The ground was flat all around us with the only monument being a corrugated mountain range barely visible in the moonlight and stars. A feint design, jagged teeth sprouting up from the maw of earth. Which was all we could really see, the feint outline of things. Silhouettes in an early dark coming up. We sat around on logs or boulders with raised sleeping bags to our rear. Two. To my side were picking sticks. We still hadn’t decided who’d keep watching first. 
  “Got any idea what we’re moving?” Obrick asked. We stood around the campfire, I threw in little flakes of wood. A whole bundle sat near me by the fallen log I stood on. We were posted outside the little village, beyond the wooden gate and beyond the small tower they had in the corners of the city. Our eyes were set on the dark horizon. In the flat desert, hiding our fires was a necessity. We had them in little burrows inside the dirt. Upon these ovens we laid a metal grate and ate from lizard skewers. I poked the floor with my knife. A scorpion. It’s body flailed about the tip of my knife. I spun it and eyed it carefully.
  “Virgil?” Kal asked.
  “We’re moving people.” I poked the scorpion into the little oven.
  “You’ve said that.” Obrick said.
  “What else do you want me to say?”
  “The truth. What are we moving?”
  “People. I told you. They’re merchants. They’ve got stores and caravans.”
  “Yeah. I noticed, big fucking bulky boxes carried by half a dozen oxen. Tell me, what the hell requires that much drive power?”
  “I don’t know. Heavy things?” I spun the scorpion. It crumpled up, rolling into the tip and into a bundle. 
  “Yeah. Real heavy things.” Obrick said.
  “I heard something metallic.” Kal said.
  “There you go. It’s something metal.” I said. “Stop thinking so much about it.”
  “Thinking is all I can do in this shithole.” Obrick threw some wood into the fire and stood. He put his hands on his waist and took pacing laps around the fire. His shield loose on his back, the giant rose jumping up and down. He scratched his head and spat and kicked dirt into the dark. 
  I took the scorpion out of the fire and bit into it. Too hot. I spat and blew my mouth and stuck my tongue out into the cool air. It cooled fast. Whole desert felt like a tundra into late night. Kal kept his hands near the warm pit. I wrapped my coat around me and tried again at the scorpion snack, eating the tail and then the head. Munching on it, spinning the blade. 
  “We’re on the border.” Obrick said. 
  “That’s right.” I said. “So keep your eyes peeled.”
  “Like I can see shit.” He said. “What are we even looking out for? An attack?”
  “Naw. This city ain’t worth attacking.” I said. “King wants us to confiscate anyone smuggling. Drugs, women, any of that type of shit.”
  “So we’re border control.” Kal said, at last. He dragged a whetstone along the edge of his blade. Sliding it down the giant length. He finished and admired the sheen, wiping off the metal scrapings with a rag until he could see his own reflection unstained. 
  “We’re just trying to keep things under control.” I said. “That’s it.”
  “We inch closer and closer. The hell is the king fighting anyways? No one understands.” Obrick threw stones into the dark.
  “He’s defending his capitol. Like any strong nation would.”
  “Right. Right.” Obrick said. “That why his kingdom keeps expanding with each battle?”
  “I’m not here to defend the state. Alright?” I stood, sheathing my knives. “Truth is. I don’t give a fuck about the king, but Vincent does. And if Vincent cares, you care. Where the fuck were any of you before he found you? Wandering. Stragglers. Nothings in this world. Now look at us, on our way to become knighted heroes, and all it’ll take is a little bit of watching and waiting. Sure as hell beats getting killed by monsters every other fucking day.” 
  “Does it?” Obrick asked.
  I smiled. Not like they could see it. I walked towards Obrick with the mind to slap him in the back of the head. But stopped midway, narrowing outward to the black horizon. Perhaps a small smudge in my vision, I rubbed my eyes and kept my look. Moving figures in the dark? It wasn’t absolutely set quite yet, there was still a degree of light outside. Stars. Moons just making their appearance. I swear I saw something move though, past the cactus and spiny aloe growing lonely along the boulders. Something with rounded shoulders, a whole group of them keeping to their lower form and coming up the side of the village and towards a mountain range. I followed them with my eyes. Obrick and Kal caught me looking and turned too. 
  “Let’s go.” I said. 
  Somewhere in that dark, a torch flickered and my eyes followed it. A kind of hesitation about me, as if I knew that something was wrong. 

