Chapter 346: Word
The trail widened on the second day.
For two months it had been their own thin line across empty country. Now it began to show the marks of other feet. Old fire rings. A broken hobble strap, half buried. The dry sign of stock driven through, days ahead of them.
People used this trail. They were walking back into the part of the world that did.
Kai kept Ambient Map open as he went. Behind him the nine zones still held — one field, steady at the eastern edge of his read. The changed country sat back there, pushing west at its slow two miles a season. Ahead the land was only land. He read it and filed nothing, because there was nothing in it to file.
By midday they smelled smoke.
The herding camp sat in a fold of the highland, out of the wind.
