Thinking they had gone far enough, Joji and Alaric finally let Walter rest. Joji stretched his arms over his head and rolled his shoulders loose. Alaric watched him with the puzzled focus of a man studying some strange foreign tool.
"What art is that?" Alaric asked. "Can you show me?"
Joji knew there were no systematic exercises in this world. Most men simply swung a sword until their joints gave way and called that training. He wiped the sweat from his brow and kept his expression stern.
"I made this art myself," he said. "It builds stamina, sharpens muscle control, and helps with aura control. You know I had no combat arts before this. These are mine alone. Shameful as it is, this is the one thing I can point to and say, this is what makes me Sins from Crossroad."
Alaric went still. An art made by one's own hand. Not inherited. Not bought. And one that claimed to refine stamina, dexterity, and aura all at once. When he finally spoke, he chose his words with care.
"Close as we are, I would not try to pry such an art from you if you are not willing to share it," Alaric said.
Joji smirked inwardly. This was the opening he had been waiting for, and he seized it at once. He slapped Alaric on the back harder than necessary.
"You really think I am that shallow, Ava?" he said. "Better not call me Joji at all then. Call me Sir Sins from now on."
Alaric startled at once, genuinely alarmed by the turn. His eyes watered almost immediately.
"My heart is black. Alas, alas. I misjudged my place in your regard," he murmured, stepping closer as though he meant to gather him into an embrace.
Joji lifted a hand to stop him.
"Ava, because you are my true friend, I give you a special adjustment," Joji said.
Joji had his friend lie down on a flat rock by the river. Then he set his hands to work, pressing into the knotted muscles until they gave with sharp little pops.
Alaric bit his lip and held back the sound that wanted to slip free.
"Don't make this weird for the both of us, Ava," Joji teased.
Once Alaric's body had loosened some, Joji turned him onto his side and drove a quick, precise pressure into the hip. A deep pop answered, followed by a string of crackles that echoed far louder than seemed proper.
Alaric's eyes went glassy at once. Joji flipped him to the other side and did the same there, drawing out another heavy release from the joint. After that came the legs. He pulled and adjusted them until the tension broke with a few more satisfying snaps.
Then Joji moved to the back.
One firm twist, one practiced push, and the man's spine answered in a long chain of cracks. Alaric trembled on the stone, his mouth parted, saliva glistening at the corner of his lips from the sheer relief of it.
Finally, Joji set his hand at the neck, tilted the face to one side, rotated carefully, and drew out a loud, clean crack.
Even Walter found himself staring by then.
Joji finished the other side with the same ease and stepped back, satisfied with his work.
"We'll talk about the Animal Stretch Arts later on," he said, shamelessly passing off proper stretches from Earth as though they were some profound secret.
Alaric said nothing. He only lay there sprawled across the flat stone in a boneless sort of ruin. Walter, uncertain whether to approach this strange miss or not, took a hesitant step closer.
Then his eyes dropped.
They fixed on the bulge at Alaric's crotch.
Walter's face went pale.
"He. He's a man," Walter stammered, lifting a shaking finger toward Alaric.
"Do not be fooled, Walter. That is no lady. He is a ladyboy. My real name is Joji, not Desmond, and that ladyboy is Alaric, not Ava. Keep that to yourself for now. Come on. We need to move," Joji said.
Walter's stomach lurched at the thought of the lustful fancies he had nearly entertained over the man.
Joji saw at once that he was about to vomit, so he pinched Walter's nose shut and gripped his chin hard.
"Don't. You'll need your strength to cling to me," Joji said.
Walter climbed onto Joji's back with a wheeze, his arms looping around the man's shoulders. Then they set off down the road again.
This time, they kept a measured pace and conserved their aura.
Even so, their speed was nothing to laugh at. They still covered nearly twelve miles an hour, the kind of pace that would have marked an elite runner back on Earth.
The Everhart Tempest Art was one of the finest movement arts in all Vicario.
Even the throne had coveted it.
