While the healer Cid circled around to re-enter Nonts from the north, Ryn, Nuthea, Sagar and Elrann kept to the woods and continued south-east past the town, walking to the hill where they had agreed to meet later.

Ryn walked leading the chocobo by the reins, the captive bounty hunter propped up in its saddle. The black-shrouded man didn’t make any sound except the occasional sighing “Ahhhh.” He seemed still to be lost in his ‘poppy trance’, although from time to time his body twitched a little, making the chocobo beneath him caw. Ryn carried the man’s sword in its black sheath, making it his own for the time being, seeing as he had returned Sagar’s and had no other weapon.

As they walked, the travelers kept looking round over their shoulders, thinking every stray breeze on the back of their necks was an Imperial battalion come to find them. But no Imperials came. All they saw were the trunks of the trees that they had just walked past. All they heard was the sound of the leaves rustling above them, the squerch of their footsteps on the forest floor, and the sighing and cawing of the bounty hunter and his steed.

A single green leaf floated down from a branch, swaying through the air, and came to rest a few paces in front of Ryn. He remembered that it must nearly be the end of Summer; Autumn was on its way.

Eventually they made it to the wooded hill beyond Nonts that Cid had spoken of and climbed the ascent to its crest. By now Ryn’s shins and calves ached awfully. He and his body had been through a lot in the last day. Not to mention the last week… Mother. Father. Hometown. Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr. Stay with Nuthea?

At the top of the hill, trees obscured the view so they couldn’t see into the distance unless they stood at its lip. When they did so all they could see was the treetops of the wood for miles around, except for where Nonts lay nestled in the north-west. It was safer to stay hidden under the tree cover though, so they quickly decided to walk back underneath it.

Ryn tied the chocobo to a branch and they all sat with their backs against the trees. Ryn settled with his own back in the smooth crook of a tall, mighty oak, relishing the chance to give his legs some rest as he lent against its reassuring bulk.

Everyone seemed too exhausted to talk. So they just sat like that for a while, waiting for their new companion Cid to return. Ryn watched the leaves dancing as the branches swayed gently in the breeze.

Can we really trust this man? he thought of the old healer. He wondered if in the end he had voted the best way in the group decision. After all, one elderly resident of Nonts had betrayed him already. But this man seemed different.

He looked around at the other members of his traveling party. Nuthea was hugging her knees in her torn dress and watching the leaves as well, apparently lost in thought. Sagar had his legs and arms crossed and his head bowed, eyes closed. Elrann fiddled with one of her pistols, tipping some powder from a bottle into a hole she had opened in the top of it.

Come to think of it, can I really trust any of these people? I don’t even want the same things as them. I’m just staying with them for safety and convenience until I can find General Vorr and kill him, because I think he might be headed the same way as them. Although…

His gazed settled on Nuthea again, but when she raised her eyes to him Ryn quickly looked away at the bounty hunter. The bounty hunter, still sitting astride the chocobo, had gone quiet and stopped making his sighing noises. Why had Ryn argued they keep him alive, again?

Ryn remembered the look of glinting desperation he had seen in the man’s grey eyes when he had been about to die.

Because I know he’s been through some sort of horrible nightmare just like I have, that’s why. And anyway, it hadn’t turned out to be such a bad choice so far, had it? The bounty hunter had given them directions to Nonts. If Sagar had killed him, they wouldn’t have known which way to go. And he might be able to give them more information about what was going on with this Imperial invasion when he woke up. If he ever woke up...Hang on, was he snoring? When did he fall asleep?

Mother. Father. Hometown. If Ryn stayed still in one place too long images of his parents dying and his hometown burning crowded into his mind again. He got to his feet and walked over to the chocobo.

The chocobo inclined its head to inspect Ryn with its beady eyes, then nuzzled him with its beak when Ryn stroked its head feathers. “Hey, well done,” Ryn whispered. “You did good today. I might need you to run fast like that again sometime--so catch a good break while you can.”

Somewhere, a twig snapped.

Ryn’s head shot round. “What was that?” Nuthea and Elrann looked up too. All was quiet for a heartbeat.

“It was nothing,” said Sagar, without lifting his head or opening his eyes. “Just a branch falling in the wind or something. Go back to your rest, pup. And sit down. If you must insist on keeping that scumsucker alive, let him sleep off his poppy hit in peace so we can all have a break from him.”

