James blinked sunlight from his eyes as he emerged from the house. His legs were trembling, his body covered in a black cowl of the creature’s blood; a foul-smelling substance more akin to sap than blood.

The gore-splattered interior of his near disembowelment had been bad enough, but the scene that greeted him beyond the door was altogether worse. Where moments before there had been the peaceful emptiness of the village green, was now the scene of a massacre. The ground was littered with dead weevil, the lush green now covered in an oil slick of black. Fen and Leander walked between the innumerable bodies, stooping now and then to retrieve arrows; their shafts pulled with difficulty, as though embedded not within flesh but the tough bark of fallen trees. Like Tavin, their faces were smeared with splatters of black, their tarnished armour gouged with deep furrows as though clawed by bears.

Leander suddenly looked up from where she knelt beside another of the grotesque bodies and fixed her cold eyes upon James. Discarding a broken arrow, she walked briskly forward, her frowning gaze passing between the dagger still clasped in his hand, and Tavin, who stood sheepishly at his side. When she reached them, James expected the dagger to be roughly torn from his hand, but instead she offered her open palm. With his hand still trembling violently, he prised his fingers from the bloodied handle and placed it into her hand.

‘What happened?’ she asked, addressing Tavin as she absently wiped the blade across her thigh.

‘A weevil entered the house,’ Tavin replied with a grin, ‘and Jame slayed it!’

‘With this?’ Leander said doubtfully.

‘It was pure luck,’ James admitted meekly. ‘When the monster heard that terrible siren it panicked and fell on it.’

‘What are you talking about?’ she said, turning to face him at last.

‘You mean you didn’t hear it?’ he cried. ‘It was the same sound I heard when the weevil emerged from the forest. But it was louder, much louder!’

‘Jame said something of the sort when I carried him earlier,’ Tavin said uncertainly.

‘The mind plays tricks upon the weak in times of battle,’ Leander said, absently toying with the dagger in her hand. ‘There was no such sound to be heard.’

‘But…’ James spluttered.

‘But nothing,’ Leander interrupted.

The young woman’s jaw was tight, her eyes for a moment focused only upon the dagger in her hand. She appeared to be pondering something to herself before she finally flipped the blade in one deft movement that offered him its handle.

‘The blade you should not have possessed,’ she said, her eyes narrowed as though still questioning the wisdom of returning it. ‘It appears to be yours now. Keep it clean and try not to kill yourself with it.’

James hesitated, unsure if this wasn’t some cruel trick. But when at last he tentatively took the weapon from her, the young woman turned to confront Tavin.

‘Retrieve your sword Tavin,’ she said, impatiently motioning to where he had hurriedly plunged it into the ground before entering the house. ‘We have been delayed enough. Save what arrows you may, but be ready to leave as soon as Kirrin returns.’

Tavin visibly relaxed as Leander stalked away, hurriedly retrieving his sword from the soft ground. Taking the blunt blade from his neck, he proceeded to skim the blood and dirt from its length, revealing the unblemished black beneath.

‘What name will you give your blade?’ Tavin grinned, returning his sword to the clasp upon his hip. ‘You like to name such things, do you not?’

James ignored the question but instead held out his hand. The young man regarded him with confusion but repeated the gesture. As James’ hand clasped his, the young man’s smile returned.

‘A plain’s custom!’ Tavin laughed delightedly, pumping his hand enthusiastically up and down.

‘Thank you for giving me that dagger,’ James said, wincing from Tavin’s prolonged handshake. ‘You saved my life, whatever that means in a dream.’

Tavin’s frown displayed his puzzlement.

‘Surely I am glad that I fashioned the dagger and that it served you so well. But it was not I who placed it upon your person.’

‘Well who the hell else would have done it?’ James said, finally disengaging his hand from Tavin’s.

‘I assumed you took it,’ Tavin said, his grin widening.

A shrill scream made them both suddenly glance to the side, where a grim-faced Torrinth stood amongst the twisted carnage of dead weevil. With one quick stab of his sword, the old man silenced the last monster still drawing breath upon the battlefield.

James’ gaze lingered on the tangle of bodies; the raised heap of corpses that formed a crescent within which the warriors had fought for their lives. Forgetting for a moment the mystery of how the dagger had come into his possession, he looked upon the gruesome scene with growing suspicion.

‘Where’s the rest of them?’ he asked.

Tavin’s face held a look of detached concern as he replied, ‘The weevil fled.’

‘They fled?’ James repeated in disbelief. ‘Why would they flee?’

‘Weevil are cowards at heart,’ Tavin replied with a shrug. ‘Perhaps the sight of so many of their dead made them reconsider their actions.’

James shook his head as an unsettling thought occurred to him. Before he had been bundled into the house he had seen the countless sea of monsters, relentlessly shedding their lives upon the blades of the warriors. The ability of his companions in battle was unquestionable, yet it was obvious, even to him, that they could not have endured for much longer against such numbers.

