The world dissolved into fragments, red as blood, white as bone.

When she came to she could barely move. Her belly and back were a mass of pain, and one eye was covered with a film of drying blood.

Silverneck had taken her baby. The older woman cradled him on her lap, and was even allowing him to suck on her cracked, dry nipples.

With a groan, Shadow let the world fall away again.

After a time, she was aware of a looming shape before her. Her child was sleeping uneasily at her breast. She cringed, trying to curl tighter.

But a gentle hand touched her shoulder, and pushed her gently back. It was Silverneck. She was carrying a pepper. Its stem had been pulled out, and it was full of water. Shadow drank greedily. But her lips were cracked and swollen, and she felt the water dribble down her chin.

It was dark before she found the strength to clamber a little way up into a tree, and construct a rough nest.

Reid Malenfant:

Malenfant was bent double. His arms were pinned behind his back. Something was jolting him, over and over. His head felt like it would explode. It was like the feeling you got after a few days on orbit, when your body fluid balance hadn’t yet adjusted to microgravity, and blood pooled in your head.

But when he forced his eyes open — the light stabbed bright, making him squint he saw, in glimpsed shards, a ground of rust-red dust, powerful bare legs pumping.

Not on orbit, it appears, Malenfant. He was being carried over somebody’s shoulder, in a fireman’s lift. But his head was upside down, and with every step his cheek crashed into the back of his carrier.

He threw up. It was a spasm of gut and throat; suddenly hot yellow-green fluid was spilling down the naked back before his eyes.

There was a loud hoot of protest. With a shrug he was thrown off the shoulder, as if he were as light as a feather, with a good two yards to fall to the ground.

The fall seemed long, slow-motion. He couldn’t raise his bound arms to protect himself. He landed head-first.

When he came to again his head ached even worse than before. He was lying on his side. All he could see was red dust, and a pair of grimy buckskin boots. His legs were free. But his arms, still pinned behind his back, felt like they were half-wrenched out of their sockets.

A buckskin boot dug into his stomach to tip him over, none too gently. He finished up on his back, as helpless as a landed fish. It felt as if his neck was in his own warm vomit.

Faces loomed over him. One pushed closer. It was a bearded man, aged perhaps forty; his face was round, greasy, suspicious.

Malenfant tried to speak. “Let me up,” he gasped.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “English? But no argot I ever heard. What are you, a Frenchie?” His accent was thick, the vowels twisted, almost incomprehensible.

Somebody said, “He’s sick. Leave him. We ain’t here for this.”

Beyond the bearded man Malenfant saw McCann; he seemed composed, though his arms were bound. “Sprigge. In the bowels of Christ I beseech you. He is an Englishman.”

The bearded man — Sprigge — glared at McCann. Then he turned back to Malenfant. “Get him up.”

Ungentle hands dug into Malenfant’s armpits and hauled him off the dirt. He managed to get his feet on the ground. But he couldn’t keep his eyes targeted; they slid sideways in their sockets as if he were drunk, and when he was let go he fell back into the dirt.

His NASA boots were gone. His feet were bare, grimy and bleeding. They even took my socks, he thought. He wondered what had happened to his pack.

Sprigge stood over Malenfant again. “Get up or I leave you for the Elves.”

Malenfant slumped forward. He managed to get up onto one knee, got one foot on the ground, and pushed himself up. This time he staggered, and his head still spun, but he stayed upright.

McCann said, “You can’t expect the man to walk.”

Sprigge nodded, and snapped a finger.

A huge Runner stepped up to Malenfant. He was naked, dust-encrusted — and his head was small, like a child’s, though his face was weather-beaten and scarred. From the look of the dribble of vomit down his back, this had been Malenfant’s reluctant mount.

The Runner kneeled in front of Malenfant, his hands making a stirrup. Malenfant stared stupidly.

McCann said, “Use him, Malenfant.” Now Malenfant saw that McCann was sitting on the shoulders of another huge Runner, like a child riding on its father. The Runner’s head was bowed, his eyes fixed on the dirt. McCann seemed relaxed, almost comfortable. “Follow my lead, Malenfant. One must keep up the front.”

“…I.”

Julia walked up to Malenfant. Her head was bowed, and her wraps of skin had been ripped away, leaving her naked. But her hands were unbound.

Sprigge touched his belt, where a whip was coiled.

Julia kept her gaze directed at the dirt, not looking the humans in the face. She said, “Carry Mal’fan’.”

Sprigge barked a laugh. “So you use a Ham’s quim, Sir Malenfant. Your punishment will sting if you let Praisegod Michael witness such iniquity.” But he stepped back.

Julia slid her arms under Malenfant’s body and lifted him effortlessly, like a child.

The party formed up and began to move off over the dirt.

The party was made up of perhaps a dozen Runners. Most were naked, though some wore loincloths. Some of them bore heavy packs, or loads on their heads and shoulders. Two of them were dragging the carcass of an immense bull antelope on a crude travois. The rest of the Runners had passengers: buckskin-clothed men sitting on their shoulders, stubby whips in their hands. All the Runners walked silently, just waiting for instruction. Several of them had scars striped on their shoulders and bellies.

There was one other hominid: a Ham, dressed in clothes as comparatively well stitched as those of the humans. He carried a whip; perhaps he was a supervisor, a boss.

Malenfant saw that Julia’s breasts were scratched, as if by fingernails, or teeth. “Did they hurt you?”

She did not answer.

McCann’s Runner came trotting alongside. “She shouldn’t speak to you, Malenfant,” McCann said urgently. “It will be a whipping for her if she does, and perhaps for you. She knows how to behave with these types; you must learn, and fast. These brutes had a little gruesome fun with her, but yon Constable Sprigge stopped them. I sense there is a core of decency in that man, under the dirt and violence. Perhaps that will assist us as we deal with these Zealots…”

“Zealots,” Malenfant growled.

McCann said grimly, “I did not expect to encounter them here. They are clearly expanding their area of operations — which is all the worse for us. Listen to me, Malenfant. Your romantic quest for Emma is going to have to wait. It’s vital to keep up a front. All that keeps us from doing the carrying rather than being carried is that these fellows accept us as human beings. So you must act as if it is your privilege, no, your right, to use the muscles of these poor creatures as if they belonged to you. And don’t forget, you’re English.” He eyed Malenfant. “A colonial type like you might take it as a great indignity to have to impersonate a Britisher. But I believe any of these ruffians would run you through if they suspected you were a French or a Spaniard or a Portugoose…”

Malenfant said bitterly, “You know what? I miss America. In America you can travel more than a couple of miles without getting robbed, attacked, kidnapped or trussed up.”

“Chin up, sir. Chin up.”

Malenfant’s thinking dissolved. Lulled by the stink of the dust, his weakness, and Julia’s steady warmth, he dozed.

Somewhere thunder cracked, and when he looked up he saw more fat clouds scudding across the sky.