Virdon couldn't say when he had become aware that they were already inside the ruins. He only realized that they had already crossed the city's perimeter when the shape of the hills became unnaturally high and steep, the short valleys between them crossing and connecting in the pattern of a vaguely familiar labyrinth. Nature had long ago covered everything with a fur of grass and trees; dark holes in the side of the hills might have been doors once, but the archways led to walls of soil, as the wind had filled up the cavities behind them centuries ago. In the distance, strange silhouettes stretched against the sky: overgrown steel skeletons that had lost their concrete flesh and acquired spikes and feathers made of vines and little trees.

An eerie silence was hovering around them, one that was born not from the absence of sound, but from the weight of time pressing down on them. This had been a city once, bustling with life - perhaps not quite like one of their cities back home, if what Galen had said about a former ape civilisation was true, but still similar enough to make him shiver.

"I feel as if I'm walking over the grave of a king," he murmured.

"The king under the hill, huh?" Burke kept his voice equally low. Galen just gave them a curious sideways look.

The silence between them deepened as they advanced further into the remnants of what had been a city once, and Virdon could feel the pressure mount - the expectation of the others that he'd admit it aloud.

The ground began to sway again, and Galen staggered for a moment before he regained his balance.

"We're pushing our luck here, Al," Pete said under his breath. It was the closest he'd come to telling him off. With every other subject, his friend had no problem to be blunt, but Pete knew that getting home to Chris and Sally was a sore point for him...

"You were right," Virdon said dejectedly. "We won't find anything useful here. I was hoping..."

"Yeah," Pete surveyed the greenery choking the structures underneath. "Didn't wanna say it, but so was I." He gave him a slap on the shoulder. "C'mon Al, let's go back to Zana - she wasn't so happy with our little field trip anyway."

"I would have liked to see the actual ruins," Galen remarked as they turned back. "The official doctrine says that these cities are witnesses of a simian high civilization that was destroyed centuries ago by roaming human hordes... I'm just quoting the orthodoxy here," he added at their frowns. "I neither endorsed nor rejected these claims." He looked around. "But I was hoping to be able to form my own opinion about them here. Well, perhaps another time. Apparently, there are several such cities..." He paused and tilted his head, listening for something.

"What is i..." Virdon fell silent when Galen held up a hand. His head was turning slowly, trying to catch again what he had just picked up on before. The men exchanged a look, and Pete shook his head slightly: he hadn't heard anything, either.

Still, they were straining their ears for unusual sounds now, too.

Zana waited until the hoofbeats had died down in the distance before she climbed out of her hiding hole.

The interior of the hut was wrecked. Not that the humans had claimed much as their possessions anyway, but what little they'd had was now overturned, broken, or spilled on the ground. Delia stood huddled against her mother, who had wrapped her arms around her so tightly that it wasn't clear who was seeking consolation from whom.

And all because of us.

"I'm so very sorry, Leon," Zana said. "If we had suspected that Urko was that close behind us, we'd never have come near your village! Your hospitality didn't serve you well."

Leon nodded; he was pale. "No, ma'am, don't mention it, it's nothing... I'm sorry that we gave you away, but... your friends have a greater chance to escape or fight them in the ruins than either you or we would've had."

"And if they're lucky, a house falls on them in the city," Delia piped up. "I hate those apes," she murmured - and then shot a frightened glance to Zana, who smiled reassuringly at her.

"I can understand that you don't like Urko after how he treated you," she said. Delia shrugged and bent to pick up her treasures that had found their way to the floor like the rest of Leon's possessions, avoiding eye contact with her.

Well. That was a problem that she didn't have the time to address now. Zana turned to Leon. "I have to go. I need to try and warn my friends before they stumble upon Urko and his men." She grabbed Galen's backpack - fortunately, the humans had taken theirs with them, but Galen had wanted to keep The Book safe - and made for the door. Delia's description had been easy to remember; the question wasn't if she would find the city, but if she'd find Galen and the humans before Urko did. If only she wasn't so tired all the time now...

She hesitated in the door.

"Leon, I hate to ask this from you... but I need to reach the city before Urko and his men do - and they are on horseback. If there is a shortcut that a traveller on foot can use, but a horse cannot, Delia needs to show it to me. Is there such a way?" She asked the girl directly, and Delia, clearly intimidated by her intensity, nodded.

Zana inhaled with a hiss. She didn't like what she was about to ask, didn't like it at all, but she had no choice. "You have to come with me, Delia. I need you as a guide."

