating with bow still in hand.

  So many people were moving about that the only indicator of who were the attackers were the jade masks. Kaye was five steps away from them when Hogog broke free from the crowd, blood spttered on his face, eyes bloodshot red. For the briefest of moments, she thought he didn’t recognize her.

  Then they were running, into the crowd, Hogog shouting at her to keep going just how he had done with the stragglers.

  Wagons. At the far back. Between raising her feet and the next step, Kaye had fully changed directions. Hogog shouted something else, but she didn’t have time to consider it.

  Dead guards littered the ground ahead of her. She saw Aien, coming her way from the opposite direction. Kaye slowed down only enough to look at the dead faces, searching for the right one.

  It was the third one. Aien was almost upon her by the time Kaye was standing up, keys in her hand. With her peripheral vision she saw that the fight was still going — that, and the endless ctter of bdes and rails of pain. Not everyone was running. She had enough time for this. Time to give them a chance.

  Uruoro and Loho were leaning as far away from each other as they could by the time Kaye unlocked the wagon and dashed in, anticipating that she would have pulled her dagger out to cut through the ropes tying them. Both Hogog and Aien were shouting at her now, still trying to catch up, Hogog slightly ahead.

  “Where’s the master?” Loho asked.

  “What?!” Kaye asked but continued cutting.

  “The Master! Where is he?!”

  “I don’t know! In the fight!”

  “Close enough.”

  The dagger passed through the st strands with enough momentum that she stabbed at the wooden pnks.

  Hogog was just stepping inside the wagon when Loho seemed to semble into a shadow, squeezing past Hogog even though he was standing in the way to grapple at Aien. They struggled, whirling around. A single moment, then Loho was moving away with a bde in his hands, Aien still on his way to fall to the ground.

  “What are you doing?” Hogog demanded.

  “Words can kill here! Now!” It was the first time Kaye heard Uruoro shouting, but they were the right words, spoken as he struggled to shove all of them outside.

  Aien was standing up. Just ten steps ahead, Kaye could see Loho, sword in shackled hands, slowing down to attack, but his target were Shoshin’s guards, who were looking the other way.

  She hoped he was everything he cimed to be.