And so he pushed on…
Always he headed directly into the sun where its light was most evident in the sky and through the trees. But there were streams to cross, bramble and creeper thickets to negotiate, places where the forest's canopy was so dense as to shut out the light entirely. Until suddenly… the light improved a very little, the trees thinned out, lesser shrubs, brambles, undergrowth disappeared under a brittle carpet of poisonous needles. He had found the ironwood groves; but nowhere a sign that the Travellers had come this way, and no track for him to follow. He hurried on, skirted the thicker needle patches and passed safely through the groves.
The trees thinned out more yet; light, what little was left of it, flowed palely into the forest from the south; the ironwoods gave way to ash, walnut, wild plum. At least Nathan was heading in the right direction. But just when he believed he was through the worst of it, then he felt the sting of a needle sliding through the stitching of his sandal into the ball of his right foot.
Agony! And he must pause a while to draw the thing out. That was a mistake; in just a few minutes of sitting down his muscles stiffened up; from now on he must stumble half-crippled through the gathering twilight. Twilight, yes, and on the rim of the world the sun an orange blister that leaked liquid light onto the cooling deserts. And the forest very still now, where small creatures rustled and the cooing of pigeons was quiet, afraid, and all else was silent…
And coming to the edge of the woodlands he looked south across the broad savannah belt, and saw a great wheel or fan in the sky whose spokes were pink, yellow, gold; a wheel that turned, faded, and passed like a rainbow after the rain, when the sun comes out. Except here the opposite was true, for the spokes of the fan were fading rays of sunlight, a reminder of the golden glory that had been. It was sundown, and for a few hours more the land would lie in velvet twilight; stars would come out, glittering over the barrier range; true night would come down like a creeping thing, painting everything the colours of darkness.
Nathan turned his head this way and that, looked east and west in the deceptive light. Which way to go? He cocked his head, listened for a distant, familiar jingle, and heard nothing. But then, he hadn't really expected to. A wind came up and rushed through the woods, making the branches toss and sough. Streamers of cloud rushed south, following the sun. And to the east… was that a shout carried on the wind? Or just the shriek of a night- hunting bird?
He limped west a mile, then spied a knoll out on the sea of grass. A further half-mile to the knoll and Nathan was ready to give in, lie down, spend the night there. But he forced himself panting to the top and scanned the land around, and spied in the east at the edge of the forest — a fire? Hardly a bonfire; a dull flicker at best, but better than nothing.
It must be Eleni! Despite Nikha's warning to Nathan, that there'd be no friendly light to guide him after sundown, Eleni had kept a small fire burning. Uplifted, he climbed down again to the plain and started out diagonally across the grasslands in the direction of the fire. And now the going was easy where he swished through tall, windblown grasses under ashen skies, wispy clouds and gathering stars.
But… the sky was strange tonight; there seemed to be several belts of cloud at various levels; some scudded one way and some another. Directly ahead of Nathan and high above the forest, small black rags of cloud sped north for the mountains and were quickly lost in the deceptive velvet of night.
On the level, the light of the fire was no longer visible. Nathan hurried; he covered a mile, two, and was into his third when he saw the light again. After that, as the nighted forest grew up on his left hand, and a racing moon rose over the distant barrier range to light his way, the beacon eye of the fire shone ever brighter. Until at last he was there.
Where the trees met the prairie he saw the carts and caravans of the Sintanas sheltering under the branches of a trio of mighty ironwoods. Their fire was a welcoming splash of leaping orange and yellow light where it held back the shadows in the triangular space between the trees. It welcomed Nathan…
… In the same way it had welcomed others, who had been here before him!
He slowed down, reached the clearing, stumbled forward with his bottom jaw slowly lolling open. He smelled a certain odour which the squalling wind had almost but not quite blown away. And Nathan remembered the dark, ragged clouds which the wind had also blown away over the forest, towards the distant Starside pass. And he saw how the doors on the caravans swung to and fro in the eddies, as if they were protesting at their emptiness. The place was… deserted?
