Cold constricting around his chest. Rushing filling his ears. Current pulling him along, fast. Nuthea’s hand gone. White spray everywhere, vision obscured by water, white spray again. A mouthful of water. Another. Get me out of this water! I hate water! A gulp of air, by sheer chance, enough to keep fighting a few moments longer. Being dragged downwards by the weight of the armour. Frantically kicking his legs and flailing his arms around to try to prevent the downwards drag. Panic. Not knowing how to swim.

A scrap of sound.

“--he is! Help him out, now!”

A hand grabbed Ryn by the arm and yanked hard against the direction the current was taking him.

Pain flared in his shoulder and he thought his arm might pop out of its socket, but Ryn cooperated with the hand and tried to pull himself in the direction it was tugging him all the same, to reach round with his other hand...

Another hand found his other arm, and pulled.

And then he was up and out of the rushing water, being hauled onto a grassy riverbank by Sagar and Elrann.

They released him and he fell to the grass with a thwap, landing face-down. He tasted soggy earth. He never thought the taste of it could be so sweet.

“--stupid pup!” Sagar was saying. “Why didn’t you tell us you couldn’t swim?”

“Yeah, farmboy!” Elrann joined in. “Why shouldn’t you be able to swim? It’s not like there aren’t any rivers or lakes in Efstan! It doesn’t make any sense!”

Ryn raised his head. Like him, they were completely soaked. Sagar’s hair hung like curtains over both his eyes and his ponytail stuck limply to his neck. Elrann looked like more of a typical girl for once, her purple hair seeming much longer than usual when plastered to the back of her head.

Ryn ignored their jibes. He couldn’t help himself from grinning at them, so glad was he to still be alive. “There wasn’t really time to think it, let alone mention it, back there. And what can I say? For some reason I’ve always had this funny thing about water... Never been so keen on it...” Nuthea, he thought. “Nuthea!” he said, looking around frantically.

“I’m here,” said Nuthea from further up the bank. Cid and Vish were with her, all of them dripping wet.

“Were we followed?” Ryn asked, standing up and surveying the river, the grass, the hills.

“No,” said Cid. “I think we took the Imperials completely by surprise. The train carried them off before they had a chance to react. Even if they stop it and back up, that will still take quite a long time. And as soon as they leave the tracks they won’t be able to travel any faster than us, since they don’t have any alternative means of transport, as far as we know. But all the same, we should get as far away from here as we can as quickly as possible, just in case.”

“You are correct in that,” said Vish. “They did not follow immediately, but they may still try to. And they had Elpis with them. You should get moving.”

They trudged up the riverbank together. A light breeze blew cold against their wet bodies, chilling their clothes inside the Imperial armour they still wore, and a shiver ran up Ryn’s spine. Before they had jumped from it, the train had been wending its way through a green, grassy, hilly country in which they now found themselves. They traipsed to the top of the nearest hill to get their bearings. The sun was still climbing in the bright blue sky, and West, in the direction it was heading, the hills stretched out as far as they could see. In the East, the hills grew to snow-capped mountains.

“Does anyone know where in Mid we are?” said Ryn.

“Hey, we’re in Zerlan!” exclaimed Elrann at exactly the same time. “I’d recognise those mountains anywhere! We must be in the foothills of the Pelna mountains, which border Imfis, Zerlan and Manolia!”

“That would make sense,” said Cid sagely, nodding. “The train would have had to go through the mountains on the border to get into Manolia, and would pass through Zerlan briefly just before it got there.”

“Look!” said Nuthea, pointing.

Over the hills, in the East, close to the mountains, its source obscured by one of the larger hills in that direction, was an unmistakable plume of steam, its tail getting slowly further and further away from them.

“They haven’t turned back,” said Nuthea.

“Of course not,” said Vish. “You are merely an irritation to them, not a distraction worth diverting their whole course for.” He still says ‘you’, not ‘we’, Ryn noted. “Though you should not assume anything. They may still have sent someone after you.”

“Like that Lady Shadowfinger?” said Nuthea. “‘Elpis’?”

“Perhaps.”

“We really should keep moving then,” said Ryn, beating Sagar to it, who closed his mouth and frowned.

“Which way?” said Elrann.

“Towards Manolia, of course,” said Nuthea.

