The hunter and two ghosts set out at daybreak the next morning. The snow had stopped, but the clouds were low and heavy, promising more.
Madrid trekked over the soft snow on a pair of homemade snowshoes. A hunter had found the design years ago in Golden Age archives, and all Hunters had used them ever since.
Zoe flew ahead, scanning, tracking her own data back toward where her Guardian had fallen. Rose remained phased inside Madrid's armor. Not only was it warmer, but she kept up a constant area scan for enemies.
The snow resumed falling at noon, wrapping the mountains and forests in a silent veil of swirling white. Madrid pressed onward, undeterred, following the bereaved ghost. She led them down into a narrow valley, across a frozen lake, then up a ridge to a rocky canyon on the far side.
As they entered the canyon, Madrid and Rose looked around uneasily. What a bad place to be pinned down. The walls were too high to climb, and there were many curves and nooks where enemies could lie hidden. But it was empty and silent under the falling snow.
"If it took five days for the war beasts to drop Zoe," Rose said privately to Madrid, "how did we get here so fast?"
"I think the Cabal hunter took a much more roundabout route," Madrid thought. "She did say that they didn't cross the lake, for instance."
Knowing the massive weight of most Cabal warriors - the Vanguard called them space rhinos - Rose wasn't surprised.
Zoe led them to a hump in the snow and flew around it, whimpering. Madrid set to work digging. Soon he unearthed the remains of another Guardian, the corpse frozen and scattered by scavengers. There wasn't much left but a few bones and bits of clothing.
"No cloak," Rose muttered. "Did the alien take his cloak?"
It was Hunter tradition that when one died, their cloak was taken as a symbolic mantle by their nearest companion Hunter. The very idea that the renegade alien had taken it made Rose fiercely angry. Madrid's anger was quieter, deeper, but she felt it, too.
Zoe flew back and forth over her Guardian's remains, making an awful, grieved keening sound. "No spark, no spark, Dustin, why didn't you wait for me? Dustin, Dustin ..."
Rose phased into reality and joined her sister ghost in scanning the dead man. She couldn't bear to see Zoe suffer without at least confirming the spark was gone. She flew close to the rib cage, scanning in a tight, focused beam.
The tiniest remnant of Light flickered there.
"Zoe," Rose exclaimed. "Is this his spark?"
Zoe zipped down beside her and scanned, too. "I think - I think it is. Dustin!"
Then Zoe did something Rose had never seen before. She phased, converting to pure energy, and embraced the flickering remnant of her Guardian's spark. Her own Light passed into his, strengthening his spark, brightening it.
Zoe phased back into being and opened her shell, expanding into a sphere of blue light that turned the nearby snowflakes into bright confetti. She poured resurrection Light into her Guardian, rebuilding his body, cell by cell, layer by layer. Then she called his spark back to life.
Rose watched, sensing the strong bond between ghost and guardian, and trying not to feel jealous.
Dustin sat up in the snow, bewildered. He was a human with brown skin, clad in the woven bodysuit ghosts dressed their Guardians in by default. "Zoe? What happened? Where are my clothes?"
His heavy, warm gear lay around him in shreds.
Zoe phased into him and vanished, telling him the whole story through their personal link. Dustin looked sharply at Madrid and Rose as he climbed to his feet. Then he turned in a slow circle, gazing at the rock walls through the snow.
Madrid extended a hand. "Guardian Dustin."
"Guardian Madrid." Dustin shook hands. "My ghost tells me I've been dead for six days. I think it's a new record. Seen any Cabal?"
"Nothing but game. Here, you need these." Madrid dig into his knapsack and handed Dustin a set of heavy winter clothing.
Dustin put them on as quickly as he could. "Thanks. I'm not wild about dying of exposure over and over. Where're you headed?"
They talked patrol routes and trail conditions. Dustin had been stalking a herd of elk when the Cabal Hunter caught him. The animals were long gone, and Dustin should have returned to the Last City two days ago.
"Not sure I'm headed back yet," he growled. "I've got a score to settle with the rhino. He threw my ghost to his dogs. His dogs!"
