As they moved out into the early morning sunshine a strong breeze rattled through the forest, sending leaves whispering through the air like the wings of dead butterflies.

For the first time, James saw the forest revealed in the light of day. The tantalising glimpses of trees and plants seen in the darkness of night were anything but familiar to him now. Trees that he had hesitantly labelled oak, elm, or ash, were revealed to be monstrous deviations from these forms. There was something undeniably alien about the forest, an essential quality that resisted his attempts to reconcile it with anything he had ever experienced. If the forest was indeed a product of his own mind, it was a construction that had plundered the depths of an imagination he never knew he possessed.

The only certainty he could hold onto was that it was a forest quietly and magnificently settling into autumn. Whilst a few curious evergreen trees covetously held on to their dark green foliage, deciduous trees everywhere else proudly displayed their turning leaves; earthy ochres and tarnished golds, the livid reds of scarlet and vermillion.

True to Leander’s word, they marched throughout the day without rest. And as the hours wound inexorably on, James found himself becoming more and more desperate. His body still ached from the previous night’s journey, and his movements through the forest were now like those of a man stumbling through a drunken stupor. By noon, his empty stomach was cramping but he stubbornly pushed on, unwilling to concede defeat to the woman who dragged them so remorselessly through the forest.

Midway through the afternoon, just as his feet were beginning to drag through the carpet of fallen leaves, the claustrophobic vista was suddenly changed. Up ahead, a great swathe of sky escaped the occluding canopy, revealing a wide ribbon of blue against a sea of yellow leaves.

From out of the thinning trees, a yawning chasm loomed across their path. Their way ahead was barred but for a fallen tree lying across the gap like a precarious bridge. Miraculously, enough of its great root remained anchored to the ground to keep the tree alive; its many branches reaching up to form a swaying tunnel of golden leaves. Despite the tree’s wide girth and the shallow groove threaded along its top, James inched across its length like an old man, his wary eyes ever creeping out to those branches trailing out into the void beneath them.

A howling gust of wind suddenly exploded from below, sending a blizzard of leaves whipping through the air. The dead leaves felt like a swarm of leathery wings rushing past him, and he flailed his arms to ward his face. The movement unbalanced him and with a terrified scream he felt himself pitching to the side. Once again, it was only Torrinth’s lightning reactions that saved him from plummeting to his death.

When they finally reached the other side James slumped to the ground. With trembling hands he drew his travel sack open, reaching for any morsel of food that came to hand. Leander glanced disdainfully down at him but for once kept her tongue, turning instead to converse with Kirrin who had emerged from beside the trail.

The man’s face was ashen, his jaw set firmly beneath his hard eyes.

‘What news?’ she asked impatiently.

‘The stone road remains impassable,’ he said, reaching for a flask strapped across his shoulder.

‘This far east?’ Leander replied incredulously.

‘Weevil are drawn to the road like moths seeking flame. The numbers we encountered with your father have increased beyond counting.’

The man’s stern gaze detached itself for a moment from Leander and raked across James’ face. His eyes seemed to burn with accusation as though he saw the reason for all their misfortunes sitting before them. After a long pause he continued, dismissing James’ presence as though sickened by what he saw.

‘We must continue further north toward the meadow villages if we are to avoid confrontation,’ he said, taking a deep draught from his flask.

Leander shook her head in dismay and gazed off along the trail ahead.

‘So be it,’ she replied with frustration. ‘We shall make instead for Venn. There at least we may find warriors to aid in Galendar’s defence.

The man nodded curtly and reattached his flask before disappearing once more into the dense vegetation beside the trail.

‘Up!’ Leander shouted, striding over to where James sat slumped upon the ground.

James groaned, chewing obstinately on a hunk of dark bread.

‘I have to rest!’ he barked.

‘You can rest when you are dead,’ Leander replied glibly.

She nodded towards Torrinth who promptly placed him back onto his unsteady feet.

James began to whimper, his balled fists pushed into his eyes. He had never felt so tired and wretched in his life. He looked past the emotionless face of Torrinth to the unyielding glare of the young woman.

‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t walk any further today! I simply can’t!’

Leander’s face broke into a cruel sneer and she pointed the end of her bow at him like an accusing finger.

‘Behold, our saviour!’ she spat.

James trembled with sudden fury as Torrinth’s hand tightened upon his shoulder in warning.

It was bad enough to be forced to endure this hopeless fantasy and all the miseries that accompanied it, but to be ridiculed by the very woman who had pulled him into this nightmare with her spiteful arrow was too much to take.

‘Go to hell!’ he bellowed, his voice shaking with fear and exhaustion. ‘I never asked for any of this! It’s your father you have to thank for my company. It has nothing to do with me!’