 

We saddled up and came rushing in. Smoke up to our faces. Obrick waved his torch. It was a bit off the perimeter of the city, to the rear of a broken post and few planks. A group of three walking gingerly. They stopped and turned, covers over their bodies. Kal and I circled them. Going clockwise around them. I had one hand on the saddle and another on my knife. Obrick stayed still, fire up. 
One of the three dropped their torch and it rolled on the floor and ceased, smoking out with a hiss. 
  “What’s your name and your purpose?” I asked. 
  A heavy silence. I turned to Kal and nodded. Off the back of his horse he lifted his blade and slammed it into the grade. The earth shook, dirt and rock scattered and the group turned away from the blast - all save one. Kal gripped tight and I dropped down from my horse and walked over to the people.
  “You gonna talk now?” I asked.
  “This won’t scare me.” The tallest one said.
  “It should.”
  Two knives in each of my grip, my eyes narrowed on them. I walked over and threw the covers off one of their faces. A young woman, hair curt and to her neckline. She dragged her hood back over her head. The two smaller bodies huddled around her legs, their gowns going down their faces as well. Children. Small, no older than eleven. I turned to the woman. Obrick’s torch flame running wild. Desert wind came up behind me and I felt the chill in the back of my neck.
  “What the hell is this?” I asked. 
  “We were taking a night walk.” She said.
  “The hells you were. Who walks out into the desert?” Obrick shouted.
  “I do.”
  I put my knives back down. Kal eased his sword back onto his horse. The weight made the creature buckle and bemoan. 
  “What were you doing out there?” I asked. “We’ve spotted you for a while, walking out, coming it from the eastern lands, going towards the mountains.”
  “We weren’t going towards the mountains.” One of the children said. The woman told him to hush and grabbed his head, tucking it into the folds of her coat.
  “Alright. So you were just trying to get into the city. Why not take the front door?”
  “’Cause we can’t.” She said. “Most can’t.”
  “Most can’t?”
  “Don’t you get it. Xanthus doesn’t want their kind.” 
  Obrick came up with the torch and I took it from him, bending over and flashing it across the children. Small brown kids. The bright light reflecting off their black eyes. They turned away into the woman. Obrick walked a ways back and sat on a boulder, chin on his hand.
  “There’s a population policy.” I said.
  “It’s a population culling.” She said. “Your king would have us die in our lands. Torch us, drown us, before he’d even think about taking us in. That sound right to you?”
  I tucked in my lips and looked to Kal. He nodded his head and sighed.
  “Don’t pretend you don’t know, capitol scum. You’d bomb our houses and rape our families before you’d extend a hand.” She said. “How it’s been. How it’ll always be. Hurt the people demanding salvation, blame the want and need on the victim.”
  “I heard you. Now shut up.” I threw the torch at Obrick. He fumbled to catch it. Crossing my arms, I studied the children. I grabbed the first by the wrist and patted him down.
  “Where do you come from. Answer me now.” I said.
  “Wh-” Her eyes looked side to side and settled crestfallen. “Irani. The children. I’m of the city.”
  “So then you’re the one committing the crime. What do you do in the city?”
  “It’s not a crime.” She clenched her fist. “I…I run the orphanage.” 
  “So you’re taking them in? Am I to believe they’re…”
  “What do you think?” She said. “Their parents were killed. Xanthus decided he needed a deeper post. You can guess the rest.”
  I turned to Obrick and Kal. Both of them shrugging and not doing me a single favor on how to think about anything. I rubbed my chin. Somewhere off, along the small tower in the front of the city, I could see a soldier waving his torch to us. Not that he could see us, but that he could see our torch. 
  “What do I tell ‘im?” Obrick asked, torch in hand.
  I looked at the children.
  “That no one is here.” I said. 
  The woman breathed heavy. She clenched the children. Her eyes still hostile and her body still protracted as if to pounce. 
  “What’s your name.” I said.
  “Is that a demand, soldier?”
  “Let’s get something straight. Being a soldier is second to being a Crow.” I said. “To hell with the King. Now tell me your name.”
  “Juna.” She said. 
  “Well then, Juna. I suspect you’ll be the orphanage later today. Right?” I asked.
  “And I suspect you’ll pay me a visit.”
  “To talk.”
  “To talk.” She repeated meek. 
  I waved them away. Kal grabbed his horse. Obrick saddled up. I came up on my steed, looking at the three as I went up. They stared. Stupid and still, statues frozen in that desert.
  “They’ll chew you out if they find out.” Kal said. “Xanthus already hates you.”
  “Xanthus won’t know anything. The fucker is fifty miles away.” I said. “We’re fine. Now lets get back to camp.”
  Obrick nodded his head, leading with his fire.