Robert took the spear, trying to picture a battle in which he might use it. But it was clumsy and unwieldy, and his mind would produce only grotesque cartoon images.
"Think small," Zak said softly. "We won’t survive without weapons."
Robert nodded, only half-believing him.
All four of them were ready now, but they loitered for a moment, waiting for some kind of farewell. Robert could see the others hesitating, too. Wanting to wish them good luck. Not wanting to make too much of all the dangers.
It was Bando who broke the silence. He walked up to Zak, holding his hand out solemnly.
"Have a good time," he said. As though they were going on vacation.
Gravely, Zak shook his hand.
Bando moved on to Cam and then to Nate and Robert. "Enjoy yourselves. Hope the weather’s good. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do."
Cam’s mouth twisted, but she didn’t say anything. She shook Bando’s hand and then turned away down the slope. Zak fell into step behind her.
Robert hesitated for a second. He caught Lorn’s eye and struggled for something to say, some better kind of good-bye. She was the one who had saved his life, and he wanted her to know that he realized it. He wanted to say—
But there was no time to find the words. Nate was walking off as well now, expecting him to follow. He couldn’t afford to lag behind. All he could do was smile at Lorn and hold her eyes for a second longer.
"See you soon," he muttered.
She bent her head. "Soon, I hope," she said.
Then he was off after the others, feeling the weight on his shoulders and using his spear like a staff.
When Robert caught up, Nate stopped to let him pass.
"Best if I go last," Nate said.
Robert nodded, knowing he was being protected. Glad not to be left at the back. It was reassuring to hear Nate’s soft, light footsteps close behind him.
They climbed down to the bottom of the slope and turned left, along the edge of the ravine. It was too dark to see the ground under their bare feet, and they had to feel it carefully, before each step, picking their way between tall plants and knee-high boulders. It was awkward at first, but gradually they settled into a steady rhythm, walking in silence and following Cam’s lead.
As the sun rose, her shadowy shape in front of Robert turned from gray to earth-brown, with the batpack dark against her shoulders. She walked with a long, relaxed stride, looking left and right as she went. Robert could see her sniffing the air and tilting her head to listen to the rustles all around them and the clarinet calls of the morning birds.
Zak walked quite differently, staring down at the ground and frowning, as if he were thinking through a problem. Robert wondered how long he had spent in the woods, living on wild food and hiding from rats and owls. His face was thin and weathered, but it was impossible to tell how old he was.
How long could someone last, living that life?
The question jarred uncomfortably. Robert pushed it away and tried to stop thinking. He began to copy Cam, listening and looking and sniffing as he walked, using all his senses to pick up what was going on around them.
The sounds and the smells changed constantly. Leaves creaked over his head, grains of earth moved beside him, and the air carried strange, shifting scents that dispersed before he could recognize them. The forest was full of small signs and messages, but most of them were beyond his understanding. When Cam stopped for a moment, or stepped around something on the ground, he had no idea what she had noticed.
At midday they stopped to rest and eat. Robert was exhausted. He lay flat out on the ground, with his leg throbbing and his arm aching. It was a long time before he could bring himself to sit up and unwrap his pack.
The others didn’t say anything about his weakness. But he could see Cam watching him as they ate. When she had finished and remade her pack, she lay down and put the bundle under her head.
"Time to sleep," she said briskly. "I’m going to have a couple of hours before we go on. You take first watch, Nate."
Robert wanted to say, You don’t have to do this. I can cope. But Cam had already closed her eyes, and Zak was settling himself to sleep as well. Nate stood up, grinning down at Robert.
"Take the chance while you can. Cam won’t give us much rest once we get beyond the long wood."
Robert shrugged and stretched out on the ground again—just for a few moments, just to humor Nate—and fell asleep instantly.
TOWARD THE END OF THE AFTERNOON, THEY BEGAN TO approach the edge of the long wood. The ground grew rougher under their feet, lying in loose, unstable clods, and the air moved more freely, striking cold against their skin. Robert began to notice patches of bright, fierce color littered among the trees—red and lurid green and a bright, raucous yellow.
