everyone, cannot protect everyone, not in this terrible world. The horse jolted beneath her. It cannot cure the world. Creedmoor yelled something. We woke it! We made Gun out of our spite, and Line out of our fear, and this poor thing out of our sorrow. Liv was very afraid for herself, but for a second, as she prayed for it to reach out and save her, she was able to pity it.
. . . but they’d left it too far behind; they were too hard to reach, and it let them go, and recoiled into its lair. The clouds dispersed. The birds moved on. The gray form unraveled. And the overburdened horse came up over the edge of the canyon and onto the red plains. The sky was very wide and blue and cloudless; the sun hung so high and golden, it was like it was daring Creedmoor to steal it. He breathed in dusty air deeply.
“Once upon a time,” the General said, “there was a high tower, where a young girl was visited by white birds. She . . .”
Creedmoor laughed and let the old madman ramble.
Two roads led off into the hills. From the west road there was the sound of roaring engines, coming closer. Wheels and shouting men and clumsy weapons being readied. No surprise; of course they had been waiting and watching for this moment.
Creedmoor felt Marmion’s dark burning strength in his veins; he felt the world go slow and cold and brittle around him while he grew faster and hotter and more terrible with every second.
—Two motorcars; carrying at most twenty men; at most two heavy motor guns. More will follow, but for now there are two.
—Fair odds.
—Many more will follow.
—An honest fight. A clean fight.
—If you like.
BOOK THREE
WESTWARD
CHAPTER 25
FLIGHT
Liv kept her eyes firmly closed. She thought yearningly of the tonic for her nerves, which was behind them now—far behind perhaps—she had simply no idea how far they had come. She was thrown from side to side. She held on to Cockle’s back as tight as a frightened child, hating him, fearing him, not understanding. The muscles in her back and shoulders and arms were in agony. Her gag smothered her, and she was light-headed. The horse’s hooves were a mad, meaningless din. From behind, there was the sound of roaring motors, shouting men. Cockle turned and laughed and there was another noise, right by her ear, the loudest thing she’d ever heard in her life, so loud that for a moment all sensation left her. She felt herself floating in darkness; lifted up helplessly from her body and its aches and terrors; set aimlessly adrift in a cool no-place among black waves. The sensation somewhat resembled falling asleep.
A small clear part of her mind said: This is the beginning of a dissociative state, the onset of fugue, occasioned by shock and trauma. You are going mad, Liv. Again.
She disagreed. It was the world below that had proved itself mad—had proved itself to be, behind its rational façade, a world of broken forms, meaningless turbulence, terror and incoherence.
Another part of her analyzed her situation. This is politics. This is history. Cockle is an Agent of the Gun. Therefore the men pursuing him are servants of the Line. Or perhaps vice versa. You are not important. Therefore, somehow, the General is. Plans are in motion. Oh, Liv, you have become involved in history.
She disagreed. There was no logic to her situation.
And yet another part of her was wordless, long gone, dreaming of history, adrift across the red plains of the West, its wars, its bitter myths, lost in images of blood and battle and destruction and madness. The lies of the Child’s History—progress, purpose, virtue—turned inside out, revealing horror. Four hundred years of the Great War. She dove deep, looking for meaning, past politics, past the bloody fall of the Republic, past the battle of this and the battle of that and four hundred years of cruelty visited on and occasionally by the Folk and back to the first colony at Founding, which now seemed like a mistake in itself, the frightened colony huddled behind its walls against the alien woods, mad and dark and shifting. . . .
Cockle pulled her to the ground. Her legs gave way and she sprawled in the dirt. She opened her eyes. It was night and cold and they were among pines. Needles pressed sharply into her palms. She did not know how much time had passed or where