Apparently, Zoe had told him a lot more than she had Rose and Madrid. But what passed between a ghost and Guardian was highly personal, not often discussed.
"It worries me, too," Madrid said. "He'll keep killing Hunter after Hunter if we don't stop him. I didn't see any sign on the way up, but the snow's falling pretty fast. Here, my ghost can send you our next patrol checkpoints. I've got some satellite data on Fallen caches that I need to check out. If we spread out, maybe we can catch this rhino. Got a gun?"
Dustin had nothing - the Cabal hunter had taken his weapons and gear. Madrid handed him his extra rifle, six boxes of ammunition, and assorted bundles of food wrapped in a spare blanket. Dustin's wilderness backpack was missing, too.
"Asshole took my cloak," Dustin snarled. "I want it back."
The Guardians hiked out of the canyon, then parted ways. Madrid followed the ridge, while Dustin set off along the Cabal hunter's trail, guided by his ghost's instructions.
Madrid and Rose hiked in silence until the ridge climbed to a jagged rock formation that blocked further travel. As they climbed, the wind picked up, driving the snow into Madrid's face. The temperature dropped. It was late afternoon, and the snowstorm was becoming a blizzard.
Rose scanned for shelter. No caves or convenient crevices appeared on her radar. "We'll have to find shelter lower down. There's a stand of trees to our right."
Madrid halted, adjusting the scarf that shielded his nose and mouth. Ice crystals encrusted the fabric. "Any life signs?"
Rose ran a high-resolution scan. "Several animal burrows with creatures inside. Birds in the trees. And ... something odd. An old campsite under the trees, maybe."
Madrid picked his way down the slope, his snowshoes sliding a little in the soft snow. As it grew colder, the heavier, wetter snow was being overlaid by a layer of fine, sandy powder. The long night would be bitterly cold.
After a while, they reached the trees at the foot of the ridge. They grew in a fold in the hills, too narrow to be a valley. A frozen stream ran through the trees, a faint trickling noise under the ice the only evidence of water.
Rose guided Madrid to the old camp. Several huge pines grew so close together, their tangled branches had prevented the snow from reaching the ground. Here, it was still bare earth and pine needles. They found an old fire pit with ash and a few charred logs. Madrid moved carefully, studying the ground.
Rose could detect objects, but the science of studying nature and reading the subtle clues it offered eluded her. She rode along with Madrid, trying to discern footprints in the ground. She saw only shallow impressions in the leaf litter.
Madrid kicked an object free of the leaves. A large bone, picked clean, and scored with tooth marks. There were plenty more, scattered and half-buried.
"Deer," Madrid said. "Chewed by war beasts. Look at the bite patterns - large teeth, far apart."
A shiver passed through Rose. "This was the Cabal hunter's camp?"
"He was here about a week ago," Madrid said. "Camped with his dogs. Probably the day he killed Dustin."
Rose gazed at the bones, imagining the huge, scaly beasts gnawing, growling, snapping at each other ... and one chewing a helpless ghost.
Madrid pulled out a pocket compass and walked the camp's perimeter, studying the ground, placing each boot carefully. He stopped and took a compass reading. "He set out northwest. If his dogs dropped Zoe near our camp, we must have been within a day of him and never knew it."
Rose shuddered.
"Relay a message to Zoe," Madrid said. "Found Cabal hunter's camp from a week ago. Headed northwest. Be cautious."
Rose sent the message. Zoe was only a few miles away and received it immediately.
After a moment, she sent back Dustin's reply. "Can't see a thing in this storm. Going to ground for the night. Watch your back. His trail moves in spirals."
"Spirals," Madrid muttered, gazing at the sheltering trees. "Or a search pattern." He stood there a moment in thought. "We'd better not stay here. Hunters return to known campsites. Even aliens."
"We couldn't make it to the cave before nightfall," Rose said. "We'll find another spot. You walk, I'll scan."
"We need decent shelter from the wind," Madrid told her, following the fold in the land downhill. "This blizzard is getting worse. It'll be twenty below tonight."