Leander’s eyes flared at the mention of her father and she moved quickly forward as though to strike, causing James to sprawl backwards onto the ground.

‘It has everything to do with you!’ Leander seethed. ‘Never speak of my father again if you wish to remain breathing in this world. He and the fifty-seven others of Galendar are currently fighting for their lives and it is all because of you!’

James stared back at the young woman as she stormed away. Fen’s pitying glance lingered upon him for a moment but then she too turned her back and followed her companion into the trees.

For a long time, there was only the sound of the leaves sighing upon the breeze. James looked down at his dirty hands, clasping what remained of his meal. Despite the alien forest that surrounded him, the scents that lingered upon the air could almost be those from his own world. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift back to a time that already seemed impossibly distant; a day in late autumn, walking hand-in-hand with the girlfriend he no longer had. He remembered her radiant smile, the falling leaves whispering across their path…

With a violent swing of his hand, James slapped himself across the face. The impact was jarring but he did it again, and again, trying to beat the nightmare from head. Only when he could no longer lift his hands from the ground did he eventually stop. But still, the sounds and the scent of the forest registered his futility.

When he opened his eyes, it was Torrinth he found kneeling beside him. The intensity of his dark eyes was unnerving and he flinched when the old man suddenly moved towards him. Taking James’ travel sack, he quickly pulled the drawstring closed and draped it over his own shoulder. And then, before he had chance to protest, he was hoisted upon his back and carried on into the forest.

***

Night had already fallen when James and Torrinth finally met the rest of the party in a secluded glade. The gently rolling gait of the old man had sent him to sleep hours before, so when he awoke it was with an unpleasant jerk of disorientation.

Torrinth carefully laid him upon the ground beside a flickering fire, once more tended by Fen. Her friendly face smiled within its orange glow as she offered him a small wooden bowl filled with the familiar broth partaken during his convalescence. Holding the bowl between his trembling hands, he quickly raised it to his mouth and devoured its contents. The food made him suddenly giddy and he sat back against a rounded boulder, staring pitifully down at his shaking hands.

The glade was secluded, shielded by dense forest and a scattering of large boulders which contained the out-spilling of firelight like a closed hand. Two of the brothers sat in the shadows beyond the firelight, the rest of them sitting upon a fallen tree beside the fire.

Despite the warmth of fire and the seclusion of their camp, no one spoke. The atmosphere was oppressive and tense; the expressions revealed by the flickering light, downcast and forlorn. Recalling Leander’s furious tirade from earlier, a number resurfaced in James’ mind.

Fifty-seven.

Could he really be responsible for these people’s lives? People he had never met, threatened by a force he couldn’t know?

No, such thoughts were absurd. The roar of the attackers descending upon Galendar seemed already like a distant memory. It was far easier to believe that everything they had left behind them no longer existed. He was the centre of this perverse universe, and everything before and behind him merely a blank page waiting for the demented brush of his imagination to fill.

Even so, he found himself now seeking Tavin’s gaze and the friendly warmth he had found there this morning. But when the young man finally met his eyes, he turned uncomfortably away and rose instead to join the company of his brothers.

James gritted his teeth and abruptly got to his feet. He couldn’t bear to be amongst these people for a moment longer. The weight of their silent accusations and the guilt it engendered within him was too much to bear. Leander looked up from where she had been staring into the fire and regarded him as though only now registering his presence.

‘I wish to be alone for a moment,’ James muttered.

Leander’s face remained expressionless but Torrinth stood, returning his bowl to the ground.

‘Alone,’ James repeated stubbornly.

Leander glanced to one side, the simple gesture causing Torrinth to reluctantly return to where he had been seated.

‘Do not get lost, little lamb,’ she said, gazing back into the fire. ‘We will not trouble ourselves to look for you.’

James left the warm glow of the fire and blundered out of the glade. His muscles burned from the forced march of the day, but his hands pushed past the obstinate trunks of trees as he propelled himself deeper into the forest. In his anguish he had developed a desperate theory: if he removed himself far enough away from his companions, then surely they’d cease to exist like the horde of attackers supposedly in pursuit. Picking up speed, his movements became frantic as he snapped twigs and tore through the cloying undergrowth at his feet. Perhaps if he got far enough away, Leander’s contemptuous grin would also be erased from her face.

Finally, exhausted and dejected, he sank to the ground, his back pressed against the tangled roots of an ancient tree. His hands came up to cradle his face as his shoulders began to shudder. Tears of fear and hopelessness fell freely from his eyes, but the sound of his crying only angered him further. He punched the ground hard and winced as pain shot up his arm. Even here, in this miserable dream, he remained the most useless and pathetic person he had ever known.