This time Sagar got there first. “But we’ll never catch up to that train now--they’ll beat us there, princess, and invade before we can arrive to warn them.”

“Not necessarily…” said Nuthea.

They all looked at her standing sopping wet at the top of the hill.

She bit her lip. Once again Ryn got the distinct impression that she knew more than she was letting on.

“Alright,” said Sagar exasperatedly, “come on, princess--give up the goods. What are you not telling us?”

“I--” started Nuthea.

“She can tell us while we are moving,” said Vish, his grey eyes scanning the hills. He began to walk, and everyone followed, except--

“HOLD ON!” yelled Elrann.

They all stopped and looked round at her. Her cheeks had turned nearly as purple as her hair. Nearly.

“You should not shout so loudly, girl…” hissed Vish.

“Aw, hush up, bountyhunter. If anyone sneaks up on us I’ll just shoot them like I shot you. What nobody seems to have remembered is that while we may still have our weapons and our lives, thank Yntrik, we’ve all lost our packs. It looks like a good day or two’s hike to those mountains, and then we have to get through them, and I for one ain’t too sure our wilderness survival skills are up to a high enough standard to get us through all a’that without any supplies. I say we head to a Zerlanese settlement first and get stocked up--hopefully none of you were so dumb as not to keep your coin about your persons, like I did. I reckon I’m familiar enough with this part of the country that I could sniff a town out for us, sooner or later.”

“Um, it’s not entirely true that none of us have any supplies...” said Cid, swinging his satchel around to the front of him by its strap. “I managed to keep hold of this during our escape, and as well my healer’s provisions it has a little food. I’ve checked it, and since it was sealed up the contents are all dry and intact, despite our little swim.”

Vish’s twitch did not escape Ryn’s notice.

Cid pulled some waybread, salt beef and a bit of cheese out of his bag. His eyes roved around the group. “Did anyone else manage to hold on to anything?”

Nobody volunteered. They all seemed, indeed, to have lost their packs and supplies during the chaos aboard the train.

“Ah,” said Cid.

A strong pang of guilt went through Ryn’s stomach. But it was soon swallowed up by hatred as he remembered what had led him to reveal himself on the train. Mother. Father. Hometown. Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr.

“Well, that settles it, then,” said Elrann. “Instead of South-East, we first go North to find a Zerlanese settlement to restock. Princess-girl can explain why we’re not in a rush after all on the way.”

Nuthea’s mouth dropped open. “I never said that we were not still in a rush. I just said we were not in as much of a rush as you might think. I want to carry on in the direction of Manolia--”

“Princess!” Sagar snapped. “There is no way we can make it through those mountains with just a bit of bread and salted meat! Not even just the two of us could manage that! You’ve employed me to do a job, but I can only do it and deliver you safely to Manolia if you are still alive!”

Nuthea opened her mouth again, but then something flickered in her eyes and she went tight-lipped. “Hmph,” she said. For once, she had backed down. Even she seemed to see the sense in what Elrann and Sagar were saying.

Ryn was torn, though. Vorr was heading South-East, not North. At the same time, he thought, he needed to stay alive as well in order to be able eventually to get to Vorr and kill him. And he still wasn’t strong enough--if nothing else, their most recent confrontation had shown him that. He needed to train more on the way, to get stronger, to get better with his sword. And maybe it was the shock of what had just happened, maybe it was the cold water, but now he began to doubt seriously for the first time whether he would ever be able to kill Vorr. The man was just too strong. Too powerful. He shook his head. No. Don’t think like that. You will get strong enough to kill him. Mother. Father. Hometown. Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr. Stay with Nuthea...

Ryn blinked. By the time he had finished thinking all of this, the others had already walked off down the hill. He ran to catch up with them.

As he ran, he tripped over his feet, stumbled a few paces, then lost his balance completely and fell. He twisted his body round to cushion himself against the impact on his side, but the hill was so steep that he rolled down it, turning over several times. He crashed into Sagar from behind, taking the skypirate’s legs out from underneath him, before managing to put his hands out and scramble to hold onto the grass, raking the earth with his fingernails at last to come to a stop.

Sagar was on him at once, flipping him onto his back, kneeling on his arms, cutlass drawn already, holding the blade to Ryn’s throat.