Chapter 71: North

The tracks were still there at midmorning.

River had expected rain to take them—spring weather in the high country moved fast, and she'd spent half the night in the third watch position watching clouds build on the southern ridge. But the rain had come in overnight and passed through, and the tracks had survived in the compressed mud between the puddles. Still clear. Still heading north.

Four sets.

She knew the ground now—they were two days behind, and two days of steady movement in this terrain put the people who'd left those prints somewhere in the approach to the northern ridge. If the route held, if they hadn't stopped, if the weather hadn't pushed them to shelter for the night.

If.

She kept moving.

---

Cal had taken the lead this morning. She'd let him, because he was better at reading the terrain ahead and she needed her attention on the tracks—watching how the stride patterns changed on soft ground, on rock, on the places where the route narrowed and forced everyone into single file.

One of the four sets was larger. Longer stride, heavier press in the heel. The way a tall person moved when they were covering ground and not worried about noise.

Marcus.

She'd been telling herself she was certain since the south bank. She was probably right. But she kept looking at the prints, looking for the evidence that would make it fact rather than hope.

"The stride on the big set," she said, to no one in particular.

Gabe was behind her. He looked at the stretch of mud she was indicating. "Long."

"Right-side heel strike is heavier," she said. "He's favoring the left."

Gabe looked at her.

"Marcus had a right hip issue when I last saw him," she said. "Old injury. Shows up when he's been on the road for more than ten days."

Gabe looked at the print again. "The print before this one—the left foot is planted flatter. Less heel depth."

Yes. Exactly.

"It's him," she said.

Gabe didn't confirm or deny. Just kept moving. But she saw his shoulders drop a fraction.

---

The second day in the open country above the ford was the clearest day they'd had—cold and dry and the light sharp off the snowmelt rocks, the kind of day where you could see what was ahead of you and what was coming from a long way off.

What was ahead of them, at midday, was smoke.

She stopped.

Not the thick working column of the Millhouse burning—she'd filed that away, two days out on the southern route, a structure fire that she'd decided not to investigate. This was different. Thin, steady, the controlled smoke of a cookfire. Multiple sources. It was coming from the north, from the direction of the ridge, from somewhere above the valley floor.

Cal stopped beside her.

"The elevation," she said.

He was reading it. "Too high for the valley settlement. Too low for the high approach." He paused. "There's a waystation above the second ridgeline. I used it twice in the winter circuit. Stone walls, partial roof—you can fire there without it showing to the valley."

"How far."

"Two hours at this pace."

She looked at the smoke. Two thin columns, working in parallel. Two fires, two cooking groups, or one large camp with two hearths.

"People," she said.

"Or a Rider circuit post," Cal said. He said it without alarm—just the accounting of possibilities.

She thought about it. The Rider eastern camp had been seven people and occupied the ridge east of the valley. The circuit south of the ford ran two kilometers off the ford access. This smoke was west.

"Not Rider," she said. "The western approach isn't on their circuit map."

"That you know of."

"That I know of," she agreed. "But Cain builds circuits around resources. The waystation has water access?"

"Spring-fed," Cal said. "Year-round."

"Then Cain has thought about the waystation. But occupying it means pulling people off the east circuit, and the east circuit controls the ford and the Parnell tributary. He won't dilute that." She looked at the smoke. "Someone else."

"We go wide," Cal said. "Stay below the smoke line, come around the west side of the second ridge."

"Add an hour," she said.

"Add an hour," he agreed.

She looked at the smoke for another three seconds, the way she'd learned to look at things that might be problems—see it clearly, decide, then don't look back.

She turned west.

---

The western detour brought them above the waystation by late afternoon.

She saw it from two hundred meters: three low stone walls and a partial wooden roof, the spring-water channel running from the rock face down through a stone trough. Two fires, both controlled, both clearly not new—the stone around the hearths was blackened from repeated use. Six people, by her count from the high ground. Maybe seven—one was inside the structure and she could see a shape but not a clear number.

