“And I tell you to shut your mouth! I’ll show you there’s nothing there. Which one was it?”

Quentin heard the tread of the man shuffling through the sand, coming closer. “There, that one on the end,” pointed out the frightened worker, following the brave one.

Three steps closer. Quentin’s heart pounded loud in his ears. He imagined it a drumbeat that could be heard all along the beach.

He heard the man breathing. The footsteps had stopped right beside him. He could hear the rustle of the man’s clothing as he stood looking down upon him. “There’s nothing here, by Zoar!”

“I saw something. It was here a moment ago.”

“A shadow.”

“It was no shadow. There’s something strange about these barrels.”

“Look, will you! There’s not a blasted thing here! By the gods! Do I have to open the barrels and prove it to you?”

Quentin’s heart seized in his chest as if it had been squeezed in a giant’s fist.

He heard the scrape of something heavy upon the lid of the keg. They were taking off the lid.

Quentin drew his feet up underneath him and crouched.

The lid wobbled loose.

“Well, look at that,” said the worker. “This lid is hardly fastened.”

At that instant Quentin shot up out of the barrel throwing the wooden covering into the man’s face and shouting as loud as he could.

As he came leaping out of the barrel he caught a glimpse of the terrified worker as he turned and tumbled over himself in an effort to flee. The other, startled almost as badly by this strange, screaming creature which leaped out of barrels, fell backwards in the sand, the keg lid catching him on the side of the head.

“Toli!” Quentin yelled, “Run for it! We are discovered!”

Toli, well aware of what had been taking place, burst from his keg in an instant and started across the strand and into the wooded tract ahead.

The worker sitting among the barrels came to his senses as the two raced off. The other cowered beneath the wagon, his head buried in the sand. “Here come the others! Nimrood’s soldiers-they’ll get ‘em,” the first cried.

Quentin glanced over his shoulder as he ran. Marching down the beach he saw a dozen soldiers, some with long spears, others with swords drawn, not far behind the two workers who were now gesturing wildly and pointing in their direction.

He turned, put his head down and sped into the woods. “Run, Toli! Run! They’re right behind us! Lead us away from here!”

With barely a pause in mid-flight Toli’s quick eyes scanned the thinly wooded area. Then, like a deer before the arrow, he was off, heading into the deeper, more thickly grown regions beyond.

It was all Quentin could do to keep up. Toli, alert and every instinct keen, was back in his own element. He seemed to flicker through the dense undergrowth effortlessly, dodging, feinting, slipping through small openings and sliding over rocks and trunks of fallen trees.

At first Quentin stumbled and fell over his own feet, sprawling, lurching, and pounding along behind. But then, by imitating Toli, by dodging where he dodged and ducking where he ducked, Quentin found the going easier. He forgot his fear and ran completely free. His heart soared with the cool exhilaration of flight.

Behind them he could hear the soldiers crashing through the woods after them. They had fanned out to keep better sight of their quarry. They cursed as they came, thrashing through thickets and brush, entangling themselves in briars and low-hanging branches.

Twice Toli stopped for a brief rest, and to listen. Each time the sounds of pursuit were farther away, receding into the evening sounds of the woods.

“It will be dark soon,” said Toli. He lifted his eyes to the sky which still held a glimmer of light. But all around them the deeper woods were sinking rapidly into darkness. Already Quentin found it difficult to tell the column of a tree trunk from its dark surroundings.

“They cannot follow us much longer… we seem to be losing them.” Both thoughts were questions; Quentin asked for reassurance.

“They will not catch us now,” offered Toli. “But we must keep going. We will find a place to camp tonight.” He turned and swiveled his head this way and that. He listened for the sounds of their pursuers, cocking his head to one side. “Stay close,” he said, and raced off again.

This time they changed directions and began ascending the rise of a hill. The path rose steadily, and each step grew a little shorter. Toli slowed to allow for the climb, but pushed steadily on.

The noises in the woods behind them died away. Quentin guessed that either the soldiers had given up or they had lost them completely.

But now Quentin trained his ears on other sounds, the sounds of the deep woods coming to life with the night. For the greens of leaves and moss, the browns of trees and earth, and the blues of shadow had merged into one confused hue. He followed Toli now with his ears instead of his eyes as he trailed blindly along.

“Ooff!” Quentin went down with a grunt. He had caught his toe on a root across the path and pitched forward onto his face. Toli heard him fall and came back. “Let us stop,” suggested Quentin. “Just for a little while. It is too dark to run like this.”

“I forgot, Kenta-you do not have night eyes.” Toli stood still and turned his head, listening. Quentin heard a strange snuffling sound. Toli seemed to be smelling the air.

“This is a very bad place. We cannot stay here,” the Jher said at last. He reached down a hand and hoisted Quentin to his feet and struck off again, but slower this time.

Still the path continued to climb; then, without any sign, it descended steeply. They reached the bottom of a gorge, cut into the earth by the rain. A small, turgid stream flowed nearby. Quentin could hear it. A foul-smelling mist was beginning to rise, seeping out of the ground around them, clinging to their legs in tattered wisps as they moved through its grasping tendrils.

An owl called from somewhere overhead and was answered by its mate far away. Other sounds-sly chirruppings, furtive rustles in the dry leaves beneath bushes as they passed, the whir of unseen wings-crept out of the woods as the night took hold of the land.

Once Quentin heard a faint whiz in the air close by and felt a flutter on his cheek. He recoiled from the soft contact as from a blow. When he reached his hand up to feel where the touch occurred, his cheek was wet with a sticky substance. He wiped it off with a grimace and trudged on.

The malodorous mist thickened and rose higher, swirling in eddies upon the pools of air. Quentin imagined that it dragged at his legs as if to hold him back. He could no longer see his feet below him.

He followed Toli, who seemed to take no unusual notice of all that went on around him, with a fragile resolve. He longed to turn aside from this wretched path and climb again into the woods.

But he moved on.

His foot struck a rotting limb which snapped with a hollow crack that seemed to fill the gorge. Suddenly, from right beneath his feet, a wild shape came screaming up at him: white and formless as the mist, and screeching in long ringing cries that echoed through the woods. It flew straight up at him, and Quentin threw his hands in front of his face as the creature lunged at him. But, at the moment of collision, Quentin felt nothing. He parted his hands to see the white wings of a bird lifting away into the gorge ahead.

“Toli, is there no better trail we can follow?”

Toli stopped and looked around, gauging the distance they had come. “Soon we will leave this path. Only a little farther.”

True to his word, in a short while Toli led them up a steep, vine-covered bank. They climbed out at a murky juncture where a small stream through the wood emptied into the gorge in a sickly little trickle which dripped its foul water over stones slimy with black moss.