Nomoru did not appreciate the comment. She was already angry at herself for being captured, and perversely she was also angry with Tsata for rescuing her. ‘They weren’t supposed to be there,’ she said churlishly. ‘There were different ones there a week ago. We could have got past them. They didn’t pay much attention.’
‘Perhaps that was why they got driven off,’ suggested Yugi.
She scowled at him. ‘I didn’t want to come this way,’ she said again.
Kaiku, who was eating a stick of spicebread from her pack to replenish some energy, looked up at her. ‘Why not?’ she asked round a mouthful of food. ‘What is this way?’
Nomoru seemed about to say something, a haunted look in her eyes; then she clammed up. ‘Don’t know,’ she said. ‘But I know not to come here.’
‘Nomoru, if you have heard something about this place, then tell us!’ Kaiku said. Her reticence was more alarming than if she had spoken out.
‘Don’t know!’ she said again. ‘The Fault is full of stories. I hear them all. But there’s bad rumours about where we’re going.’
‘What rumours?’ Kaiku persisted, brushing her fringe back from her face and giving Nomoru a hard look.
‘Bad rumours,’ said the scout stubbornly, returning the glare.
‘Will they follow us in there?’ Yugi asked, trying a different tack.
‘Not if they have any sense,’ Nomoru said; then, tiring of questions, she told them to get up. ‘We have to go. They’re getting close.’
Yugi looked to Tsata, who confirmed it with a grim tip of his chin. He hauled himself to his feet, and offered a hand to Kaiku to help her do the same. Their legs were aching, but not so much as they would be tomorrow.
‘We have to go now!’ Nomoru hissed impatiently, and she headed off down the narrow grass slope to what lay beyond.
The slope tipped gently into a broad, flat marsh; a long, curving alley flanked by walls of black granite that trickled and splashed with thousands of tiny waterways. The air was inexplicably chill; the travellers felt their skin pimpling as they descended. Humps of grass and ragged thickets rose like islands above the dreary, funereal ground mist. Strange lichens and brackens streaked the dark walls or straggled from the mire, swathes of sombre green and red and purple. Under the mournful glow of Aurus and Neryn, it lay dismal and quiet, disturbed only by the occasional shriek or croak of some unseen creature.
The terrain underfoot became steadily wetter, and water welled up in their bootprints. By the time the slope had levelled off enough to become the marsh floor, Yugi was expressing concerns over whether they could cross it at all. Nomoru ignored him. The sounds of their pursuers calling to each other in some dark, sacred cant provided all the reply she needed to give. Though the air around them seemed to dampen sound and foil echoes, it was evident that the cultists were not far away.
They forged on into the marsh, and the disturbed mist wrapped around their legs and swirled sullenly up to their knees. Already, the water had found ways in through their boots, and their feet squelched with every step. They trudged in single file, the mud sucking at them in an attempt to rob them of their footwear. Tsata took the rear, his rifle in his hands, glancing often back at the slope to the clearing, where he expected at any moment to see more of the dirty figures appear.
‘We are too exposed here,’ he said.
‘That’s why we’re hurrying,’ Nomoru said tersely, then stumbled and cursed. ‘They’ll never hit us if we’re too far ahead.’
It was too late to argue the call now, so they laboured through the doleful marsh as fast as they could, following Nomoru’s lead. She seemed uncannily sure-footed, and though a misstep often landed them in the watery sludge that lay to either side of the paths she chose, as long as they walked in her footprints they found relatively solid ground there.
Suddenly, Tsata clicked his tongue, a startlingly loud snap that made Kaiku jump. ‘There they are,’ he said.
Nomoru looked back. On the crest of the slope: four men and a woman, two with rifles. They were calling to companions out of sight. As she watched, one of the riflemen aimed and fired. The sharp crack was swallowed by the thick marsh air. Kaiku and Yugi ducked automatically, but the shot went nowhere near them.
Nomoru slipped back along the line to where Tsata was, unslinging