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56.
Alex had killed Nizin and many of his men.
He’d made the mistake of leaving Nizin’s son and his overseer alive, when he could have killed them while they were unconscious. Alex berated himself for the latter mistake. What saved him and Maryan, at least for a while, was that everyone at the site was out cold, and that the site was far from the settlement. It must have taken them hours to get together a search party with nets, guns, and Thuga porters.
Maryan and Alex headed away from the coast. Alex dreaded being weaponless—another mistake—and there was no time to sit around making anything more than a sharpened stick for a spear. They found two good cudgels that would have to do—They’d be helpless if they ran up against any rippers, but they were free for the moment. Free of the Siirk and their horrible ways.
They would expect them to head northeast to their valley, perhaps to the island which by now must be known to the Siirk also.
Talking it over, Alex and Maryan agreed to go home. Where else could they go? For now, they must simply get away in an unexpected direction. And they did. Jogging east in forests that had no trails other than those of small animals, they covered about 25 miles a day. They ate what came to hand—eggs, worms, beetles, roots. They drank from streams.
To confound any sniffer animals they might bring, they walked west a distance in one stream, then east a distance in another.
Alex could read the sun and the sky pretty well, and he kept them going as directly north and east as possible, as far from the coast as they could go.
They never did hear the hoofbeats of any pursuers.
“What are they going to do?” asked Maryan as they sat huddled together a few nights later, afraid to go to sleep.
“I don’t know. I’m hoping this wilderness runs on forever and that we’re not trapped in some Siirk society.” he told her about the sight he’d seen in the veiled tent, sparing her the details. She shivered, and he held her close.
He was wondering privately if they should just take their lives together, maybe go back and jump into the sea holding hands. It would be quick, it would be mutual, and it would be the end of their suffering.
He must seemed very down just then, for she embraced him, still trembling as she was, and held him silently while they listened for Siirk death to come down the trail.
But it didn’t. Not yet.
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