They were well away, perhaps as much as a mile, before the oakhair trees gave out, and a grove of taller stag-head oaks crowned the next gentle hump. There the company paused to rest and judge by the moon whether they had strayed too far east. The dwarf’s destination was due north. Clearest route out of the danger was due north. The dragon’s eyes had gone dim and the bellows of its nostrils now trailed only faint, acrid wisps. Its wings settled back in their customary place, folded across their mount with reticulated wrist-claws pointing straight up like spear heads.

“It’s a bad night to be wandering in the woods,” said the sergeant-at-hand. “Unlucky for some, though not for us. Hide your eyes lest the glint give us away.”

The company froze, looking through fingers where he pointed. Eighty feet to the northeast, a group of Munchkinlanders in tabards and boots were preparing some sort of a catapult. They were whispering-they must have heard something of the commotion downslope. But they seemed oblivious of the company of the Clock hunched on its separate hilltop. They were too involved in their own efforts at stirring something in a large spherical iron pot at least as tall as they were.

It was nothing short of a miracle that their attention was so riveted by their preparations. Yet through the dragon’s breath, which continued to lay close to the ground, the muffled complaints of the EC men clearly identified their location: a mile or so along the ridge and below it, to the west. The twang of snapped oakhair strands; the cursing of the soldiers and the hollering insults of their officers.

The smoke didn’t clear for another quarter hour, by which time the Munchkinlander guerrillas had slid their heavy artillery overland on something like a forest sledge, sleek birch runners that used the slick of pine needles to advantage. When the smoke thinned enough that the moonlight again struck the surface of Kellswater, the company of the Clock could see well enough. Not the attack of the Munchkinlanders, not the lobbing of the fiery pitch they’d prepared in their dreadful cup. Not the EC soldiers cowering or falling back-all that remained concealed by the great dark and undifferentiated folds of the hills, the screen of oakhair limbs. What the company could see was the metallic rings of bright moonlit water that grew out from the shore, circles interrupting slow circles, chevrons divided into shards, as one after another the EC Messiars were driven backward into the lake.

The Past Approaches

1

T HE DAWN was a masked one, clouds making modest the exhibitionist sun.

Brrr, whose sleep had been erratic, sat up. In the corner, as yet un-struck by light, Shadowpuppet looked like watery milk. A small heap of shit, its tapering point like the head of a worm, lay coiled nearby. Brrr couldn’t imagine how a transparent creature could produce opaque offal, but if this was a philosophical question in disguise, he wasn’t up to considering it before breakfast.