Free Timegods' World by L.E. Modesitt Jr.

toward the highway, I unstrapped my pack and set it on top of the flat stone marker, unfastened it, and removed the last blue chyst. After three days, even the blue ones didn’t taste too bad. I needed some energy, and otherwise there were only a few sticks of jerky and two small chunks of cheese left. Those I wanted to save.
    Allyson had done well, but like all good things her provisions were about to end. When I finished the chyst, nibbled all the way down to the hard seed, I tossed it into the deep brush to my right.
    Swwiiissshh.
    A grossjay swooped after it, almost catching the seed before it struck the ground. Times had apparently been hard for the birds as well. Grossjays were not known for their fondness for chyst seeds.
    I pulled the pack back on, shrugging my shoulders to try to relieve the stiffness that seemed permanent. Then I started down the trail, staying on the short grass on the side, avoiding the slippery combination of dirt and mud in the middle.
    The line of firs ended halfway to the highway, and I pulled up short, staying in their shade, as I could hear the rumble of a vehicle in the distance. Instead of walking along the road, stupid in any case, I kept under the overhang of the trees, where I stumbled every so often. While most of the trees were light-leaved for winter, between the mist and the evergreens, I wasn’t as exposed as I would be closer to the road, and I could hide quickly. The idea of hiding and skulking around bothered me, but being picked up by the ConFeds would have bothered me a lot
more—especially since I didn’t know why they were after my family … and presumably me.
    After about a kay, the rumbling increased in pitch, and I dropped behind a pine, waiting.
    Over the hill from the west they came, clear even from a distance. First came a steamer, black, with a flag on the front bumper. The flag was the ConFed banner. Then there were two open steam freighters, carrying full loads covered with tarps. Last came an armored steamer, the kind with the composite ceramic plates and a turret gun. The armored steamer was wreathed in vapor as it rattled along.
    In my whole life, I had never seen such a detachment on the Eastern Highway, not near Bremarlyn, so far from Eastron, even father from the Northern Isles—although that conflict had been over even before my father was born.
    So I crouched in a hollow behind the pine and waited for them to pass out of sight. The wait wasn’t all loss, though. In looking around, I saw what might have been a stunted pearapple, behind the firs to my left, toward Herfidian. As I waited, watching, I marked the pearapple location and studied the steamer as it hum-hissed past my pine tree, less than five rods away. Double-tiered and totally enclosed, that black steamer was easily twice the size of my father’s official steamer. The black finish was wearing thin and beginning to show the reddish ceramic beneath, and the faded purple stripe along the side, across both doors, was also heavily scratched.
    I could feel the ground vibrate as the rest of the road convoy neared. The dull gray freighters looked newer, but still battered. Unlike the steamer, their cabs were open, and one had the windscreen folded down. Both were heavy-laden, with what appeared to be machines under the tarps. An armed ConFed stood in the guard booth at each corner of the cargo bay of each freighter. Eight armed ConFeds—in the center of Westron, thousands of kays from the old borders. And they weren’t looking bored. I shrank down further behind the pine as the freighters neared. The guards had weapons out and kept scanning the roadside.
    How anyone would catch them I couldn’t imagine. All four were travelling nearly as fast as a normal runabout.
    But someone had, clearly, because one of the armored guard booths on the first freighter had projectile holes in it and a dull reddish smear on the shattered composite underneath.
    I decided not to move as the freighters passed,