"Perdew’s treasure trove," Zak murmured sarcastically from behind. "He would fill the cavern with bits of polyethylene and cellophane—if we let him."
Robert could think of hundreds of uses for something waterproof and easy to cut. "Why not?" he said. "What’s the problem?"
"Can’t you see how they catch the light? How they draw your eye?" Zak sounded impatient. "That stuff is no good for us."
Robert would have argued, but Cam called suddenly from in front of them.
"Beak!"
There was no mistaking the urgency in her voice. She and Zak threw themselves forward onto the ground, and Nate caught at Robert’s arm, dragging him down.
"What—?" Robert’s spear tangled itself with his ankle, and he fell with a bump.
"Keep still!" hissed Nate. "Keep absolutely still! And shut your eyes."
They were lying flattened between two boulders, breathing into the damp earth. From just in front, Robert heard sounds of movement. A quick, jerky rustling. Two or three seconds of silence. Then another rustle.
Keeping his eyes closed was unbearable. He felt exposed and helpless, unable to defend himself. Without raising his head, he opened one eye, just enough to see through his eyelashes.
He saw crumbs of earth hanging together in clods. And, beyond the clods, the top of Cam’s head, with the water shell tipped forward on her shoulders. The water had soaked into the leather stopper, and it was dripping, very slowly, onto her hair.
Suddenly a huge, speckled head appeared, looming over the shell. Its eye glared horribly, unblinking. Its beak was as long as Cam’s whole body. With irregular, mechanical movements, the beak tapped at the tilted water shell, trying to dislodge it.
Lorn’s ropes held out. The shell barely shifted. And Cam herself was as still as a stone, even when the beak brushed her cheek, coming away from the shell. She stayed rock steady as the cruel beak lifted.
Then the bird pounced.
It stabbed suddenly downward, aiming close to Cam’s head, and Robert drew in his breath sharply, unable to keep silent.
"Stay still!" hissed Nate, so softly that the sound hardly carried as far as Robert’s ear.
The great bird pecked down, once and twice and three times. Then it straightened abruptly, dragging up and backward. Out of the ground came a long, grotesque serpent with a body five or six times as long as Cam’s. Its pink flesh was mottled and ridged, and it stretched elastically as the cruel beak pulled at it. It gave out a smell like nothing Robert had ever come upon before—fleshy and close and raw.
The bird jerked it free of the ground, dropped it, pecked twice, and picked it up again. Then it hopped away toward the light, with the serpent writhing in agonized contortions in midair.
Robert’s whole body was shaking. He had pushed the memory of the ogre-bird to the back of his mind. Now it was surging up again. He could see the yellow, inhuman eye coming down at him and feel the savage beak ripping at his flesh.
Nate put a hand against his back. "Are you all right?"
Robert nodded, taking great gulps of the cold, fresh air.
"That’s only the beginning," said Zak, getting to his feet. "There’ll be worse things than that before w
e’re done." "I know there will," said Robert.
"Not tempted to change your mind?"
Robert shook his head and scrambled up, staggering slightly as he straightened his pack. Zak gave him a small, grave smile, and set out after Cam, who had already started walking again.
THEY EMERGED FROM THE LONG WOOD JUST AFTER SUNSET, when the horizon was still streaked with red, away to the right. The trees ended suddenly, and the travelers stepped out onto a patch of bare earth. The air around them was cold, and above them the sky spread wide and open.
Ahead, waist-high grass stood in stiff blades, cropped square at the top. The ground rose slightly, so that they couldn’t see more than a few minutes’ walk into the grass, but somewhere farther ahead a long, dark shape loomed up, black against the fading sky.
There was just enough light to see that it was a wall of trees, very thick and high. Much denser than the long wood they were leaving. Robert had the impression of an artificial shape, squared off like a building. The trees were tangled together so closely that they formed a single, gigantic block. In the dim light, it was solid and forbidding.
