"Did you find them?" Matvei asked, looking up from his laborious search through some scrubby bushes.
"Yes. We got the donkey back." Eva nodded towards Pasha, who was leading Ludmilla along.
"Oh. Rus... he isn't..."
"He's not dead. He's among the gnomes." Eva said.
"Sounds like a euphemism to me." Matvei shook dust out of his clothes.
"I've been waiting twelve years for an opportunity like that, I wasn't going to pass it by. Come on, where are Isidor and the Bunny?" Eva looked around at the vast expanse of flat grass, interrupted only by one very large tree.
"Christ...are we going back to that gnome hole?" Pasha asked.
"No, I don't think so..." Eva sighed and started towards the tree.
"So she killed Rus?" Matvei asked as soon as the witch was out of earshot.
"No. The field gnomes got him. Eva said they'll put him to better use than we ever did."
"They're probably going to eat him."
"That's not quite what Eva was implying."
"So we're free?"
"We're free. You don't have to be the bard anymore."
"So what am I going to do?"
"Maybe you can be our brawn."
"Brawn?"
"Strictly in the aesthetic sense, of course."
"And you can be our... pineapple."
"You can be our resident corpse if you don't shut up."
"I have returned." Eva announced, coming up with Pushki and Isidor trailing after her.
"The only tree for five billion miles around, and you two had to hide in it." Pasha shook his head.
"Had a nice view. Where's Rus?" Isidor asked.
"In a hole in the ground. Come on, we want to get to the ocean before dark." Eva straightened the packages tied to Ludmilla.
"Say... one more person can ride. Pasha? Isidor?" Eva offered Ludmilla to her two walking companions, since Matvei rode Baly and Pushki was on Bastard.
Pasha and Isidor grabbed Eva and hoisted her onto Ludmilla's back.
"HEY!"
"Ladies first." Pasha said.
Eva called him down with some very unladylike language.

Chapter Twenty Eight