Chapter 7: The Ridgehound Night

Thora left the river camp with her bag on her back and nobody to stop her.

Nobody had to.

The cameras followed her up the ridge and the chat window scrolled, half cruel and half confused.

She walked until the camp was out of sight, then stopped and sat down on a flat stone.

She was not hurt, and she was not crying.

She pulled the empty vial from her pocket and scratched the dried gold ring with her thumbnail.

It flaked into a pinch of dust, and she folded it into a leaf and tied it shut.

At dusk she climbed a tree and slept in a fork of it, tied to the trunk with cord.

At midnight a scream woke her.

It was not the long thin cry of the night animals.

It was a man's voice, hoarse and sharp.

Then came gunfire, and a dozen snarls that all started at once.

She was out of the tree before she finished waking.

She ran down the ridge in the dark with the axe in one hand, and she saw the glow of the camp fire a long time before she saw the camp.

Ridgehounds were all through the clearing.

There were more than she could count, slate gray and lean, circling the fire in a ring.

Keir stood on a rock with the rifle jammed against his shoulder, firing until the magazine clicked empty.

Ansel was on the ground with a hound's jaws locked around the leg of his trousers.

The Heir stood back to back with Joren, a long knife in each hand.

Stella was nowhere in sight.

Her pod stood with the hatch shut.

Thora saw the open tub of face cream on a log by the fire, and the mirrors laid out beside it, and the sweet scent of vanilla on the air.

"Throw that in the river!" she shouted. "It's pulling them in!"

Nobody heard her.

A hound leaped at Joren's back and he spun and caught it with the rifle butt.

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