"Faline!" Velma insisted, hurrying after the girl. "Faline, please! It is he, isn't it? It is he that's come, and none other but you and Quetz?"

But Faline was ignoring her, and Velma clenched her teeth in frustration. She followed the girl through the corridors, the Spring Green Pendant clutched firmly in her fist, and they both stopped and turned as the door thundered open.

Camphor stood there, taking in the scene with expressionless eyes. He turned to neither, and therefore addressed both. "Gather your things," he said with that familiar monotone. "We're leaving tomorrow."

Faline eyed him scrutinizingly. "What?" she demanded.

Velma opened her mouth to speak, and he turned to her as if predicting this. "Yes," he answered. "You'll need it all."

Her eyes snapped wide. "Are you certain?" she whispered, but he didn't answer.

Faline was boiling on the other side of the room. Camphor paid little mind and retreated through a door towards his room.

Velma cast her eye around carefully. "Well," she said quietly. "I suppose I'd best get packing." And she scurried off towards her most private of quarters and the herbs and oils that lay bottled there.

The horses trudged forwards, leaving the effects of their camp far behind. Marley spent a large time glaring at the horseman and the dog-headed companions he had somehow scared up. Fat lot of good this was, rescuing them just to lead them to a slaughter, she was sure.

What else would Feivel have disappeared over the horizon for yesterday? Only to come back, drag them across the plains, and now they wake up among his people. They couldn't be anything else, considering they all spoke the same twisted, venomous tongue.

Several times, the girls leaned in towards one another, especially those sharing horses, and whispered to one another, only to be smacked fiercely across the wrists with poles. It was barbaric, and Janice was being held a good ways away from the rest of them, a knife to her throat as they rode. She was particularly indecent, the dog-heads refusing to grant her even so much as a coat or a second shirt to preserve her modesty.

Finally, Marley could take it no more, and she dug her heels into her horse, but the horse refused to heed her urging. She grabbed the reins, and the horse refused to heed her urging. She glared first at the horse for being so stubborn, then at Feivel for betraying them so readily.

How could he?

And why weren't they dead already?

And when would they stop for a rest? There were children here, damn them! How could they do this to children?

Marley dared a glance backwards at Lina, whose expression was a perfect mirror of her own feelings before settling back and letting herself be led.

At least they weren't expected to walk.

"Is this those we be waitin'?" Gleb asked with a sigh. They'd been at this some absurd amount of time, and now he was asking at every little sound, without bothering to look up.

He received no answer, and he stopped shaving wood into curls for kindling and turned towards where he thought for certain Gershwin was. He had been skinning dinner, the dinner that was for the humans, anyway, and was now stopped, mid-motion, and staring up at the mountain.

"Friend Gershwin?" he asked quietly.

The horseman went back to skinning the fox they'd caught with no notice of whether he heard or not.

"Gershwin," Tem intercepted.

The tribesman still did not answer.

"Fantastic," Tem sighed. "We've got a blind man and a deaf man. Gleb, please don't lose your head. I don't want a dead man on our hands, too."

Gleb smirked. "I doubt me that's bein' on m' own list t'day," he laughed, and he took up the wood to shave again. "Sure 'nough, friend Gershwin'll be his own self sooningly. Pro'lly gettin' himself tired out from this game we've ours."

Tem sighed and nodded. "I suppose," he admitted resignedly, glancing uselessly at the mountain. "It's just starting to wear. That's all."