We hadn’t gone far, but it was already pitch dark when we reached the bottom of the next narrow valley. We stood on a thin line of soil, a dry streambed that barely supported a few scraggling bushes and had failed to support a tree that stretched its dead branches into the air. In front of us was a rocky hillside just as high as the one we had just descended. There was no sense in moving farther unless the moon rose, and even then we would have to proceed with caution to avoid breaking a bone among the rocks.

We still couldn’t risk a fire, but the Attolian collected what fuel he could find. He used his blanket and his belt to make a bundle of it that he could carry on his shoulder; then we ate the last bites of dried meat we had from the slavers and waited to see if the moon would give us enough light. When it rose, we began climbing again, moving even more slowly than before, the moon shadows more treacherous than their daytime cousins. I looked longingly down the valley, along the relatively flat streambed, but the Attolian shook his head.

“We’ve no idea where it will lead us. If we keep heading north, we will eventually leave the empire and cross over into Zaboar.”

“Assuming the way north is passable.”

“Assuming that, yes.”

We climbed the next hill, and from its crest the Attolian could see signs of a road below. I had to take his word for it.

“Probably leads to another mine,” he said. We started carefully down. This hillside was as treacherous as the one before, and as we got closer to the bottom, I could see that the roadway was partially blocked by a slide. In spite of our care, we both lost our balance and rolled down in a shower of rocks. Sitting up at the bottom, the Attolian asked if I was all right and, when I didn’t answer, hurried to my side. I was staring at the rocks and what they had partly covered over.

“A slave escaped from the mines,” said the Attolian.

“He didn’t get far,” I said. Like us, he’d fallen on the hillside, but unlike us, he’d died of it. He must have hit his head as he fell, or the rocks came down on top of him once he’d hit bottom. The side of his head was crushed and black with blood.

“No, not far,” said the Attolian. He reached to lift one hand of the corpse. “Just recently dead,” he said.

“Could it be one of—”

“The men we freed? I don’t see how. I can’t believe any of them could be moving faster than we are, not in the state they were in.”

Reluctantly I stood, wishing I could do something for this corpse, but there was nothing to do that would make any difference to him now. So we walked away, again choosing the rocky climb up the next hillside instead of the deceptively inviting road. The road would lead us nowhere we wanted to go.

When I woke the next morning, the sky over me was gray. Thinking it was just dawn, I fell back asleep and woke again to find it still gray. The Attolian was standing with his back to me, staring upward as if he could pierce the clouds like his god Miras with a magic arrow.

“This is unexpected,” he said.

We waited for the skies to clear, but they did not. There were brighter spots, but it was impossible to tell if this was the sun itself shining through or only a thin place in the clouds. In these irregular hills we needed the sun to guide us.

“I’ll climb to the top of this ridge,” said the Attolian, “and see if there is a landmark we can navigate by. Watch for my signal.”

He came back without having signaled, but I hadn’t wasted the time he was away.

“Is that edible?” he asked when I held up the ring snake I’d caught.

“I think so,” I said. I was certainly hungry enough to eat it.

“There’s another valley just the same beyond this one. Why don’t we go that far and, if it seems safe, cook the snake? I can make a fire without too much smoke. If the skies clear, we’ll push on, and if not, we’ll just have to wait out the clouds. We can’t afford to lose our sense of direction.”

I nodded. It seemed as good a plan as any. So I wore the snake draped over my shoulder as we climbed. The Attolian already had the wood for our fire balanced on his. Hunger lent skill to my feet, and I picked my way quickly up the hill. Whatever unpleasantness I might have encountered in my life, I’d never been this hungry for this long, and I deeply resented the clenched emptiness in my middle. I refused to think of the emaciated slaves we’d left behind. I was concentrating so hard on not thinking of the poor men laboring in the mines around us that I nearly jumped out of my skin when the Attolian grabbed me by the arm. Heart in my mouth, I looked where he pointed, but it was no armed enemy watching us from the far side of the next narrow valley. It was a wild goat.

“Much better than snake,” whispered the Attolian. Stripping the bundle off his back, he lowered it to the ground with only a slight sound of wood bumping against wood. Catlike and much faster than we’d been moving together, he made his way down to the flat ground at the center of the valley and then up the far slope. The goat didn’t seem alarmed, but it didn’t wait for him either. It moved off across the hillside, the Attolian following after. I descended more slowly to the bottom of the valley and arranged the wood for a fire and looked over the snake. I’d had ring snake before, but it had been cooked in a tureen. I wasn’t sure what to do with it out in the wild. Instead of making a bad job of slicing it up, I went hunting down the valley for more firewood while I waited for the Attolian to return.

He was gone most of the afternoon, but when he came back, it was with the goat over his shoulder. I nearly cheered and pitched the now thoroughly unappetizing snake up the rocky hillside. The Attolian was less happy. When he reached the fireside, he threw the carcass down with a grunt.

“There are Namreen everywhere,” he said abruptly. “I think that road we saw must lead to some sort of passage into the Taymets, and they are watching it. We can’t have a fire. We have got to get out of here in a hurry, and I can’t carry the damn goat, but if we leave it here, they are sure to find it and guess we are nearby.”

He rubbed his face. “I didn’t see the Namreen until after I’d killed the goat. I haven’t gutted it yet. Maybe we can eat the liver, but then we’ve got to be on our way. I’ll hide the carcass and hope for the best.”

I suggested we could go back to the rockslide we had caused earlier and hide the goat underneath a new one. So the Attolian cut out the liver with as little mess as possible, we split it between us, and then he carried the rest of the goat back over the hill and I carried the firewood. While we climbed, I had another idea, and when we reached the dead body of the slave, I told the Attolian to leave the goat next to it. He went up the hill to start another slide that covered the goat completely, and most of the body of the slave. I added a judicious few more rocks until only an outstretched hand remained visible. Beside it, I placed the gold plaque from my slave chain, set just deeply enough between the rocks that it would seem to have fallen from the body during the slide, but not so deeply set that it would be missed by an observer.

The Attolian crouched nearby, his hands on his knees. He looked between the rocks to the shining gold plaque and said, “Perfection.” I ducked my head, more proud of myself than was probably warranted.

Then we hurried down the road, afraid of who might have heard the rocks coming down, hoping that we were moving away from any Namreen, not toward them, and that any footprints we left would be obscured by the other traffic. Fortunately the road did move more north and east for a while, so we were no farther south from our goal, at least, and after we’d traveled some distance, we again took to the rocky hills and hid for the night among them. We still had no fire. There was some dried grain in the slavers’ bags, and we had water to soak it but no pot to pour it into, so we chewed it as it was. I thought longingly of the slavers’ pot, stupidly left behind. Still, I had little to complain about, and any consideration of the poor slave we’d just buried under a rockfall would have silenced my complaints anyway. I think the Attolian sensed the bleakness of my mood. After he’d licked the last flecks of grain from his hand, he asked for another story of Immakuk and Ennikar.