A man could run all day with it, so long as he was not dragged into hard combat. That was why Everhart knights were so often chosen for long range reconnaissance and for crushing rebellions in distant provinces.
The art could even be tied to a mount, if one had a horse beneath him.
After two hours of running, Joji finally began to breathe a little deeper, though the fatigue never settled long.
His physique made him almost impossible to wear down. He glanced at Alaric.
Another hour passed before Joji raised a hand.
"We're far enough. Stop here."
No one had harried them for too long a stretch now. That was proof enough. Their pursuers had lost the trail, at least for the moment.
"Alaric. Let me sleep a while. Two hour shifts."
Joji lay down with a stone for a pillow and fell asleep almost at once, snoring like a man who had kept his fear locked in his ribs and finally let it go.
Alaric watched his face in the moonlight while keeping one ear turned to the road.
Then it was Joji's turn.
He drank a little water and lifted his eyes to the sky.
Three moons hung above them. Nothing like Earth.
Their light washed the ground in a pale glow and made the night far brighter than it ought to have been. Joji narrowed his eyes toward the edge of that light.
A wolf moved there. Then he saw the thing that made his stomach drop.
A collar. Wild wolves did not wear collars.
"Alaric. Alaric. Wake up," Joji hissed.
Panic made him rougher than he meant to be, and his kick landed hard enough to jolt Alaric at once awake.
One look at Joji's face was enough. Alaric grabbed his bow with quick practiced hands, then nudged Walter awake with the tip of his boot.
While they had been running earlier, Joji had taught Walter something from another life.
Joji had shared a secret with Walter during their run earlier. It was a simple concept from a different life. He described the ghillie suit to the man.
Every time they paused, Walter stuffed dried herbs and scraps of brush into loops and seams, building camouflage from whatever the road gave them.
He worked like a man born to cloth. His fingers moved quick and sure, knotting, weaving, adjusting.
At first, Joji had thought the merchant would not understand. He had underestimated him.
Walter made something that blended so well it might have stirred envy even in trained killers.
"Hide. Now," Joji whispered.
The night seemed to hold its breath. Only a lone cicada cried somewhere far off.
Then the footsteps came. Soft. Measured. Not human.
In the distance, a dire wolf slid into view. Then another emerged behind them. Then one at their flank. Then another.
The shadows kept multiplying until the pack swelled to nearly twenty, their eyes catching the moonlight and throwing back a bloodthirsty gleam.
One stood larger than the rest. The pack leader. It was the size of a horse, its muzzle scarred, its eyes too calm for any common beast.
A red beast aura rolled off it in steady waves that made the hairs on Joji's arms rise. It threw back its head and howled. The cry drove wind through the trees and stirred the branches, as though the forest itself were answering, as though it were calling for a master.
Alaric did not wait. He loosed an arrow at once. It struck one wolf before it could even shift its weight. The beast jerked once and fell dead on the spot.
The pack erupted.
They charged with snarls ripping from their throats, claws tearing at the dirt, hunger turning sharp with rage.
Joji planted his stance and waited for the first lunge. He moved to strike, but the wolf twisted aside with a burst of speed and shot low for his foot.
Joji drove aura into his legs and used Lightness of the Wind. His foot flashed out faster than the bite and smashed into the wolf's jaw. A crack snapped through the dark.
He did not let it recover.
Joji charged his fist with Emerald Blade Wind Art and drove it into the wolf's head.
The force punched through the skull like a weapon detonating from within.
Blood burst from its eyes, snout, and ears. The beast collapsed as if its strings had been cut.
Alaric dropped his second wolf just as cleanly. He baited it in with a half step back, then drove a dagger through its ear, deep enough to kill it before it could even yelp.
Then the same thought struck them both.
They could kill the wolves. Of that, they were certain.
They had the arts for it. They had the nerve. But they were killing too slowly.
The pack was not trying to win outright. It was pinning them in place, buying time while the night did its quiet work.
And even with all their arts, if a hundred men arrived now, they would still die.
They needed a way out. Fast.