The first three fingers of his right hand moved lightly on the waxed linen string of his yew longbow as he knelt behind the boulder of coarse dark gray volcanic rock, and he spoke without turning his eyes. A bodkin-pointed shaft was ready on the rest that cut through the riser-grip, and the stocky thick-armed body was ready to bend and loose the weapon with a snapping flick.

"Yes, but then Martin Thurston would have gotten away with it, sure," Rudi Mackenzie pointed out reasonably, scanning the ground ahead with his binoculars. "And we'd be leaving an ally of the Prophet here on our way home, and next to our own borders."

The long flatlands to the south were dark as the sun sank westward. Until a few days ago the area had been the borderlands between the United States-the United States of Boise, to everyone except its inhabitants-and New Deseret. Now it was probably the borderland between the US of Boise and the Church Universal and Triumphant, and its Prophet.

"You mean he hasn't gotten away with it, then, Chief?" Edain enquired sourly. "And we aren't doing just that?"

Ah, and it's a rare comfort you are, my friend, Rudi thought.

Not just the rock-steady readiness; the bantering grumble kept a distance between his mind and the fact that three of their friends were in the hands of an enemy who were no more likely to show mercy than they were to drift upward and migrate south like hummingbirds.

"Ah, well, and they do need fighting, to be sure." Edain's lips tightened. "I saw what they did to those refugees. They'll have to account to the Guardians about that… and I'm not sorry to send more of them through the Western Gate to do it."

"It was probably fated that we get mixed up with this," Rudi said. "The Powers didn't have a nice straightforward trip East for us in their minds, so."

"And they have our friends," Edain said.