noses, and mouths. But before panic consumed them they got deep enough in that Corvus deemed it time to set fires. Those spread downwind with great speed. But upwind the flames advanced slowly enough that outrunning them was possible. That was the good news. The bad news was that they had to run more. This time, at least, they were not inhaling bugs. At length they passed into more open territory that had evidently been burned in the past, so that the flames could not follow in their wake. There they stopped and were rained on all through the night as the storm, having apparently replenished its energies, returned at full strength.
“Fuck this,” Corvus shouted, when it became light enough to see. “Enough of orderly and well-planned Questing. There’s nothing for it now but to make a run for the cave.”
“Which cave would that be?” Lyne asked.
“The one we’re heading for,” Corvus said vaguely. Which would have led to further questions had they not just spent the whole night exposed to the storm.
They had crawled under a fallen tree whose branches were stiff-arming it just high enough above the ground that they could wriggle under it. This sheltered them from direct laceration by rain and hail but did nothing to keep them dry. If any one thing had saved them it had been the giantess, who made more warmth than all the others put together. Curled up next to Edda during the long hours of the night, Prim had gone into another of those strange dreams in which it seemed to her that Edda was as tall as a tree, and Prim a thing like a squirrel, nestled in the crook of a bough, wet but warm.
Now, in the light of the morning, Edda was plainly a woman of normal size. Prim feared, though, that she was diminished; she squatted on her haunches to keep off the soaked ground, and wrapped herself in her cloak, and remained still, eyes closed, for a long time as Burr tried vainly to light a fire. Prim was remembering Edda’s cottage on Calla, and her sheep and horses, and the flour she would grind to bake bread. How long had it been since she had taken such nourishment? Did absorbing the whole form of an angel give her some power that she could call upon at times such as last night?
“We are in no condition to run anywhere,” Burr pointed out. “We could march.”
“We need food,” said Pick. “Other than this, I mean.” He waved in front of him a fleck of jerky, his portion of all the food they now had remaining.
“None is here,” Corvus pointed out, “but if we march, as Burr suggests, Mab and I can keep an eye out for things that might be eaten.”
So that was how it went. For much of the morning it rained, but this was plain old ordinary rain, which compared to the storm seemed like no rain at all. Perhaps the sound of it covered the noise they made walking and enabled them to get within sight of another of those horned creatures. They spied it across a clearing. It fell dead. Burr’s response was to flatten himself against the ground. “Get down!” he whispered. “Someone else is hunting here!”
Prim did not get down. She kept walking until she had reached the beast, which was lying there as if asleep. Burr, still convinced of danger, caught up with her a few moments later, spear at the ready. When the rest of the party caught up with Burr, he was rolling the dead beast over, looking for some sign of the arrow that had slain it. But of course there was none.
He stepped back from it. “I saw a similar thing during the wolf fight. I did not believe it.”
“We saw something like it too,” Mard said. “A wolf simply died.”
“Some fell presence stalks these woods, and slays what it will by magic.”
“I am the fell presence,” Prim said. “Let’s eat.”
This time, no wolf pack came. Neither were they molested by larger beasts or clouds of insects. Not even when they lit a fire and the aroma of roasting meat spread on the breeze. The rain stopped while they were cooking. They were on the edge of a meadow that sloped up out of the country they had covered during the last day. Below them in the distance they could hear wolves raising the same alarm they had heard yesterday: “Invaders have come!” This seemed