"Somebody's been cutting the dead off the east road and hauling them away," the man with the scorched sleeve said through the gap. "They've been doing it every day. I thought your wife might like to hear what sort of people lived at the other end before you took your children there."
"I would, especially if any of them knew how to make porridge." Felicity called to him from the table by the door, where her breakfast bowl was keeping one curled corner of Voss's map down. Victor unhooked the chain. The three newcomers had the same long face, the same horse ears and very different opinions about whether it was polite to scrape your boots outside somebody's door. The youngest went back to wipe up his prints when he caught Frost looking at them.
Victor had met the brothers two days before the rescue. He and Voss had followed the kidnappers' truck past a broken overpass and seen lightning jumping from one dead body to the next. The three men who'd made it had been holding the road open for travelers. They'd agreed to keep it open until everyone from the warehouse was out. While Felicity had been running for the west fence, these men had been getting the last stranded people through the smoke.
Felicity had heard explosions the night she'd gotten out of that place. She hadn't known anybody had kept the east road open, or that three strangers had gone on doing it when the smoke got bad enough to make a man lose sight of his own hand. She liked knowing that. She liked it a little less when Victor added that he'd ridden straight at the tallest brother the first time they'd met.
"You saw three fellows putting lightning through a bridge and your first thought was to see what happened if you flew at one?" she asked. The middle brother set his helmet on the table, covering most of the way to the coast. A silver line ran down its side, right where the metal had gotten hot enough to melt.
"He could've flown right over us," the eldest said. "Instead he came in low. If we'd just been showing off, he'd have had our lightning straight up his ass, and hadn't he just gone and brought a team out here with him? All it would've taken was one hothead." He moved the helmet so she could see the pencil line along the overpass. "He wanted to know if he could trust us around a rescue party."
"Did you get the answer you were looking for, Victor?"
"I got three men who knew how to stop a strike halfway down a rail when there was a living man on it. Sweetheart, I've worked jobs where I'd have been glad to get one." He had pushed the table up against the wall to stop it wobbling under the maps. When he moved it, the floor tipped the other way and Tommy's coffee headed for his lap. Apparently there were projects that needed more than a man who could fly under a lightning bolt.
Voss moved the mug to the half of the table held up by Felicity's knee. A damaged tablet beside his elbow kept enough of the old road grid to show where the east road crossed the commercial route. The pencil marks on his paper told her which pieces of the old grid had bridges left. He'd been building a new map out of the parts of the old one that people had actually walked. She'd never been all that turned on by the sight of a fellow doing his homework before, but she was inclined to make an exception for the wolf.
"Finch said we'd find the one who got the cell doors opened here," the eldest said to Voss.
"I'm the one with the knife," Voss answered. "If you mean the one who got those women to walk through the doors, she's the one using my good map for a tablecloth."
Felicity picked her bowl up. Under it lay a red pencil circle around a town called Vineyard. "I'd like to know what happens there when somebody comes in who can't do anything to earn a bed. We've got a lady with a hurt hand and two children who'd bankrupt us if the price of admission was sitting still."
It was the middle brother who answered her first. He'd spoken to a pair of beastmen running supplies out of Vineyard. One drove, one kept a rifle, and when they'd cleared a footbridge, both men had traded their jobs with the two fellows at the other end. Their captain went back into town with reports. There was enough of a military left to keep track of the trucks and shifts, little enough of one that the captain had to take his turn in the rain.
"I don't suppose the men from Tidehaven looked particularly sinister carrying bags of groceries," Felicity said. Victor's hand settled beside her knee, and she put hers over it. "I'm willing to listen. I'd just like to know what they do when somebody tells them no."
"Their driver told them no when an officer wanted him to carry a second load past dark," the youngest said. "Said his headlights had gone and he'd be damned if he'd drive a load of school supplies into a ditch. They let him sleep under his truck and take them around in the morning. Had to get up early, mind you."
She found she could picture that more easily than a place where every man in a uniform had somehow learned to be reasonable. A fellow could still get ordered out of bed in Vineyard. At least he could say when he couldn't see to drive.
The youngest brother fished a folded sheet out of his pocket. It was an order for flour and lamp oil, signed by the officer on duty at Vineyard. Below the list somebody had added six boxes of crayons for the kindergarten. The brother had met the driver on the east road. The children there learned how to find shelter, he said, and once they'd done that they got to draw all over perfectly good paper.
Frost had come to look over her arm. "Mummy, do you think they'd let me have a green one?"
"I think we could go find out." She passed the paper to Victor. He studied the officer's signature while Voss traced the road with a finger. A week and a half, he figured, allowing for the fog and people traveling on foot. Felicity went down to the gatehouse herself to ask the women what they wanted. Every woman took the offer. They packed the gatehouse blankets around the children's seats and shared the places on the carts so the injured could ride. By noon the horse brothers had taken the shafts, and Frost had thought of seven things he could draw in green.