Not Riders.

She knew what Rider camps looked like—the specific arrangement of weapons to body positions, the watch rotation pattern, the way Rider-trained people held themselves when they were on duty. These people were sitting the way people sat who didn't think they were targets. Two of them were eating. One was working on a boot sole. The largest one, the one by the west-facing fire, was talking—she could see the gestures, the kind of animated movement you got from people telling a story.

"Scavenger band," Gabe said. He was beside her, low on the ridge, and he'd been watching for five minutes without speaking. "The woman by the east fire—she's got the pack configuration of someone who moves light and fast. See how it's loaded higher than it should be for her frame. Short-haul runner, not long-distance." He paused. "The two eating are a unit. They've been together a long time—watch how they pass the container."

She watched.

He was right. The small things that only showed up after you'd been reading people in the field long enough: the automatic movements, the trust that showed up in gesture, the way a pair that knew each other moved in and out of each other's space without negotiating it.

"They're not a threat," she said.

"They're not looking for us," Gabe said. "But they're between us and the north route."

She thought about going around. Add another hour to an already long day. Eli's knee had held today but he'd been carrying it carefully and she'd seen the stiffness in the last two hours.

Or: walk through.

Six people in a waystation who weren't Riders and weren't running. They had fires going in daylight, which meant they weren't hiding from anything. A band that comfortable was either armed enough not to worry or had been through this area enough times to know the risk landscape.

She looked at Gabe. "You know any of them."

He looked again. The large one who'd been talking had turned now, and the profile was visible. Gabe's expression shifted.

"That's Sal Mbeki," he said.

She waited.

"He runs a dry goods circuit between the Parnell corridor and the eastern ridge settlements. We've traded twice." He paused. "He's not a problem. He's a—" He stopped. "He knows everyone on this corridor."

She stood up from the ridge line.

"Come on," she said.

---

Sal Mbeki was a large man who laughed the way some people coughed—involuntary, sudden, stopping as fast as it started. He recognized Gabe from twenty meters and the greeting that came with it was loud enough to make River's hand move toward the knife at her hip before she caught herself.

"Gabe from the northern run," Sal said. "I heard you stopped running."

"I stopped the trading run," Gabe said. "Still moving."

Sal looked at River, Cal, Eli with the practiced read of a man who'd been assessing strangers since before the Collapse caught up with everyone. He didn't ask questions right away, which she respected.

"We've got room," he said. "And there's enough in the pot."

River looked at the camp. The other five were watching with the ready stillness of people who'd been working with Sal long enough to trust his judgment but not enough to stop paying attention.

"We're not staying," she said. "We're north-bound."

"North-bound." Sal turned that over. "From Parnell?"

"From the ford," she said.

"The ford." He looked at her differently now—not suspicious, something more careful. "You crossed the Karrow ford."

"We crossed."

He breathed through his nose. "I heard the bridge was gone."

"Six weeks," she said. "The crossing's passable. Rocky, three channels."

"I heard other things about the ford," he said. "That there were people crossing it recently."

"Four sets of prints," she said. "North-bound, two days ahead of us."

Something moved in his face. He had a very readable face for someone who'd survived this long.

"I know about those prints," he said. "I saw the people who made them." He held her gaze. "One tall man. A woman. Two others, moving at pace. Coming north from the Karrow valley." He paused. "I offered them water. The tall man said no and kept moving."

"Did he have a name," she said.

"He didn't give one," Sal said. "The woman with him called him Webb."

She held that.

Marcus. Definitely Marcus. Dara and two others she didn't know.

"Where were they," she said.

"Day and a half south of the northern ridge," he said. "That was three days ago." He was watching her face. "They were moving fast, or as fast as you move when one of your group is sick."

She stopped.

"Sick," she said.

