"Have you heard the word of the Good Lady of the Morn?"

August gasped awake to find a face leering over him with a smile. Even in the starlight, dark and framed by a silver halo, August would have known that lopsided grin anywhere. 

"Shit." August lurched to his feet like he'd been tickled by a scorpion, pain wincing up his right foreleg, and Boone laughed like he'd never seen anything funnier. August watched the condensation billowing from Boone's open mouth and made an effort to calm his own breathing. His ears sat flat on his crown.

Finally the idiot stopped laughing.

"Why, you look like you've seen a ghost, Gus," said Boone, tilting his head. That stupid lopsided smile still lingered on his face.

"No, just a fool who can't mind his own business. Ira sent you after me, did he?"

Boone's smile faltered. "'Course he did. I gotta say, you're a hard one to find, you old fart. Took me near a whole damned year, if not more." He took a step closer and August bristled.

"You're older than me, you—"

"—Hey now, I'm just catchin' up with an old friend, that's all. That's what we are, right? Friends?"

August's answer was silence. For a moment the two stallions regarded each other, standing stiffly in the starlit meadow while a nighthawk winged overhead, its nasal pyitt echoing through the dark. Then August rushed Boone, and they tangled with teeth and hooves, grunting as their scarred, muscled bodies thumped and struggled in the grass, pale hair and clods of dirt flying. It was over in seconds. August had always been the stronger fighter and apparently still was, even with his bum leg. He watched, blowing heavily through his nares, as Boone, who had been knocked flat onto his back, struggled awkwardly back to his feet. The humbled stallion let out a bitter laugh as he shook the debris from his gold-and-white coat.

"I'll take that as a yes," he said.

"We're gonna wake up the whole damn herd. Why are you here, Boone?" August's voice was a low, tired growl.

"Herd man now, are you? Never took you for the sort." There was a hard edge to Boone's words now. He shook himself a second time and snorted dust from his nostrils. "Ira's cracked, Gus. He sent me away to find you, but I ain't going back. Everyone else is gone. He won't stop babbling about some 'Lady of the Morn'—"

"—Wait, Ira's alive? And everyone's gone? The whole gang?"

"Gone as birds in a bushfire. And yes, Gus, Ira's alive, though you certainly ensured it was almost otherwise. If he wasn't cracked in the head before, he's certainly cracked now."

August swore under his breath and tore his gaze away, scanning the horizon as though Ira might materialize out of the night. Then, a figure—there was indeed a dark silhouette heading their way through the grass. Someone come to investigate the kerfuffle, no doubt.

August dropped his voice to a deep murmur. "Someone's coming. Shut up and let me do the talking. And don't call me Gus."