When his quiet sobbing finally exhausted itself, he felt somewhat better for it. Exhaling a deep sigh, he tilted his head back to the tree and peered through the lacework of its branches. Dark clouds rolled menacingly across the sky obscuring all but the brightest stars. The moon too had been claimed by its velvety blanket, but when it eventually slipped past, it was the bright nimbus of its green companion which emerged from its grasp.

‘So you’re back again?’ James said with a wry smile.

Now that the curious green moon was proved to still exist, he hurriedly scrutinised it before it could be reclaimed by the cloud. As he had remembered it from his dream of flying, the moon was completely featureless. However, the strangest detail, other than its unusual colour, was the more curious absence of its phases. The larger of the two moons had, in the intervening weeks, been reduced to a slender crescent. So why hadn’t its smaller companion?

As he continued to stare up at the baleful green circle in the sky, he imagined instead that it was the eye of a giant cat, and he the helpless bird pinned beneath its glare; something merely to be toyed with, a broken thing to be batted between its paws before being pitched into its mouth…

The unpleasant play of his imagination unsettled him and he quickly got to his feet, brushing dead leaves from his robes. Now that his anger had evaporated, he recognised the folly of his impetuous dash through the forest. The brooding silence that surrounded him appeared all the more sinister now that he was alone. Drawing in a deep breath, he strained past the thudding in his ears for any sign of his companions. In the far distance, he thought he heard the faraway notes of Fen’s voice, and gingerly he began walking in that direction.

He hadn’t got far, when he heard a noise that made him stop in his tracks. In the absolute silence, it was all the more unsettling, for it was the sound of something heavy dropping to the ground. Inching backwards, he kept his eyes trained upon the darkness framed between trees tinted green by the light of the moon. The hairs on the nape of his neck bristled as a twig snapped nearby, followed by the murmurings of a female voice. Lurching behind the gnarled roots of a tree, he watched as a curious light blossomed from out of the darkness. The light was weak but it threw wild shadows as it drew ever closer.

It was then that he saw her.

Wearing ragged robes of stained white silk, a slender young woman walked hesitantly between the trees, her movements jerky and uncertain like a rag doll animated by clumsy hands. Her pale body seemed to radiate a cold white light of its own which shimmered across the dark boughs of the trees like reflected moonlight.

James’ eyes widened.

It wasn’t possible! It couldn’t be! But there she was, ambling between the trees like a broken toy.

‘Bettiny!’ he called, staggering from out of his hiding place. ‘Bettiny! Over here! It’s me, James!’

If the forest had been holding its breath moments before, now it suddenly exhaled, sending a rushing gale barrelling through the trees. The fevered eyes that had been roving restlessly in her head suddenly fixed upon him.

He noticed now that her silk robe was torn asunder, gouts of dried blood plastering one side of her body like a crimson shroud. And, her hair… her beautiful braided locks of ebony hair had been savagely shorn from her head, leaving behind a tattered bob that twitched pitifully in the breeze.

‘What… whatever happened Bettiny?’ James stuttered as he walked uncertainly out to greet her. ‘Are you very badly hurt?’

He extended his arms, meaning to hold her in an embrace, but something about her expression made him stop, his blood running cold in his veins.

For despite her terrible condition, Bettiny was grinning. The whites of her wild eyes were tinged with red, her pale lips drawn up into a manic grin. A terrible sound issued from behind her closed mouth as her jaw savagely ground her teeth together. There was a terrible crack and then a jagged splinter of tooth appeared between her lips, which she spat towards him like a piece of over-chewed gum.

She opened her mouth and a thin dribble of blood dripped onto her chest.

‘I… see… you!’ she whispered.

James took a step backwards and tripped on the roots of the tree, the scream he was about to release dying as the wind was knocked out of him.

From between the trees, two other glowing figures emerged. To James’ horror, these came floating through the air, their naked body’s slowly rotating like drowned bodies gliding beneath dark water. Unlike Bettiny, they were obviously not of the Gelding; their features were somehow cruder, their noses larger, their flint-grey eyes like round pennies in their sunken sockets.

One was a woman, her naked body crisscrossed with dark wounds. The other, a man, his left arm severed and crudely bound to his chest with thick straps of leather. Like Bettiny, their eyes roved ceaselessly in their sockets until they fixed upon their prey.

‘Help!’ James finally screamed.

Bettiny laughed, a horrible sound that sent pieces of broken tooth and blood sliding down her chin.

‘Too late for help, little man! We see you now!’ she said, her voice bubbling in her throat.

With a sickening crunch, her head snapped to one side, addressing the figures still hovering in the air beside her.

‘I am needed elsewhere. Bring him north. He is to be kept alive, but should he resist, remove his legs.’

With her command given, Bettiny lurched backwards through the trees as though pulled by an invisible rope. Her glowing body receded into the darkness, leaving him alone with the floating apparitions.

