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bots hunted us all night. Grat was wounded and Crassius stood when no one else could.”
    Denali laid her head down and heard Barley’s heartbeat. Was it all true?
    “Then it was done. We fled and eventually came here, where we spend the summers. You can probably just remember the last time we made the trip south,” Barley said, yawning. Her metal teeth rippled in the waning light.
    Denali could remember, but only the slightest of details. The smell was what struck her most, a congregation of thousands of dogs. She’d never smelled anything like it since. They came, in packs, groups, and alone. They brought loads of scrap and corpses, all to seek the blessing of the machine gods. But most brought the young.
    She remembered the day when the passage opened and the younglings ventured in. She could smell the fear, and see the looks that said none cared. But they all did. They waited all night. The shamans howled in the darkness, to call to the dead, they said.
    Most came out, endowed with the gifts from the machine gods. Others didn’t.
    “Do we go again?” Denali asked.
    Barleys eyes took on a worried look, she glanced away. “Yes.”
    “Will I have to go into that passage?”
    “Yes.”
    “Will I survive?”
    Barley looked back to Denali with tears ringing her eyes. “Yes.”
    Denali looked away and listened to the heartbeat. She wanted only to run, hide, be away from them all. But she knew if she did that her mind would go, and she’d be nothing more than an animal.
    And so what? Be an animal that was free, or a conscious being shackled to reality. The hills suddenly didn’t seem so bad to her. The pups would get on fine without her. Grat and Barley could have a family without a bastard. She knew in her heart that she was captured, or maybe even stolen. Samus did it, she was sure, he’d take a pup.
    Of course he would. He did everything he could to get more marauders. More dogs, and not the sort she liked. He told them all that they would reclaim their honor. Well, he can have it, she thought. I don’t want any damn part of it.
    She closed her eyes and pictured the hills in the distance. The exile came back to her, the one that saved her, and she felt even more ashamed. Humiliated. It wasn’t just her failure, but the fact that Samson made her lie. Damn them all, she thought. Tonight, wounds or not, she’d go and be on her own.
    Grat came in and stepped gently through the room. His breathing was soft like hay rustling in the wind.
    “Well?” Barley asked.
    “Samus will speak with me again in the morning.”
    Denali feigned sleep and listened.
    “I know how he feels,” Grat said.
    “I know,” Barley added. “Light of men, do I know.”
    Denali slid out into the crisp air. The mountain air cut through her coat. It took a moment to shake off the chill. She already wished she was back where it was warm. No, this is not my life.
    The stars were pins of light that shone through a shroud of darkness. Only the mountains silenced the spread from one end of the sky to the next.
    She paused just outside and closed her eyes. Not that she needed to adjust to the darkness, but it seemed to help her take in the smells. At first the scents were a wall, a cloying prison of dog and meat. But then the bits seeped through. The currents wafted and danced. The picture grew in her head. 
    Laccus was on guard, she could smell him and his caribou knuckle. He always brought a knuckle to chew on. The scent was as good a marker as any to Denali. She set off and kept to the edge of the street.
    The night was deep, that deep darkness that comes when it’s so far past morning and evening that it seems the sun was never there to begin with. The scent of fake things, man things, plastic things, came to her. The breeze shifted and she smelled Sabot.
    It hit her then. She stopped and leaned against the cool concrete and felt it rasp against her. Sabot was dead. The fact hadn’t seemed real until she smelled the dead smell. It was