Leon stepped between them, his fists clenched - not in fury, but desperation, Zana hoped. His face was tense. "Please, ma'am, I can't let her go with you. It's too dangerous! The ground is shaking so often, she could get hurt by the falling rocks..."

"You said she goes there often on her own," Zana pointed out. "It didn't seem to be a problem a mere hour ago."

"The place is cursed!" Asa hissed. She drew her daughter closer against her chest. "I never allow her to go there, she just slips away, and I won't allow her to go now!"

Leon raised his hands. "Please understand, we don't want your friends to get captured." He moistened his lips. "But if they do capture you, and Delia is with you, she is doomed. They will kill her on the spot, or..." His gaze flicked to his daughter, and for a moment, he seemed to be uncertain. Then he plunged on. "Depending on their mood, it could take a long time for her to die. Urko... Urko hates humans. M-more than usual." The last words came in a low voice, almost inaudible, and Zana's heart ached for him.

"I promise you, he'll never know that she was with me," she said. "I'll send her home as soon as we reach the city. And we won't meet them on our path - we'll take one the horses can't go, remember? Besides, if Urko doesn't find us in the city, he'll be too busy searching for us to come back and deliver that caning he threatened her with!"

But Leon didn't take the bait. "If he doesn't find you, then he'll want someone to work off his anger on," he said darkly. "He'll beat her even worse."

The girl wouldn't survive a beating from Urko in either scenario. Zana shook her head. "You need to hide her from him. You all need to hide."

Leon shrugged helplessly. "If we all hide, Urko will punish someone else instead of us; if we hide Delia, he will punish another child in her place. This is how it's done: all are accountable for the misdeeds of one."

Zana stared at him. "So you... you'll just hand her over to him?"

The human closed his eyes, utterly defeated. "We have to bear whatever the general decides."

And what choice did they have? For a moment, Zana felt as if a hand closed around her ribs and took her breath away; felt the trap these people were caught in, from the moment they were born, with no way out... no horizon, no beyond.

And then she thought of Galen. And Alan. And Peet. Wandering through the ruins, unaware of the shadow closing in on them.

She did have a choice.

"You also have to bear whatever I decide, atoro." Human , in the form that apes used to address a servant, a slave. Not the neutral andoro she usually chose to refer to them.

Leon froze for a moment at her change of address; her change of demeanor.

Then his face went slack; all tension - all hope, Zana realized - left his body. Asa didn't give up that easily, though. She clung even harder to Delia, so much so that the child began to squirm in her grip.

Zana dropped the backpack; everyone in the room flinched. It made her feel shaky and sticky and awkward, but she couldn't drop her role now. She had to be the ape they feared. The sickening thing was that she didn't even have to work hard at it, it had been beaten into them so thoroughly.

She took the two steps to Asa and stared her down. "You let go of that cub and give it to me, atoro."

Asa just stared back, out of defiance, or frozen terror, Zana couldn't say. She only knew that she couldn't ease off now. She couldn't afford to make idle threats that she couldn't - or wouldn't - follow through, but she also couldn't return to appeasement. She had to be tough. She needed that girl.

She grabbed Delia's arm, and the girl whimpered. Asa's eyes shone with tears, but she didn't dare to protest when Zana slowly pulled her daughter out of her arms. She held Zana's gaze, and Zana found she was unable to break it. The silent plea in it broke her heart.

Suddenly, Zana was acutely aware that she was with child - that she would be a mother one day, too. If someone would tear her baby from her arms...

But nobody would dare to do that. Because she belonged to the master race.

She felt dirty.

"I won't..." Harm her. Endanger her. Take her from your arms. "I won't take her into the ruins. I'll send her home as soon as I can."

The humans just stared at her with dull eyes. Mute. Dumb.

Zana grabbed her backpack and fled, their child in tow.

If Urko felt any unease at moving inside the Wasteland, he was careful not to let it show; his men were tense enough already, strangling their horses with too-tight reins, adding their jerking heads and dancing hooves to the general nervousness. Urko supposed the Lawgiver had had a good reason to set such a strict taboo on these cursed patches of land, but right now he wished that doctrine had extended only to humans; it would have made his job considerably easier. As it was, he had to split his attention between searching for tracks on the ground and keeping his fey soldiers in check, before one of them broke formation and raced back to the border as if demons hung on his horse's tail.