James screamed again as the man and woman dropped to the forest floor, their bodies jerking under their own weight like fallen puppets. With clumsy movements, they reached blindly to their sides, before drawing wicked knives from where they had been tied to their thighs. Baring their teeth like wild animals, they slowly advanced.

James had just found his feet when he was savagely thrown to the ground. With wild eyes, he looked up to find Torrinth standing over him, his leathery hands gripping his dark sword.

‘Forest scum!’ the naked man shrieked, his hand sweeping the air with the cruel blade.

There was a shrill whistle, and then a black arrow was embedded in his head. His eyes flickered momentarily, but his grin widened, releasing a thin trickle of dark blood onto his bare chest.

‘Pointy sticks will do you no good, forest bitch!’ the man leered, the arrow protruding from the centre of his head like a sick joke.

Leander walked slowly into view, another arrow drawn against her pale face. Releasing her hand, she sent it thudding into the man’s jaw, causing it to hang obscenely from his skull. But even without his mouth, his eyes continued to glint with evil mirth, the tortured skin of what remained of his face drawn into a mocking sneer.

Torrinth rushed forward, his blade seeking the other man’s neck, but the one-armed man reacted with inhuman speed, warding the blow with his knife. The woman tried to rush Torrinth as he was driven back, but her body lurched to the side as another black arrow appeared between her sagging breasts.

In the split second distraction caused by Leander’s arrow, Torrinth stepped to one side and with a deadly sweep of his blade, drew a dark line across the other man’s neck. The grotesque head promptly toppled from its shoulders in a torrent of blood, but unmindful of its decapitation, the man stayed afoot, his one arm blindly carving the air with the knife still clenched in his fist. With a deft turn of his hand, Torrinth’s sword traced a tight arc through the air, completing a trajectory that swept downwards, cutting out the leg from under the headless body. The man finally tumbled to the ground, but the limbs it still possessed continued to thrash and convulse like a toppled automaton.

The demonic woman screamed and threw herself beyond the reach of Torrinth’s blade. Holding the jagged iron dagger in two white-knuckled hands, she sprang forward with bewildering speed, sending the point straight for James’ throat.

James jerked his head to the side and closed his eyes. There was the sound of something sweeping the air close to his face, followed by a spray of warm liquid. James clutched at his throat and gasped, but it wasn’t until he opened his eyes that he saw that the blood covering his face was not his own.

Leander stood beside him, her own sword now drawn and dripping blood. Beneath her, the woman’s naked body thrashed wildly in the undergrowth, its decapitated head mouthing silent curses like a fish gulping air.

James screamed at the horrible sight, but was instantly muffled by a hand covering his mouth. Leander bent beside him shaking her head, her face tight with annoyance. Turning, she took her blade to the severed head, cleaving it in two; the jaw bone still twitching pitifully as though uncertain how to be still.

James’ stomach heaved and he vomited onto the ground as the wet sounds of Leander’s butchery continued to fill the silence.

When he finally sat up, dazed and shivering, he found the other members of the party gathered around them, their swords drawn and bloodied.

‘We have been foolish,’ Leander spat, shouldering her bow. ‘How many kabavar?’ she asked Kirrin, who quietly surveyed the carnage around them.

‘Three others,’ came his terse reply. ‘All of them now silent.’

James regarded Leander with desperate pleading. His mind continued to revolt against what he had just witnessed, but only one thought emerged out of his terror.

‘Bettiny was here,’ he heard himself say, his trembling voice like that of a lost child, ‘she… she spoke to me.’

Leander’s face seemed to sag at what he had said. Turning slowly, she stared at him as the other’s quietly gathered nearer.

‘Are you certain?’ she asked, her voice now a harsh whisper.

‘It was her,’ James whimpered, hugging himself across his soiled robes, ‘but her hair had been cut and her voice…’ James paused, his mind still refusing to believe what he had just witnessed, ‘her voice was wrong! Everything was wrong!’

‘Forest preserve!’ Fen’s quiet voice limped from the darkness.

Leander closed her eyes, her hands reaching up to cradle her face.

‘Then Bettiny is already dead,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper.

Raising her head, she stared up at the pale circle of green, peeking from between dark clouds.

‘What you saw was what she has now become,’ she said after a long pause. ‘A corpse come alive… a kabavar.’

James found himself staring into her eyes made green by the reflected light of the moon. The tight mask of resilience she had worn ever since leaving her father’s side was momentarily shattered. When she glanced back down, she fixed James with her inscrutable gaze. The words that followed were tossed at him like accusations, yet their sound was hollow as though they had already laboured across a thousand miles of desolation and despair.

‘Bettiny is dead, and the house of my father has fallen.’