No, not deserted, just empty. Of life…
Nathan couldn't accept it. He looked beyond the caravans where an area had been roped off into animal pens. Everything stood in shadows cast by the guttering firelight and starshine made pale by the wind and the scudding clouds. The animals were lying down, forming low, humped, motionless silhouettes; which should have been evidence enough in itself. Shads rarely lie down, and never in a group…
He made his way to a great ironwood where the ground had been swept free of needles to form a small clearing in its own right. But as he paused there and turned in a circle, bloated black shapes like windblown weeds went lumping and fluttering low along the ground into the shadows. He gasped, took a pace to the rear, glanced this way and that as the wind sighed and the branches soughed. And as Nathan's eyes focused so he saw other eyes — like tiny crimson pinpricks — reflected by the fire and glaring back at him from the encircling underbrush.
One of the things, whatever they were, was hiding behind a broken table where it had been tipped on its side, crouching there like a vulture. Nathan stood breathlessly still, paralysed under the great tree, until something made a shrill chittering sound in the surrounding darkness….nd was answered from the other side of the circle!
Then, as he gave a start of recognition -
— Something dripped down and splashed against Nathan's forearm where his sleeves were rolled up, and looking down he saw that his arm was red; likewise the ground under his feet. And looking up… he saw the tree's strange ripe fruit, male all three, hanging by their heels with their throats slashed, and the last of their scarlet juices running down their dangling arms to drip into space!
A giant desmodus bat, glutted with blood, released its hold on a drained corpse and fluttered to earth. Too bloated to fly, the creature scuttled and flopped out of sight, joining its companions in the shadows…
All the demons of hell rode the wind then, shrieking mad with laughter as Nathan staggered to the fire, took up a brand and lit his way to Nikha Sintana's caravan. Inside, the place was a shambles, and outside, at the back… Nikha lay there with his eyes staring and the halves of his chest laid back, and his heart ripped out of his body for a tidbit!
Now Nathan knew he must look for the others — search for Eleni, and pray she'd run off into the woods — but first there was something else he must do. His blue eyes blazed with a sort of madness when he found oil in a large stone jar on the ground beside Nikha's caravan. Lifting it, he sniffed at the uncovered rim: nut oil, mainly, for cooking. But a little kneblasch, too. Little wonder they hadn't wanted it! And carrying the jar back to the slaughter tree, he knew how he must use it.
There under the ironwood, the bloated black familiars of the Wamphyri — more than a dozen of them — had gathered once more in the cleared space to lap like ghouls at the bloodsoaked earth. Keeping well back, Nathan looked at them a moment, shuddered and grimaced. Then without further pause he loped through the underbrush around the perimeter of the great tree, deliberately slopping oil as he went; and when the circle was closed, he tossed his firebrand into the tinder-dry scrub.
The fire crept slowly at first, then with a vengeance as the wind caught it, and finally roared up in a wall of blistering heat and yellow light. Forced back, Nathan laughed, danced, and shook his fists like a madman, which for the moment he was. And: 'Burn, you bastard things, burn!' he yelled.
Greedy tongues of fire licked at the lower branches, took hold, and spread into the whole tree. Jets of fire, whipped by the wind, leaped from bough to bough like demon imps, till all three trees blazed up in unison and the heat was an inferno.
Still Nathan danced, and laughed all the louder when the shrill chittering of the bats turned to shrieking and a handful tried to flee the holocaust. Singed and smoking they rose up into view, burst into flames, spiralled down into the furnace under the mighty torch trees. And so they burned…
Later, when the wind swung south and blew a widening swath of fire across the grasslands, Nathan's madness passed and he returned to the carts and caravans. Standing to one side of the huge trees and mainly away from the fire, the vehicles had been licked by the flames, blistered by them, then passed by and left intact. Nathan