"That’s what we’re heading for," Cam said. "We should be safe in there."
Robert shuddered, imagining the darkness under those black trees. But there was no alternative. The tree wall blocked the way ahead of them, stretching off to the left into the distance.
Nate narrowed his eyes, studying it. "Good place to spend the night."
Zak nodded. "But we ought to wait for the light to fade before we cross the grassland."
They crouched at the end of the long wood, watching the bright sky. Gradually the colors around them drained away, and the shapes blurred until the tree wall was barely visible. They could just make out the mass of it, rising out of the grass ahead.
"One at a time," Cam said softly. "Aim for the nearest bit."
She went immediately, as soon as she had finished speaking, crouching low to run through the stiff grass. For a moment Robert could see her hunched back, with the stick held high in her hand. Then she melted into the darkness.
"You go next," Zak said.
Robert bent and moved forward into the grass. The darkness was deceptive. Cam had disappeared very quickly, and he assumed he would catch up with her in a few seconds. But he ran until he was out of breath, and the tree wall seemed no nearer. His spear kept getting tangled in the grass stems, and the grass blades tore at his tunic and scraped his arms until he had to slow to a careful jog. He could hear Nate and Zak behind him, moving easily, but he resisted the temptation to look over his shoulder. All his attention was focused on the ground ahead.
By the time he reached the end of the grassland, he was exhausted. And he still hadn’t reached the tree wall. He was standing on the edge of a strip of rough, black ground as hard as stone. Beyond that strip the wall reared up, filling the sky.
He crouched in the grass, glancing left and right and overhead. But it was too dark to be certain of anything. He could hardly see the ground in front of his feet, and the night played tricks on his eyes, forming and re-forming mysterious, insubstantial shapes.
In the end, he stood up and ran recklessly, stumbling on the rough, hard ground. Three times he tripped and fell, skinning his hands and knees on the rocky surface, but he was up again instantly, racing for safety.
As he came close to the tree wall, he realized that the thick network of branches didn’t reach right down to the ground. The trees began to branch just level with his eyes. Looking up, he could see a continuous curtain of needled branches, dark and heavy as wrought iron. Looking down, he saw the trunks rising straight and massive out of bare earth like a line of ancient pillars.
The trees had a strong, resinous, aromatic smell. It drifted toward him as he ran. When he reached the wall at last, he ducked his head and went in under the branches. Inside, there was space to stand up straight, and the scent of the trees was almost overpowering.
"Hey," said Cam’s voice softly, from above.
He looked up into thick shadow. Inside the wall itself, the branches were bare of needles. They ran in all directions, forming an intricate scaffolding that went up and up, as far as he could see.
"Here," Cam said.
Robert’s eyes began to adjust to the darkness. Now he could see the crouching mass of her body, lodged in an angle between two branches.
"How do I get up there?" he called.
"Walk along until you get to a trunk. That’s the easiest way. Then you can climb up—and go anywhere you like."
Ten steps took him to the nearest trunk. It was far too big to grip, but the bark was rough enough to give plenty of footholds. Robert tucked his spear through the strings of his pack and climbed the trunk as if it were a rock face. When he reached the first branches, he began to work his way toward Cam. The thick, bitter smell of the trees filled his nostrils.
By the time he reached the place where Cam was perched, the others were already there. Zak was settling back against the trunk, and Nate was straddling a branch, whistling as he unwrapped his pack.
"We’ll eat now," Cam said.
It was a bleak meal, with no fire and nothing to drink. Each of them sat on a different branch and they ate in silence, listening to the noises of the night. There were a hundred questions Robert wanted to ask, but he was too tired to put the words together and the others seemed remote and detached.
As soon as Cam finished eating, she rolled up her pack and settled herself on the branch, pulling her fur blanket around her. "I’ll sleep now and watch later. Wake me at dewfall, Zak. Robert can have the third watch."
