The Hangman’s Horde joins the disparate Outsider tribes at a full moon festival
where Joan, general to the Horde and Hank’s lover, announces she has found Hank’s errant brother Donnie, “the Demon,” with a distant mystic tribe.
Treatment
As Hank and the Hangman’s Horde drive through the Wilderness, we hear the tail end of a conversation between Hank, Sid, and Tim. Tim tells Hank about a person named Perry who they are supposed to meet about a tunnel. Hank asks whether Marcus controls the tunnel, which Tim thinks is unlikely. SId questions how Ricky “lightened the burden,” and Hank replies “he is a herald of the ones inside the walls. With his message and now the means to get inside… only one thing remains.” Hank praises Tim for a job well done as Sid scowls.
The Horde arrives at their destination - a large Wilderness gathering of Outsider tribes. Abarth is here. He says some of the Horde who had already arrived were almost thrown out for unspecified aggression. He tells the arriving members of the Horde if they would join his tribe they wouldn’t go hungry. Hank reveals he knows Abarth provides some services for Marcus and says the Horde doesn’t share his “appetite for a slumlord’s table scraps.” Abarth retorts that Hank and his “mountain cult” could benefit from occasional deferment. Sid threatens that Hank will eat Abarth’s heart, but Hank calls him off, saying Abarth “will have his time to make his choice, just like the rest.”
At this gathering, a wide variety of Outsiders gather around several large bonfires. They are dancing, meditating, eating, drinking, smoking, fornicating, debating, and playing games and music, some doing several of these things at once. Two women call out to Hank, inviting him to attempt to impregnate them. One of the women is already pregnant, suggesting a lack of information about insemination or childbirth in general. Hank leaves with the women.
Joan arrives and speaks with Abarth. Joan is the Hangman Horde’s current general and former general of Abarth’s tribe. He tells her Hank didn’t make “his usual challenge” - “no fights to the death or King of the Wilderness bullshit.” Joan says they are taking a new direction, but Abarth chides her for still following “a voice in the Demon’s head.” Joan finds Hank where he is lying with the two women and tells him they’ve found his brother.
Sid feels Hank has lost focus and is putting too much importance on fighting Boomtown and too little on conquering the Wilderness tribes. Tim says Joan has decided fighting the other tribes wouldn’t be worth the losses. Sid blames Tim for Hank’s distraction with “this… city stuff,” and attacks Tim after he vaguely references Sid’s birth tribe.
Hank deduces that his brother is not alone, and Joan confirms he is with a desert tribe far to the south. We briefly see the one called the Demon laying semi-conscious among a group of others in a similar state.