Ryn’s jaw tightened at Sagar’s casual commands. The skypirate was really beginning to irritate him. “I want to find out what he knows about the invasion,” he said. He also wanted to further vindicate himself for having kept the man alive, but he wasn’t about to say that out loud.

Sagar sighed audibly from where he reclined against his tree, but he didn’t say anything more.

“Hey, wake up,” Ryn said to the bounty hunter. He prodded him in his black-clad leg where he sat bound astride the chocobo. The man didn’t even stir. “Wake up,” Ryn said again a bit more loudly, and shook the man gently.

Nothing.

“If he’s sleeping off a poppy trance he’ll be pretty hard to rouse,” said Elrann helpfully as she polished her pistol with a cloth. “That’s if you can rouse him at all.”

“Just give it a rest would you, pup?” said Sagar.

Ryn gritted his teeth. “Wake up!” he yelled, and slapped the bounty hunter in the face.

“Huh?! Whrrrrrrrr…” The man opened his eyes. They were deeply bloodshot, more red than right. But he was awake now. “Where…...where am I?” he rasped. Ryn noticed again how his accent was neither Efstanish nor Imfisi, but something else entirely--a strange combination of guttural and lilting.

“Rrrr...now you’ve done it…” muttered Sagar.

“You’re in a forest outside Nonts, in Imfis,” Ryn said to the man.

The man’s brow knotted and some grey reasserted itself in his eyes amidst the red. The black discoloration around his mouth was really quite horrible. “I am...? Oh...you’re one of the boys who was with the target.” One of the boys. That meant the bounty hunter classed Sagar as a ‘boy’ as well. Either that or maybe he mistook Elrann for a boy, as some people did. “Why didn’t you kill me when I failed the job?”

“Yes, why indeed...” said Sagar from off to the side.

Even the bounty hunter himself is questioning my decision to keep him alive! Ryn thought. But then he set his jaw. He was determined to justify his actions and make some sense of his spur-of-the-moment choice to spare this man’s life.

“I didn’t kill you,” Ryn said, “because you’re going to tell us what the Empire is doing invading Imfis.”

The man’s forehead furrowed even more deeply as he looked at Ryn. He did nothing for a moment. Then his body twitched and his arms tensed against his bonds. He let out a small grunt.

“You’re not going anywhere,” said Ryn, a little surprised at his own boldness in the face of his fear of the man. “You’re tied up good and tight.”

“Why should I tell you anything?” the man said, his foreign-accented voice dripping with spite.

A clicking noise sounded. Ryn turned to see Elrann standing next to them. She had cocked her pistol and had it pointed at the bounty hunter’s chest. “Because this time I will shoot to kill,” she said. “I’ve re-loaded. Now tell farmboy here what he wants to know or I fill you full of lead.”

Does everyone have to have a derisive nickname for me? Ryn thought.

The man curled his black-tainted lip, looking contemptuously between the pistol and Ryn. He didn’t seem afraid of the weapon or of the prospect of imminent death. “Do you have any more poppy seed?” he said.

“You just had a hit,” Elrann growled. “You shouldn’t need another one for a while.”

The man did seem a lot more together and focused to Ryn, even if he was being entirely ungrateful and uncooperative.

The man smiled, but not in a happy way, and the blackness around his mouth rearranged itself. “It’s never too early for another hit. Besides, it’s nice to know where your next one is going to be coming from. If I knew that, I might be inclined to be a little more talkative…”

“You’ll be talkative because if you don’t I’ll put a shot in you,” said Elrann.

“Stop talking, woman, and just shoot him already!” said Sagar.

“Please,” called Nuthea from where she sat. “No more violence! The One does not approve of senseless killing.”

That lent Ryn a little more authority. “Cool it, Elrann,” he said gently, reflecting as he did so that he seemed to be the only one of them who called anyone by their proper name. “He can’t tell us anything if he’s dead…” Mother. Father. Hometown. Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr. Stay with Nuthea?

“Where’s the old man?” said the bounty hunter, taking advantage of Ryn’s being interrupted by his own thoughts to break the momentary silence. “The one who gave me the poppy before?”

“He’s doing something for us,” Ryn said. He decided to use a bargaining tactic that Sagar had used earlier. “But he’ll be back soon. We’re just waiting for him. If you talk to us, I’ll get him to give you some more poppy seed when he gets back.”

The man went quiet for a moment and seemed to be considering his options. He must know he didn’t really have very many. He was tied up and completely at their mercy.

“Alright,” the man said at last. “I will talk now, for poppy later. What do you wish to know?”