That kind of cold would kill a man in his sleep, if he dared close his eyes at all. Rose analyzed the landscape as they traveled. The clouds blocked the setting sun and the world became a dim twilight of wind and whirling snow.
At last her scans detected a decent spot. "Bear left," she said. "There's a sheltered dell at the foot of those cliffs."
Mostly blinded by the snow, Madrid followed her instructions and picked his way downhill. The cliffs blocked the wind, so visibility increased as they entered a tiny valley, merely a scoop out of the mountainside. Years ago, an enormous tree had toppled, tearing open a hole in the ground. Its roots still towered into the sky, nearly as tall as the lesser trees around them.
Madrid surveyed the spot and grunted his approval. He set about breaking dead wood off the roots and piling them in a clear spot to build a campfire. Once he had it burning, he pitched a tiny, weatherproof tent under the shelter of the roots.
"Watch for hostiles," he told Rose as he heated water to pour over a pack of dried soup. "The storm will hide the campfire smoke from sight, but a good Hunter will still smell it."
Rose nervously watched the area, but nothing appeared. Madrid ate his dinner, then crawled into the tent and wrapped himself in his sleeping bag, boots and all. "Phase tonight," he told Rose. "It's too cold for you to sleep alone."
He hadn't invited her to do that in years. Rose phased into him, leaving the biting cold behind. She wasn't really inside him - she occupied the same space as he did, but in a higher dimension - but his spark was there. She nestled as close as she dared and allowed herself a few hours' sleep. But she woke herself up before midnight to keep watch.
Cabal Hunter Tel'ur sat under a rock overhang, watching the snow fall and sharpening his hunting blade. Nearby, his five war beasts snarled and growled at each other, fighting over the remains of their meal - an unfortunate antelope Tel'ur had shot at long range.
Tel'ur had once been a lowly Legionary - just one more grunt in the great army of the Red Legion. He had taken the assignment to hunt lightless Guardians during the Red War. After all, he was good with war beasts, and picking off helpless Guardians sounded like an easy job.
But once he was out in the wilds, far from his legion and commanding officers, he realized he had a talent for hunting. Helpless Guardians were too easy a prey - he pitted himself against deer, first for food, then for sport. He stalked elk, moose, bears, wild cats, wolves, anything his war beasts could track. At first, his excuse was that he needed food for his beasts. But even after the Great Machine resumed operating and gave Light back to the Guardians, Tel'ur remained in the wilderness. It was too easy to ignore the order to fall back to Mars. His commanders marked him among the dead.
Now Tel'ur had a real challenge: hunting Guardians who possessed their Light. It took much cunning, figuring out how to force their ghosts to manifest, making themselves vulnerable to a bullet or a crunching jaw. The first time Tel'ur brought down a Guardian Hunter, he had howled his triumph to the hills. His blood had raced with adrenaline for hours afterward.
Three more Hunters fell, sometimes caught in traps, sometimes driven into dead-end canyons they couldn't escape. Tel'ur took great amusement in watching his war beasts destroy their ghosts. It seemed a fitting end, the mythical Guardians of the Traveler brought low by mere animals.
The blizzard had driven him into shelter. He had explored these mountains so often, he knew every ideal camp within fifty miles. He also knew where the Fallen hid the supplies they stole from the humans. He helped himself to their food stores whenever he grew tired of meat.
Guardian Hunters sought out the Fallen, so by knowing the location of the prey, he could stalk the predator.
As he sat there, his leathery, frog-like face exposed to the biting wind, the faintest aroma of wood smoke touched his nostrils. Tel'ur inhaled it, letting the wind erase it and bring more. A campfire. Judging by the faintness of the scent, the fire was a mile away, perhaps two. Certainly no more than five.
Tel'ur smiled, baring pointed teeth. He was too wise in the way of the mountains to risk a hunt in a blizzard at night. But when the storm ended, the unmarked snow would show the tracks of every creature, from tiny field mice, to birds ... to Guardians.