Chapter 354: Back Into Range
Four days east of the way-station, the grass stopped being a surprise.
It was just green now. Green the way summer grass is green, except the season was wrong for it, and the wind still carried the cold edge of the high country. Kai walked at the front and read the ground through his boots. The warmth was steady under the trail. It did not come and go the way it had near the keeper's fence. It held.
They were getting close.
The pack mule had stopped fighting the green days ago. It grazed when they stopped and walked easy when they moved. Soren said the animal was sleeping better. Soren said most things now, and wrote down the rest.
"The reading hasn't dropped since dawn," he said. He had his small surface instrument out, walking with it the way another man might walk with a stick. "Not once. West of here it rose and fell with the ground. Here it just sits. High and flat." He looked up. "We're inside the spread now. Properly inside it."