Leaving took longer than deciding to go. The woman who'd brought the gray bags down from the landing could close her bad hand now, though she still couldn't lift a bucket by the handle. She had a very definite opinion about which cart she wanted. "That one by the window door. I'd like to see who's doing the driving. I don't suppose that'll be a problem these days."
Felicity made sure it wasn't. Two others wanted to walk so long as they could change their minds when their feet started to hurt. Finch put the last blankets on the wagon seats and helped fasten a piece of cord each woman could reach to lift the canvas for herself. When he went to help Rose up the step there was quite a good chance he'd have come away missing a finger if he hadn't made it clear he was offering an arm. She took his sleeve, thanked him and told him privately, in a voice that carried all the way across the yard, where to put his sympathy.
Outside the gatehouse, the children got their first decent look at what it took to make the whole company move. Victor folded down on the broken paving and opened his wings. Frost gathered along the darker feathers, and silver feathers came up thick around his neck and shoulders. Luna put her hand right under one so she could see if it had changed color underneath as well. Voss got a furry shoulder between her and the street before Felicity could worry about which side the little girl might wander out of.
Ash shifted into his jaguar form and walked around the gate so lightly she could just hear the scrape of one claw on the stones. Kai shook himself into a sandy dingo, went past him with his tongue hanging out one side of his mouth, and left a neat row of wet tracks from the water trough to the front wheel of the cart. Sarge had to go a little farther down the street before he could make his change without breaking anything. A black rhino took up a considerable amount of space, even when he'd had the forethought to pick a bit of street with no railings. Tommy shifted beside him, white and nearly as large, and tried to pretend the end of an old drainpipe wasn't hanging from his horn.
"Thank God nobody changed into a giraffe," Rose muttered. "We'd be sitting here till dark getting him out from under the awning."
Finch lowered the bridge of his great white nose alongside her good shoulder. He tucked his head so there was a step behind his ears and a solid place for her boot at the base of his neck. She told him she was quite capable of climbing into a cart with the rest of the injured. It was an excellent speech that would've had rather more effect if she hadn't already put her hand in his fur. She settled on his back with her knees below the sore places and sent a vine along either side of him to steady herself.
"Do try to keep the advice to a minimum," Finch told her. "It's been a while since anyone drove me."
"It's a damned good thing you're pretty," Rose said, and they got through the gate together. Felicity had wondered how Rose would feel when she woke up tomorrow with sore ribs and the memory of those men coming through the door. On Finch's back she'd found a position that let her take a full breath, and it was good to hear her use it to call him a smart-ass.
They camped the first night beside a toll shed. Felicity got to watch her enormous husbands discover that a shed built for one toll collector could accommodate either a spread pair of eagle wings or a wolf trying to turn around. The next night Victor took the cubs out under his wing while Voss made room for her, a much better arrangement in several respects.
Those days did a great deal for the people who'd come out of the warehouse. Each morning the women sorted out their own seats. By the fourth morning the one with the bad hand could use it to lift the flap, and on the sixth she insisted on buttering her own bread with a knife that would've tested a person with two good ones. Felicity had a little light to offer when something went wrong. There was also some pleasure in sitting down next to a friend and complaining about a blunt knife just because it was a bloody nuisance, and a better knife was right there in the basket if somebody would get off her skirt long enough to let her reach it.
Damien usually took the last stretch of road beside her cart. At first she thought he'd appointed himself a guard until she noticed he came up alongside whenever the youngest horseman went ahead to check the next fork. He was the only man who could get up and down the length of those wagons without kicking half a load of dust in the passengers' faces. He'd been doing the job that needed doing and putting himself at her elbow as often as he reasonably could around it.
"Did anybody give you permission to be this useful?" she asked him on the eighth evening, when he came back with the cup she'd dropped on the road. "I'd rather gotten used to having to ask my men twice to get the damn dishes washed."
"I learned quite a bit about your feelings on dishes in that room with the couch. If I remember correctly, there were one or two things you didn't think anybody ought to do in a bowl." He passed the handle up to her. Their fingers met across it, warm from a day's walk. She'd been waiting for a chance to lay a hand on him when the other two men who loved her weren't looking on. Having her two men actually see her take his hand turned out to feel better. Victor finished checking the wheel behind them and came up to rest a wing along her side of the cart.
By the ninth morning Rose could take a deep breath without wincing. She still rode on Finch's broad white back over the rough stretches. She claimed the polar bear was easier on her ribs than the cart, which didn't explain the way she scratched behind his ear. Felicity was well enough rested to leave the wagon and ride on Voss's back. He went down low for her, waited while she made a complete hash of where to put her left foot, then lifted just enough for her to settle behind his ears.