It was the unnatural shapes of the landscape, he supposed, that unnerved his men so much - rationally, they knew that it was due to the old buildings hiding underneath the earth and tall grass, but the strange combination of greenery and architecture made it look like one of the otherworldly theaters that their mothers had frightened them with in their childhood if they didn't come home before sunset, or didn't eat up their dinner.

"Stay your horse, Olam," he growled under his breath, "and for the love of the Mothers, let the beast breathe, or do you want to walk back?" The chastised soldier threw away the reins, and his horse snorted with relief and shook his head, causing the metal parts of his harness to jingle.

"Excellent, Olam, why not blow a trumpet to announce our arrival?" his lieutenant barked at him, but before he could tear into him some more, the ground began to weave like a boat on choppy water, and everyone was busy staying in the saddle of their bucking horse.

Urko studied their faces after the ground had stopped moving - tense, grim, sullen. Time to give them something to take their minds off their childhood fears. He smiled.

"Boys, you aren't here for nothing. I chose you because you are the most hardened, skull-busting, blood drinking sons of baboons I could find between here and Cesarea, and for such an exquisite hunting party, I have some equally exquisite prey on offer."

"Humans," Dako scoffed and scratched the scar on his cheek.

"Believe me, old friend, these here are a different beast than your average human, or I wouldn't have bothered you." Urko showed his teeth. "And right now, they're hiding in this labyrinth. They're not too far ahead of us, and I noticed these old streets intersect at regular intervals, so... Olam, Dako, take the one parallel to us on the right side, Hima, Delvan, same on the left side. One of you each, try to overtake them, close the circle, drive them back to us, the other one of your teams makes sure they don't dive into one of those intersections and break through our little cordon." He turned to Nelva, his lieutenant.

"You're with me."

It was hard to hear something, apart from the chattering of birds and the whirring of insects in the grass and leaves - and the rushing sound of his blood in his ears. Hoofbeats would be muffled on the soft ground, and if they let their horses walk, you'd never know until they-

"Run!"

Galen pointed to a dark tunnel that might have been an alley eons ago, and darted away from it; in the next second, Burke could see a bobbing movement in its depths.

Rider.

He turned and dashed into another side alley, a narrow gap overgrown with shrubs and little trees. Maybe they'd slow down the horse...

His feet dug into the soft soil, it was like wading through sand. Behind him, he heard rustling and crashing as the rider broke through the underbrush. No openings to either side of him, just that long narrow funnel and he had no chance!

His hunter probably wouldn't shoot, it was almost impossible to hit a target from a galloping horse, even if the target wasn't moving itself, so what, trample him down? Didn't they want them alive anymore? Perhaps better that way.

Burke stumbled over a knoll of grass, lurched, regained his footing. The crashing sounds seemed closer now, but he didn't dare to look back; instead he scanned the overhanging branches to both sides of the street for any sign of a gap, a cave, an intersection - anything!

No such luck. This thing was a box trap, and he was rapidly reaching the end. The horse snorted; he could feel its hot breath on his back.

Burke whirled around, ducked under the grasping hand of the ape, and grabbed the rear end of the saddle skirt to push himself off. The moist heat of the horse engulfed him for a moment, the scent of sweat and leather.

Then he was free, speeding down the alley the way he had come, towards the bright patch of daylight, the broad street they had been wandering down just moments ago.

Please don't let his comrades wait for me there!

He won some precious seconds before the soldier managed to turn his horse around in the narrow passage, but Burke was under no illusions that it would make any difference in the end: a human could outlast a horse, but not outrun it. He had to shake him off, burrow down...

... be quiet like a mouse.

Galen shot across the street towards a side alley, but veered off in the last moment, narrowly avoiding the hooves of a second rider thundering towards him from that direction. He blindly changed direction again; a gnarly vine hit him in the face and he grabbed it instinctively and catapulted himself upwards, pulling himself hand over hand far above the riders' heads within mere moments.

A crack thundered from the walls, and wood exploded only inches from his head, slashing his cheek with needle-sharp splinters. He doubled his efforts, propelling himself towards the edge overhead. A second shot cracked, and hot pain carved a path along his upper arm.

Galen had studied medicine; he hadn't graduated, but he knew where all the big vessels ran. This one had only grazed the outer side of his arm, but perhaps the shooter would get lucky the next time.

He vaulted over the edge, a third bullet hitting it behind him and spraying him with earth, and leaped across the little clearing that had once been a roof. Shouts rang up from behind him, then silence. Galen stilled, chest pumping, and threw a glance over his shoulder. He imagined he could hear a faint rustle. His attacker was climbing up the wall after him.

