Knucklebones tossed her rucksack over one shoulder. "Shouldn't we scavenge wires and such? You made snares last time," she said.

"I just want to get away," Sunbright began, "but you're right." With their knives they cut away loose wires, lengths of tubing, and fabric from the wings. They never knew what might prove handy.

Looking at the wrecked flitter, Knucklebones asked, "What will the coyotes think of this?"

"A bird skeleton picked clean," he mumbled, then faced north, where a sentence of death awaited. "Let's get this over with, too."

They walked where the evening shadows of the Channel Mountains touched the tall grass, and, gradually, darkness overtook them.

After three days' walk-the last across rock and shale-they breasted a low hill. Sea wind carried salt to their nostrils. Sunbright stopped dead. "That's them!" he cried. "But it can't be them!"

Knucklebones just stared. In the distance winked the Narrow Sea, a silver so bright it shone white. At its shore, and surrounding the toe of the last Channel Mountain, the peak called the Anchor, lay the villainous town whose name had become Scourge. Punished by hard winds off the sea, the town saw any steel mysteriously rust away within weeks. Since industry could not prosper, the town had fished until the fish thinned out. Good people left, the desolate stayed. Them, and plagues of rust monsters. The idle population turned to thieving and infighting, until Scourge gained its name as a place to avoid.

And here, on the outskirts, amidst sand and rocks, where no humans would venture, Sunbright found his tribe.

The camp was lumpy huts of piled stone, or caves cut into hillsides, or mere holes in the ground covered by rotting hides. The only wooden structure was the common house, a ring of rotted aspen trees dragged from the mountainside, the roof thatched crudely with brush. The disordered camp was rife with garbage, droppings, bones, ashes, and trash. The smoke of a few fires trickled into the brassy sky. At midday it was hot here on the rocks, as it would be cold by night. A few women trudged through camp with fagots or bundles of meager food. Men slept in the shade or lay with feet jutting from canted doorways. Dirty children crept at quiet games, or else turned over rocks, hunting salamanders and insects for food. Buzzards picked at garbage, unmolested.

Sunbright stood with his mouth agape. "I had a hint…" he said, his voice heavy with shocked disappointment, "when I glimpsed the village in the scrying table… but how… Where are the reindeer? Where are the dogs? How did this happen?"

Knucklebones only shook her head. She'd grown up in poverty, in the sewers of a mighty city where every scrap was stolen or scavenged. But even she was shocked, having heard time and again of Sunbright's proud people. This motley bunch looked like trolls.

After a long time the barbarian picked up his feet-a mighty effort, as if they were glued to the ground-and descended the slope.

At first there was no sign they'd arrived, as if the pair were ghosts. Children looked up curiously with big eyes, and retreated around rocks. A woman glanced up, for strangers never came from the south, and rubbed her eyes. Without a word she slunk into a hut. A man peeked out and frowned. Other folk noticed the odd couple, one small and one tall, and trailed them. Sunbright kept walking, watching everywhere, but not believing his eyes. His goal was the common house. By the time he reached it, thirty ragged barbarians had trickled from shelter to see him enter.

Sunbright ducked under a reindeer hide so old it was white strings. Knucklebones slipped after, quiet as a cat. Inside hung rotted hides with faded totems, but nothing else: neither animal masks nor enemy scalps nor ancestors' skulls. The old couple seen from afar, Iceborn and Tulipgrace, huddled under thin blankets by a smoky fire. The old man turned blind eyes, demanded, "Who is it?"

His wife, Tulipgrace, woke with a start, peered at them with red eyes, and asked, "You are…"

"Sunbright Steelshanks, son of Sevenhaunt and Monkberry," he said flatly. He almost added: of the Raven Clan of the Rengarth Barbarians, but these were the same folk, or had been.

"Sunbright…" Tulipgrace said, awed. "You fled, were banished in absence. You're sentenced to death."

"Unwrap the wolf masks then, and sing the death song! Kill me if you can! I've yet to see a man or woman in this village bear a sword! By the Teeth of Kozah, what's happened to my people?"

The elders didn't answer, only turned back to the fire. Knucklebones cleared her throat, an explosion in the awesome silence. She noted that once Sunbright had set foot in the camp, he walked taller and spoke more boldly, blood and thunder in his voice, but boldness seemed lost on this lost race. It was as if they'd invaded a graveyard full of tired ghosts.

"Sunbright," came a mild reproof.

The barbarian whirled, hand over his shoulder to snatch Harvester, then froze. A wizened woman peeked from the doorway.

"Mother!"

In three steps the warrior-shaman became a small boy, stumbling as he hugged his mother. Barbarian emotions never lay deep, so he wept openly, tears streaming onto her gray hair. The woman curled arthritic fingers around his massive, scarred arms and patted his back like a baby's, cooing, "My boy. My man-child."

Sniffling, Monkberry led the pair from the common house to her own abode. It stood on the edge of the camp, a heap of stones roofed with branches, but round like the ancestral yurts of reindeer hide. The roof was so low they sat, Sunbright's head brushing dead leaves, the room so tiny their knees touched. A bed of rags was the only furniture. A fire pit let smoke through a hole in the roof.

Once seated, no one knew what to say. Monkberry's face was seamed as a prune, her eyes deep-set but bright blue, like her son's. Her hair was long and gray, but neatly combed. She wore a simple smock of deer hide, almost worn through at the shoulders. As the awkward silence dragged, she nodded at Knucklebones. Flustered, Sunbright said, "Uh, this is Knucklebones of Karsus. She's a-rogue. Good with her hands. Clever, I mean. She's a friend." When Knucklebones shook her dark head, he amended, "I mean, I love her."

Monkberry took the thief's small hands, touched her scarred cheek with crooked hands, and said, "She's lovely. Elven blood so becomes a woman."

"I'm not," Knucklebones stammered. For the first time in her life, she felt shy. "I'm just an old, scarred alley cat. A sewer rat too contrary to die."

The old woman caressed her tousled dark curls, and said, "Scars are a badge of honor in our tribe, dear. You carry enough to sit at the elder fire." Then she sighed at painful memories.

"Mother," Sunbright began. "What's happened? How came you here? Where is everyone? Why don't you leave this awful place?"

Another sigh. "I prayed you'd return, Sunbright," his mother said. "In my heart and dreams I knew you'd come back. I could feel your eyes on me, hear your voice, grown so deep and manly. And it's time, for the tribe needs you desperately. Needs a miracle, or else we die out. Far worse than the gods forsaking us, we've forsaken our own heritage. But ask not, and let me speak…

"I don't know if you've been north, but the tundra is dying. Or sleeping. We don't know which. Perhaps it's some cycle that runs centuries, beyond the memory of our tribe. Howsoever, the Earthmother could no longer sustain us. The reindeer were scrawny, calves dropped stillborn, salmon ran thin…" She went on, listing small disasters that Sunbright already knew. Finally she came to,"… We knew we couldn't remain, so we moved south, to the edge of the tundra. But immediately the cycle of our lives was broken, and we felt uprooted. With nothing to hunt or gather, we were bereft of work, lacking any way to make a living.