Something had made the monsters retreat.

He remembered again the shock of that great sound exploding above the house and the look of sudden panic that had gripped the weevil that had been about to kill him. If it was fear that made them flee, it was not the fear engendered by the warriors who had dealt such swift death to their numbers. That awful sound, the sound that no one else had heard, that had been the source of their fear…

James’ train of thought faltered when he saw Wellin, gazing out across the orchards beyond the crooked spires of the village. Something about the man’s posture seemed strange, his familiar upright bearing oddly skewed to one side. At first, he thought perhaps the man still grieved for the dead villagers so recently laid to rest upon the orchard floor. But just as he was about to look away, Wellin toppled to the ground.

‘Fen!’ James croaked. ‘Something’s wrong with Wellin!’

Fen, Leander and Tavin sprinted past him as Wellin struggled onto his haunches. Bracing against his sword like a crutch he glared back at James, his cold eyes pinning him where he stood.

‘It is but a scratch,’ Wellin muttered through gritted teeth.

He tried to stand but Fen’s hand pressed to his shoulder, keeping him seated. With a frown, she reached between two torn plates of his wooden armour, causing him to hiss a breath through clenched teeth. When she withdrew her hand, she regarded the slick of red covering her pale skin like a scarlet glove; between two of her fingers, she held what looked like a long, jagged thorn. Her face flinched with concern and she turned to look into the man’s watering eyes.

‘It is more than just a scratch, Wellin. You were struck by a poisoned spur.’

Tavin’s face grew pale as he hurriedly removed the blunt blade from his neck and cut a series of overlapping wooden plates from his brother’s armour. The wound revealed beneath was already darkening; vivid purple tendrils which laced into the depths of his pale flesh like black ink swirling into milk.

Fen turned her grave face to Leander as she reached for a vial of spring water from her belt.

‘The wound itself is not fatal,’ she said, dousing the oily water across the weeping wound, ‘but the poison has already spread. I can slow its progress but it will not easily be arrested. Unless we can find a wellspring soon…’

Fen was cut short as Kirrin came sprinting from behind a row of green-thatched houses.

‘We are discovered!’ he gasped, struggling not to shout his warning into the brooding silence. ‘Five score men enter the meadow from the northwest.’

The tall warrior lurched to a halt when he saw his stricken brother and dropped to the ground beside him, resting his blood-stained hand upon his shoulder. He spat on the ground with contempt before his voice grated once more from his strained lips, ‘Kabavar are among them.’

James felt his legs weaken as a wave of nausea swept over him. At last he realised the terrible truth. The weevil had not retreated as Tavin had assumed, they had been disengaged. The terrible cost of their innumerable deaths had merely been served to delay their escape!

Weak with fear, he watched Leander wrestle with this new threat, heaped upon a quest that had appeared doomed from the outset.

‘Kirrin, Tavin,’ Leander barked, ‘take your brother between you.

‘I can carry myself,’ Wellin replied gruffly.

‘You will do as I say!’ Leander growled, nodding to his brothers, who quickly pulled him from the ground.

‘We will strike south and lead the barbarians back into our forest. Then we shall see who has the greater chance of leaving it alive.’

Faced with such overwhelming odds, her bravado seemed all the more absurd, yet her fierce words galvanised the shocked warriors all the same. Torrinth promptly hoisted James upon his back, and with the other men guiding their wounded brother, they fled back through the empty village and into the orchard.

The great sun was lower now, casting long shadows through the fruit trees and the many bodies now at rest beneath them. In the half-light, the villagers appeared to be asleep; only the pallid gleam of their skin spoke of their true fate.

As James took his first stumbling steps back into the dense forest beyond the orchard, he stole a final glance across the swathe of meadow behind them. Upon the shifting sea of yellow grass, the black smudge he had first spied from the watchtower of Galendar now lay before them like a drawing tide. And there, at its centre, like a pale fire blazing on a dark horizon, was a figure gliding through the air.

Bettiny had found them at last.

***

Throughout the night they were hounded by the barbarous sounds of their pursuers. The air rang with their harsh voices and the clash of their metal blades as they cleaved aside the obstinate arms of the forest.

Upon the old man’s back, James flinched at every sound, twisting his head from side to side to peer hopelessly into the darkness that surrounded them. At any moment, he expected the dark tide of men to crash upon them, but somehow they remained just out of reach.

After what felt like an eternity, the breaking of dawn slowly lifted the curtain of night from the forest. Around him, the ghostly apparitions of his companions slowly materialised out of the gloom. Their pace had not slackened in the least, yet they all seemed in some way transformed by the passage of night. Their graceful movements had become oddly blunted, their faces for the first time exposing their growing exhaustion.