Turning her back on them, she wedged herself firmly into the place where she was sitting. A moment later, they heard her breathing grow slower and deeper.
"You heard the orders," murmured Nate. "Don’t waste good sleeping time."
Robert unrolled his bat fur and fidgeted around in the branches, trying to find a place that felt secure. It wasn’t easy to relax like Cam. The branch was hard, and he was afraid of falling. It was a long time before he went to sleep.
18
THE CAVERN WAS FULL OF ANGER. AND BELOW THE ANGER WAS a slow, cold fear that seeped into every action and every sentence.
Lorn felt it as soon as she opened her eyes in the morning. If she went out, she could taste it in the air as soon as she crawled back through the tunnel. She saw it in people’s eyes, when they sat eating or separated to work.
No one spoke the words, but she knew what they were thinking. Cam’s gone. Zak’s gone. They’ve abandoned us. Who’s going to figure out what needs to be done? Who’s going to tell us how things are?
On the fourth day without Cam and Zak, it all came to a head.
Lorn had taken Bando out collecting wood. By the time they had hauled it all back to the cavern entrance, it was almost too dark to see. Lorn kept watch anxiously while Bando snapped the logs into manageable lengths. It was a relief when the wood was short enough to push through the tunnel.
Bando went ahead, dragging it, and Lorn scrambled after him. When they emerged into the cavern, they found Perdew cooking grain. He had an old can lid balanced on the edge of the fire, and the air was full of the rich scent of roasting seeds.
"Smells good," Lorn said.
Perdew didn’t react. A week earlier he would have looked around and smiled.
Lorn was left on her own to carry the logs across the cavern and stack them on the woodpile. Bando shuffled off, working his way around the lair. The others were sitting singly, waiting to eat. No one spoke to Bando, and he began to fiddle with the blankets, pulling at the fur and twisting the corners.
I ought to find him another job, Lorn thought. She could see that people were getting annoyed. Annet snatched the blankets away, and Dess pushed at Bando with his shoulder. He needs some more work to keep him busy.
She tried to think of something, but she had been looking after Bando all day and she was too tired to invent anything else.
It’s all falling to
pieces,
At least when the food was ready, everyone came into a circle to eat. There was a drizzle of conversation about practical things, and Ab even made one of his lugubrious jokes. But everyone laughed too long, as though they were desperate to fill the silence.
Bando was still restless and uneasy. He chomped at the grain, chewing noisily and spitting the empty husks fiercely at the side of the brazier. They clung there, sizzling and scorching.
"Stop it!" Lorn said. "What’s the matter?"
Bando looked sullen, turning his head away. His heavy jaws moved laboriously, still chewing.
"You know what’s the matter," Perdew said impatiently. "He’s wondering. Aren’t you? Aren’t we all? He’s thinking, How far have they gotten? What are they doing now?"
"We won’t find that out for a long time," Lorn said. She reached for another seed and cracked the husk under her foot, picking it off and flicking the bits over the top of the brazier.
"They shouldn’t have left us," Bando said peevishly. "Why did they have to go? How long till they get back?"
He was looking at Lorn. Suddenly they were all looking at Lorn. And Bando’s question was rattling in the air.
Lorn felt a surge of panic. She knew—surely they all knew?—that Bando’s question was unanswerable. There was nothing she could say. She knew they needed a reply, but she had nothing to give them. I can’t—
And then the power came.
Without thinking consciously, without figuring it out, she knew what she had to do. She stood up, walked across the circle to the woodpile, and pulled out a long, straight piece of wood. Then she began to walk toward the tunnel, pulling the wood behind her. The cavern was totally silent.
She walked slowly, dragging the wood over the ground so that its tip marked out a deep, straight groove. Gradually the others turned, following her with their eyes. When she reached the tunnel opening, she stopped and looked back along the line she had made. It stretched right down the side of the cavern, from the brazier to the entrance.
"They’re going a long way," she said at last. "It’ll take weeks. But even long journeys finish in the end, if you keep walking."
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