For instance, "The Red Fang is back!" was ranked lower in importance to "Darian came back on a dragon!"

But even "The dragon seems to be on our side!" was ranked lower in his mind than "Remian exhausted himself and is now ill in bed!"

Faced with that dire top-ranking news, George called Taj. "How's our secret project?"

"The herb farm?" Taj blinked. "It's just getting started. It seems secure, and there's been no signals or reports of attacks, but you have to understand, herbs take time to grow, even with life magic, water magic, and earth magic treasures and the most skilled mages of my clan on it."

"Is there anything we can do to…"

"We're already giving it all our best. The herbs will thrive, I guarantee it, but we need time!"

"How much time?"

"A week at least for even the quickest-growing herbs. That is, a.s.suming you want quality."

"Absolutely." George said. "Thanks, Taj."

Also, his comms crystal rang. "h.e.l.lo?"

Remian coughed, then said, "George? Can you come over to KarGoth for a meeting?"

"I'm coming!" George sprang into action.

He slipped on board the Farm/School Sky Barge bound for KarGoth, and quietly brooded in the corner as Remian's mom ran everyone ragged trying to hurry a junk-grade barge hauled by an industrial-grade Tug across the distance of a day's journey on foot-with-wolfcat-support.

But stealthy as he was, Eriane found him anyway. "George! Let's play!"

"What do you want to play?"

"Let's play Sniper!"

"You want to shoot me again?"

"Not you. Not now. Other things. You pick!" Eriane said generously.

"Huh." George pointed to a normal bird flying by innocently. "That one."

Eriane aimed, fired with her toy sniper rifle, and sent a cork bullet spiraling way off-target, missing the bird by perhaps ten meters or more.

"This is a lousy gun." Eriane complained, looking at the 'rifle' in her hand.

"Well, let's try something bigger and easier." George glanced down. "That sleeping snake thing on that tree."

"Ooh!" Eriane stared, eyes wide.

"Just, this time, use THAT." George pointed to the nearest ballista on the Barge's prow.

He wasn't sure her mom would approve of her shooting Wilds at her age, but everyone had to start somewhere, and out here on the Frontier, George's belief was 'the sooner, the better'.

It didn't seem to be anything to worry about in any case. Eriane missed her next shot by a grand fifty meters. She missed her second shot at the snake by thirty, and then missed her third by twenty.

"If you can't hit it with your next shot, you'll have to give up on it. We'll be out of effective range soon." George advised her.

"I can do it! I know I can!" Eriane jumped as the gunnery crews reloaded the ballista for her. She took careful aim again, then fired.

"HISS!" The snake leapt up with a loud shriek. It looked furious. But of course it would be, having been woken up from its sweet nap by being shot in the tail!

"Well… I guess that counts as a hit?" George scratched his head.

"It's a hit?" Eriane beamed.

"Yes, it's a hit. It's not a kill-shot, but…"

"It's a HIT!" Eriane exulted running around the airs.h.i.+p. "Mommy! It's a hit! George said I got a HIT!!"

That totally blew George's cover. In no time flat, Lisa Vin discovered George was on board and immediately pressed him into service lecturing her students on identifying common edible plants in Shadowflash Fief.

This went on for the entire remainder of their trip. By the time they reached KarGoth, George was on the brink of collapse and seriously thinking about joining Remian on his sabbatical.

But when he finally met Remian, the guy was sitting up in bed, swinging his arms left and right experimentally, wearing… "What is that?"

"This?" Remian slowly stood up awkwardly, jerkily. "This is a prosthetic Phoebe had Arnold made for me when I told her I had trouble standing up."

Apparently, somewhere between lunch-time and the arrival of the Farm School Sky Barge, Remian had tried to go to his apartment's living room to hold his meetings. Attempting to get out of bed, however, landed him face-down in the floor and his family yelled for Phoebe on the spot.

Phoebe tried ordering him back to bed and canceling his meetings, but on his promise not to leave the apartment or move around too much, she was eventually persuaded to get him some help in moving around. Instead of the crutches or the wheelchair he'd expected, however, she came back with these.

"These are manpowered motion-a.s.sistance prosthetics designed to help for rehab patients who need to recover their movement abilities." Remian explained. "I don't really need it, but it really helps me get out of bed."

George frowned. "If Phoebe says you need it, I strongly suspect that you actually do need it. How badly did you overexert yourself this time?"

"It was just a few days' adventure, nothing much." Remian waved dismissively, but even his wave was jerky and erratic.

A weird idea was occurring to George at this point. "Just how much help does this skeleton frame give you?"

"Um… a little? It falls just a bit short of the average human's." Remian said, still moving around jerkily.

"Yeah, we might want to fix that." George observed. "If it was properly made, if Arnold had time to really smoothen out the kinks and the magic… might we be able to make something more powerful? Like… motion a.s.sistance to twice the strength of average humans?"

"That's not good, George." Remian shook his head. "Cheating like that is going to stunt people's growth. It's going to cause a problem with future growth potential. Better to grow stronger by working out as normal."

"That's fine if you have time, but what if I don't?" George asked. "What if I only have weeks before the next Beast Tide hits, and I don't have time to grow stronger?"

"Then your best bet would be an airs.h.i.+p with a good ballista."

"That's not going to be very inspiring to our troops on the ground. Not as inspiring as say… standing in front of your own troops, between them and the oncoming hordes, your sword drawn with all their eyes on your back."

Remian chuckled softly. "You'll be designing it for Song Chen, then, because I'm probably never going to be able to do that."

George didn't tell Remian what he was really thinking; that such a suit was something he wanted for himself.

"So, how are the farm and the mines doing?" Remian asked.

"The farm's fine, but it's not expanding any more, because n.o.body dares to provoke the Wilds." George began.

"That's good. The fewer Wilds we kill, the better." Remian nodded.

"What?" George stared. "But… the dangers to our people…"

"The Beast Tides are triggered when the number of dead Wilds reach ten thousand." Remian told him directly.

"But what about OUR dead?" George asked. "Are we simply to stand around letting them kill our families and friends?"

"No, of course not, but we should try to get along."

"I'd rather have the more dangerous ones killed before losing anyone important to me."

Remian frowned. "Maybe we can't avoid killing one or two, and I don't think it's fair to prohibit hungry people from eating meat if they can hunt either… but don't kill unnecessarily. Remember, there's only so many deaths the Wilds will tolerate before we face another Beast Tide, and next time, the one commanding them might not be as kind as Doom, to let us keep the farms, the mines and the airs.h.i.+ps. I have it on good authority that the next one might not stop with just wiping us out, they might start wiping out all of mankind."

George shook his head. "I don't think they'll ever manage that."

"Tell me that again after you've seen the Wilds around Dragon Lake. The dragon that Darian brought back was actually one of the smallest ones there. I saw dragons literally a hundred times bigger than him back there."

"Just how many dragons did you see around that lake?" George had to ask.

"Hundreds." Remian said, shaking his head. "Most of them were twenty to thirty times bigger than Ha'res-dras. Think about that the next time you think about a Beast Tide coming for us."