Blood, dark, and slick, soaked through his shirt just below the ribs. His breathing came ragged, shallow, each inhale costing him visibly more than the last. "They caught me," Chaitton managed, words slurred with pain, coming down from the rock. "I thought I was clear. I was wrong.
Don't talk, Ayanna said, already tearing strips from her own shirt, pressing them hard against the wound. Save it. There's more. Chaitton gasped, gripping Ezra's arm with surprising strength for a man bleeding out on Canyon Rock. They know now.
Crane knows someone's coming for him specifically. Not just raiders being unlucky, someone hunting him. How do you know that? Because I heard him. Chaitton's grip tightened, urgency overriding pain for one crucial second before I ran.
Heard him shouting orders. Move the herd. No, wait. The herd's already gone. He means the men.
Move the men. Cut off the northern pass. Don't let them reach open ground. His eyes, glassy with pain, found Ezra's. He knows someone's coming, and he's not running from it.
He's preparing for it. We need to move him, Ayanna said, voice tight with barely contained fear. Now before they organize a real pursuit, they worked fast, lifting Chaitton as gently as urgency allowed, settling him across the back of the calst horse they could find among the herd. Ayanna rode behind him, one arm locked tight around his waist, holding pressure against the wound with her free hand. "How far to help?" Ezra asked. real help.
Someone who can treat a wound like that properly. Our camp should be half a day's ride, maybe a full one if we push slow to keep him steady. Ayanna's voice had gone hard and focused. The particular focus of someone who decided panic was a luxury she couldn't afford right now. There's a healer there.
If we can get him back in time, then we ride. They pushed through what remained of the night, driving the herd hard alongside Chaitton's labored, uneven breathing, every mile, feeling like it stretched twice, as long as it should. Ezra kept glancing back, watching the canyon mouth behind them for any sign of pursuit, heart hammering every time shadow shifted wrong in the dark. They didn't see Crane's men again that night. That Ezra understood with growing unease wasn't good news, wasn't relief.
It meant something worse. It meant Crane had chosen not to chase blindly through unfamiliar canyons in the dark, which meant he had a different plan already forming. One that didn't require chasing at all. Dawn broke pale and exhausted over a landscape that felt for the first time since Ezra had ridden out of redstone, genuinely dangerous in a way that had nothing to do with rifles or arrows. The danger now was quieter, colder. the danger of an enemy who'd stopped reacting and started planning.