From where James wearily clung to Torrinth’s back, he watched Leander stalking ahead of them. He was familiar now with the rigidity that had slowly crept through her since first learning of Galendar’s fate, but the hours of darkness had imparted something more. Each step she took forward was like another galling step in retreat. Her body yearned for the excuse to turn and face her enemy, to exact some form of vengeance for the atrocities committed against her people. For some unfathomable reason, it was Leander’s growing fury which terrified him more than the pursuing men so intent upon their lives.

As the day drew on, the sounds of their pursuit finally began to recede behind them. Yet it wasn’t until night had fallen once more that Leander finally allowed the party to break for camp. Heavy clouds had swept in from the north, and now without firelight or even the scant light of stars, the darkness of night was complete. The injurious sounds of the enemy might have gone but the silence left in its absence was immeasurably worse.

Too exhausted even for sleep, James lay shivering in his damp blanket as he listened bleakly to the hushed conversation between his exhausted companions.

According to Kirrin, the skill of the pursuing trackers – or “wayfarers” as they called them – could not possibly account for the way they were now being followed. Despite his and Fen’s best efforts to waylay their enemy, they were being pursued through the dense forest as though following a trailing thread.

James sensed the other man tilting his head to the sky, directing his next words as though to the shifting leaves above their heads.

‘The Kabavar’s sight fails in darkness, but by day we are like mice before the eyes of a hawk.’

***

The next day dawned grey and heavy with the scent of rain. Wellin had worsened during the night, and now lay shaking uncontrollably upon the ground. For the first time, James noticed the desperation twisting its way onto the warriors’ faces. But it was a desperation derived not of fear, but of confusion, as though none could believe that they could be hunted through the forest that was their home.

After a miserable breakfast of sour blue apples and stale bread, the distant blast of a horn cut through the grey light of morning. Like a beast suddenly awakened, the violent sounds of their pursuers carried upon the air. For one palpable moment, Leander appeared poised to face their assailants, but with one last defiant glare through the trees, she led them on into the dew-laden forest.

Around noon, they happened upon a denser swathe of forest, which greeted them from out of the sparser woodland like a towering cliff. The trees reminded James of pine, but once again these were monstrous deviations from anything he had ever experienced in his own world. Conical in shape, they rose more than two hundred feet into the air, bristling with dense clusters of black needles. The wall of black trees looked foreboding, but without hesitation, Leander led them inside.

The spaces between the trees were narrow and claustrophobic, the dense clusters of black pine needles forming a low ceiling above their heads. To James, it felt as though they were now travelling beneath the ground; the pockets of space allowed to them by the prodigious trees more akin to caves than forest. In the perpetual twilight, the sounds of their footfalls were dampened by the thick layers of dead pine needles littering the ground. Other than the harsh sounds of their breathing, the forest was completely silent.

When the rain finally began to fall, the trees spared them the worst of the deluge, but it wasn’t long before an internal rain of heavy droplets fell from the trees themselves. The rain was cold and seemed to sap what little energy remained of the warrior’s strength, but still they marched on.

It was sometime in early evening when Kirrin finally brought the welcome news that the pursuing force had finally made a mistake. Without the aid of their Kabavar spying from above, they had fallen for the most obvious trick and had begun following an animal trail that threaded southwest. No one spoke it, but an overwhelming sense of relief seemed to etch itself into each of their faces.

However, when they finally broke for camp hours later, James was dismayed when Leander informed them that a campfire would not be lit. When he protested, cold and shivering within his sodden robes, Leander bit back with her usual venomous retort.

‘Need I remind you how we were discovered by the Kabavar the last time we made fire?’ she snapped. ‘You may have a fire of your own, but it will not be within fifty leagues of the rest of us!’

Fen approached Leander and spoke quietly to her, pointing to where Wellin lay shivering uncontrollably upon the forest floor. Tavin was bent across him slowly shaking his head, his hands holding onto the trembling body as though to bring it to rest.

‘What would you have me do?’ Leander replied, her voice for the first time betraying a note of desperation. ‘You know as well as I what folly it would be to make fire when Kabavar are abroad!’

Kirrin had been absent for hours, but when he finally returned his stoic face was wearing an uncharacteristic smile. Speaking quietly with Leander, he pointed behind him into the gloom. The anguished expression that had marred her face these past few days seemed somehow to falter, and after a moment of hesitation, she nodded her head decisively.

The tall warrior made his way over to his brothers and together with Tavin they lifted their brother between them.

Speaking hurriedly with Fen, Leander pointed to where Kirrin had emerged from the forest moments before. The older woman frowned, but it wasn’t long before a wide smile sprang to her lips.

‘What’s going on?’ James muttered uneasily.

Fen swiftly disappeared between the trees, followed closely by Kirrin and his brothers. Leander remained motionless where she stood, regarding James across the dripping bows of trees. In the failing light he could not read the expression upon her face.

‘Well?’ she said, turning to follow the others. ‘Do you want a roof over your head or not?’