"If I end up coming off the back of you, I'd like you to make out that I did it on purpose," she told him. His fur was thick enough for her to get a good grip, and the ridge of muscle between her knees gave her a pretty clear idea where the next footfall was going to land.
"Give me fair warning if it's your intention to fall off my ass, sweetheart. I'd like time to put Tommy where he can break the fall."
Behind her the youngest brother started laughing. The clouds had come down overnight, turning the first few miles into a long, slow ride through wet leaves and stands of trees with no tops.
Near Vineyard, the road dipped into fog so thick Felicity could see Luna's bright scarf on Victor's back and very little of the eagle under it. Frost rode Sarge, one small boot on either side of the black rhino's neck. From her place behind Voss's wolf ears she heard a shoe dragging somewhere ahead. She put her hand flat on his neck. He stopped before the dead woman hit the ground in front of him with both feet still tangled in her apron.
More dead came out of the fog behind her. Victor set Luna down inside the cart with the high sides. Sarge backed Frost in with her, and Finch planted himself across the shafts until the passengers had cover. Felicity asked the brothers to let the dead come past the carts before they used their lightning. She'd seen the sparks run down a chain. She had no interest in finding out how well they ran along an iron wheel with her children behind it.
The trouble came from both ends of a line of old cars. Ash went along their left flank where he could get from hood to hood in two jumps. Kai ran under the far ends and called out whenever a pair of feet moved that hadn't been moving when he got there. For a few moments that was enough to keep the dead coming steadily away from the wagon. Then a driver's door fell off its hinges and three bodies that had been leaning against it came out together.
The first struck Tommy on the horn, which sent it into the other two on its way to the ditch. He looked so pleased with himself that Felicity hated to spoil it for him, but the woman who'd tripped on her apron had dragged herself close enough to catch her hand in the spokes of the wheel behind him. She'd only be half as dangerous if she could be persuaded to let go.
"Turn the wheel back a little, Tommy! Her hand's stuck in it." He stepped around the shaft and gave the tire a shove with his head. A rotted wrist came loose. Finch swept what remained of the woman off the road, and Rose's vines pulled the apron clear before it could catch in the next turn of the wheel. Inside the canvas, Frost kept one hand on his sister. Felicity could see a thin curved sheen in front of their faces. He'd managed to set the shield where the danger might come in, leaving himself room enough to breathe. She would've liked a minute to tell him she'd seen him do it.
Voss carried her into the gap beside the lead cart. Damien took the other side, his coils sweeping the feet out from under anything trying to get beneath the bed. She meant to give those two enough strength to hold that line. When a whole row of dead fell against it, she felt her light go out through both hands and keep going. A spark from the youngest horseman jumped clear over the ditch. Ash landed beyond the body he'd leaped for. In front of her, Victor caught himself against a signpost after a single beat of his wings.
"Fel, I can hold them," Voss told her. His ears were warm under her shaking fingers. She tried to close her hands. The light kept going until she picked out one living thing inside all that noise, the beat of his heart between her knees. She let go of everybody else first, then of him. The last dead man tumbled past her boot with a horse's hoofprint in his forehead.
She stayed where she was until Voss had walked her past the damaged cars. They'd put enough road between the living and the heap of bodies for Finch to bring the last wagon through. The eldest brother and the middle one checked the ditch by taking turns touching the earth with a spark. A hand grabbed for the first flash of light and barely made it out of the grass before the third brother put a hoof on it. They did it quietly enough that the people in the wagons had no reason to be afraid all over again.
"What happened when I gave you too much?" she asked Voss. "I could feel you going faster. I couldn't tell whether you wanted to."
"I'd already got my feet set for what I meant to do. The extra strength took me about half a step past it. Ash had his eye on that hood, and I think his ass landed a whole car farther along." He stopped where she could see the ruts the wheels had made through the mud. "It helped, Fel. Next time I'd like enough warning to aim for a piece of ground I'm happy to end up on."
She pressed her cheek against his neck. She'd meant to keep two men on their feet and had nearly pitched her first husband into a road sign. If those two things could come out of the same pair of hands, she needed to learn what they felt like before the light had left her fingers.
Damien brought her a drink while Victor helped the children out. She had wanted to ask whether any of her light had reached him. He held the cup for her because her fingers were still jumping, and she decided that question could keep until after she'd had something to eat.
Luna's scarf had slipped down Victor's beak. He shifted back onto two feet so she could wind it around his neck instead. Frost inspected his face and both his hands as carefully as Felicity had checked the children's travel straps. "You didn't get hurt," he said, sounding satisfied. "That's good, because Dad's supposed to be in front."
Victor had been handing the boy his cup. His fingers stopped halfway. Frost looked from his face to Felicity's, and the pleasure went right out of his own. "Was I supposed to call you something else?"