"The tall man," Sal said. He was being careful with this, she could tell—not delicate, just precise. "He was coughing. Not the cold kind—I've seen it before. The dry kind, down deep." He looked at her. "You know what kind I mean."

She looked at him for a long second.

"Which of your group," he said, quietly. "You or the tall man."

"Neither," she said. "The tall man is—" She stopped. "A colleague."

Sal looked at her steadily.

"I've run the eastern corridor for six years," he said. "I've seen three people with that cough. Two of them made it another eight months. One made it eighteen months." He paused. "I'm not telling you anything you probably already know. I'm just telling you I saw it."

The fire crackled. Eli had found a seat at the edge of the camp and was stretching his knee with the systematic attention of someone who'd been doing that on a schedule all day. Cal was watching Sal with the focus of someone cataloging what he'd said and how he'd said it.

"How far are we from the ridge," River said.

"Tomorrow," Sal said. "Half a day at good pace. Less if the weather holds." He paused. "You want a meal before you go."

She looked at him.

"You know what kind of people eat another group's food," she said.

"Hungry people," he said. "And people who understand that information has a price and sometimes the price is a meal."

She held his gaze.

He'd just told her that Marcus was ahead of her and Marcus was sick. He'd told her freely—offered it before she asked—and he hadn't asked for anything. The meal wasn't payment for what he'd said. It was something else.

She sat down by the fire.

"Twenty minutes," she said.

Sal nodded and passed her a container that smelled like something reconstituted from pre-Collapse stock, heavily seasoned to cover the baseline of nothing. She ate it without commenting on what it was.

The firelight. The group of six around the two hearths, shifting to accommodate four more bodies with the ease of people who'd done this before. Gabe talking to Sal about the east corridor. Eli working his knee. Cal sitting close to her, shoulder to shoulder, not speaking.

"The waystation," she said, quietly. To Cal.

"Yes," he said.

"On the northern circuit, if Marcus keeps west—"

"He'd pass here," Cal said. "He didn't stop."

She thought about that. Marcus not stopping, even with Sal offering water. Keeping his group moving.

Which meant Marcus knew he was on a schedule.

"He knows something," she said.

Cal was quiet.

"Or he's in more pain than he let on and he needs to get somewhere before he can't anymore," she said.

Cal looked at the fire.

"Both might be true," he said.

---

They left the waystation as the light was going. Sal walked them to the northern edge of his camp and pointed them toward the ridge approach—a route she hadn't known, a cut through the rock that saved a half-hour of elevation gain.

"West face of the second ridgeline," he said. "Look for the cairn at the top. From the cairn, it's a straight shot to the high valley."

She looked at him.

"You've been through this corridor a lot," she said.

"Since before Cain started taxing it," he said. "I know where the ground is soft."

"Then you know what the documentation says about Cain's organization."

He looked at her for a moment. "I heard something was being passed around," he said. "Haven't seen it yet."

"You will," she said. "When you do—" She stopped. She didn't have copies on her. She'd sent everything with Cael and the Station's runners.

"The Station," he said. "North of the ridge."

She looked at him.

"Gabe talked," she said.

"Gabe trusts me," Sal said. "That means something. It also means the Station's position isn't as unknown as you might want." He held her gaze. "I'm not a problem. But the people Cain has running his information circuit are going to hear about the Station eventually. If they haven't already."

She knew. She'd known since the exposed shoulder, the east camp.

"Then they hear about it," she said. "The Station is what it is. We're not moving it."

Sal looked at her—the same long assessment he'd been doing since Gabe vouched for them.

"Good," he said. "Places that move don't mean anything." He nodded once. "The cairn. West face."

She turned toward the ridge.

Above the camp, the stars were coming out—the specific density of mountain-altitude dark, the stars that felt like the only permanent thing in a world that kept losing its permanent things.

The cairn. The high valley. The Station.

Marcus, a day ahead with a cough she'd heard described twice now and still hadn't heard herself.

She pushed the pace.