Galen broke into a run, zigzagging around thorny bushes and a patch of stinging nettles, jumped over a heap of dead branches,

... crashed through the thin layer of soil that had been covering the hole where the roof had partly collapsed. He threw himself backwards, blindly grasping for something to stop his fall; his hand closed around a young sapling, and a ripping sensation trembled through his palm as roots were torn from the soil.

But the tree held. Slowly Galen turned around until he came to lie on his belly, dug the fingers of his free hand into the soil, and began to pull himself along the ground. His legs were dangling free in the darkness hidden under the grass, and somehow he sensed a great height underneath.

He let go of the trunk for a moment, gripping it again farther down at its base. The leaves shook and rustled... announcing his position.

Galen ground his teeth and pushed against the soil once more. His knee caught on the edge, but he didn't dare to put weight on it yet. If he broke off another batch of soil now, the momentum might throw him into the abyss. He continued to pull himself upwards, sliding on his belly like a worm. He couldn't hear or see his attacker now; for the moment, he was out of that ape's line of sight, too, but he couldn't avoid making noise.

His legs were out of the hole now, his knee on level with the little sapling that had saved his life. Galen pulled his knees under him and came up into a crouch. His arm burned where the bullet had shorn off the skin, and his sleeve was wet from blood. He'd leave a trail of bloodstains for his pursuer - the soldier didn't have to hurry; he just had to get into position. His fur rose at that thought.

Galen circled back around the patch of nettles, keeping in a low crouch, using the knuckles of his hands to support himself in that bent stance, and to disperse his weight more evenly; he moved without a sound now. He went as far back towards the edge of the roof as he dared, then changed direction again, deliberately rubbing his injured arm against the trunks and shrubs along his path.

He slipped between the nettles, ignoring the few stings that penetrated his fur, and peeked through the stalks. He had to have overtaken the other at some point; now he just had to wait until the soldier had followed his trail.

While his breath began to calm down, the dizziness grew stronger; Galen knew that he hadn't lost enough blood for that, far from it - it had to be his body's reaction to the whole situation, the chase and the danger and the pain... the reality of being on the run for his life. Until now, the whole thing had been more like a scavenger hunt, his little stint in Aken's prison cell notwithstanding.

Movement in the underbrush. Indistinct - no, not his imagination. Galen's heart began to race and his mouth went dry. Just another moment... any moment now...

He almost missed his opportunity, almost broke out of his hideout a moment too late. His hunter charged after him immediately, his breath loud in the silence. He didn't shoot, although Galen was crossing the clearing now, all he had to do was to stop and take aim, but instead the soldier sped up, and Galen stumbled and then lunged, a huge, desperate jump over a pile of dead wood...

... vaulting upward and gripping the branch of the pine tree leaning over the cave-in.

Beneath him, Urko's soldier crashed through the treasonous ground like a wrecking ball, too surprised to make a sound. Galen stared into the silent blackness under his feet; there was no way to know if the man was dead, or deadly injured, and no way to reach him, even if he'd had the time. Galen was mildly surprised that he felt the urge to help a man who had been so intent on killing him, and that he felt guilty at having lured him into a deadly trap himself.

I... I can't think about that right now. I need to find Alan and Peet.

He swayed back and forth, building momentum before he let go of the branch and leaped back to the point where he had jumped off. He hesitated for a moment, unsure where to go.

Then he began to jog back into the direction where they had started their flight, staying to the rooftops.

Burke threw himself into the bright light half expecting to collide with another rider, but the street lay deserted, the rest of the hunting party off to catch Galen or Al. He sprinted across the street towards another side alley, wary after his narrow escape just now, but he needed to get as many corners between himself and his hunter as possible.

A shot was fired, but the projectile went wide and lodged somewhere in the artificial hills - impossible to tell where, with the soil dampening the impact. Burke turned a corner, accelerated, turned right again, he was now parallel to what he was beginning to think of as main street, headed towards the city limit. If he could find another side alley before the ape behind him turned the latest corner, shake him off...

Another rider emerged from a side alley ahead of him, cutting him off. Burke skidded to a halt, veered sharply to the left, into the middle of the street, he had already run circles around a horse just now, he could do it again-

The rider raised his rifle. His horse was standing still now, and Burke was just a few yards away. He wouldn't miss.

