The threat consisted of insects. From any distance greater than a stone’s throw—not that stones would have been any use—they simply looked like smoke. As Prim saw when they were overtaken by a lobe of that “smoke,” they could take to the air in an ungainly combination of leaping and fluttering, and the wind was their friend. As she learned when one landed on her arm, they could bite off freckle-sized scoops of flesh.

Corvus had insisted that they carry nothing but weapons (useless now, important later?) and firebrands, and that they run upwind. They did not have to run for more than an hour before they encountered a rising slope where going was difficult because of undergrowth and low branches. There the insects caught up with them and did damage and made going very disagreeable indeed with their propensity for attacking eyes, ears, 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?