Behind him, Burke could hear the slow clop of the second horse. Nobody was in a hurry anymore. He stood there, bolted to the ground by the rifle pointed to his chest, trying to catch his breath and find a way out of this.

Leather creaked as the ape behind him dismounted. Burke threw a quick glance over his shoulder and saw him walking towards him with a rope in his hands. So they wanted them as prisoners, which explained why they hadn't shot them on sight before. He swallowed, a watery weakness spreading in his chest. He remembered Urko putting his knife to Al in that yard back in the capital.

Fuck this... he'd never get out of Urko's hands alive anyway... the only choice left to him right now was a quick bullet or a slow skinning...

I'd really have liked to go home.

He lunged to the side, and the ground came up to him with a sickening lurch, hitting his knees and sending shockwaves through his palms up to his shoulders. A horse cried, a shot cracked; a deep, grinding noise spurred him to his feet again. The hill-houses were shaking off their trees, and their balconies, and part of their rooftops, vomiting streams of soil from their doors and windows.

A slab of grass-covered concrete bored itself into the ground behind him, and Burke staggered away, past the rearing horse, narrowly avoiding a collision as the panicked beast took flight in the same direction. He had no idea what had happened to its rider. The ground was still bucking under his feet, making him stumble and weave as if he was drunk. He turned into another alley, fighting his nausea, trying to stay away from the walls that were still throwing parts of themselves at him.

He needed to stay ahead of all of them now, the apes and the city itself.

Galen landed on the edge of the roof with a faint gasp; this was the second gap he had jumped over, and his legs were beginning to wobble. A third jump might turn out too short, in which case he'd make a long jump down . He flicked a quick glance behind him. Well, the building had lost its upper levels an indeterminate time ago, so perhaps he'd even survive that fall. Galen's nose twitched. He wasn't keen on finding out.

The sharp crack of a gunshot made him duck instinctively behind the crumbling wall that surrounded the flat top of the building like a battlement. It was difficult to determine where it had come from - the walls broke the sound, and their plant cover muffled it. Galen crossed the roof, keeping his head below the height of the ruined wall, and cautiously peered over the edge down onto the street where the whole disaster had started moments ago. He couldn't detect the shooter, but when he turned his head to the left, he inhaled sharply at what he saw.

Urko was riding up the street in a light canter, dragging something - someone - behind him. Galen's nostrils flared when he recognized Alan... caught with a lasso like a calf; he'd been swept off his feet by the horse's speed, and with his arms pinned to his sides by the rope, he was unable to buffer himself against the ground razing the skin off his back.

"You lice-infested son of a monkey," Galen murmured.

Below him, Urko brought his horse to a halt and turned it around; he began to wind up the rope, palm to elbow, pulling Alan towards him. The human swiveled around on his back to face him and dug his heels into the ground. It didn't slow Urko down - human strength was no match against any ape, least of all a gorilla.

Galen quickly surveyed his hiding place... he had to try something to help Alan! He grabbed a piece of the strange, ragged stone that made up the walls of these buildings and peered across the street to gauge the distance. If he could hit the horse's nose, it would rear in pain and surprise, no matter how well it was trained, and the rope might slacken for a moment...

The floor swam up under his belly like a raft riding on a huge wave. Galen dropped the stone and dug his hands into the ground. Tremors shuddered up the building and through his bones. On the street, Urko's horse reared and bucked, throwing him off, but its feet tangled in the reins and it stumbled towards the buildings. Alan had struggled to his knees and was now frantically trying to free himself from the lasso, but the rope was still tight around his body. Urko lay still, stunned by his fall. Galen hoped his head had been knocked hard enough to give Alan the time he needed to get away from him.

Another quake lurched him sideways and made him gag, and the street below gaped open like a hungry beast, swallowing Alan in one swift gulp. Galen stared as Urko's body began to slide towards the yawning blackness, dragged into the hole by the weight of Alan's body; the rope was still wound around the general's arm. No, Alan wouldn't escape him.

Nor would Urko escape Alan.

The entire front of the building next to the hole suddenly tilted, as if the house itself wanted to have a look. Galen swallowed bile as the wall leaned leisurely forward, then broke off with a sudden shudder and covered the hole with a muffled thud.

They were... gone. Both gone.

To his surprise, Galen felt a pain in his chest that made it hard to take a breath. He had always mentally referred to Alan and Peet as "Zana's humans," but over the last weeks, they had slowly lost their human-ness, and become... just people. Just Peet and Alan.

And now Alan was dead.

How am I going to tell Zana?