The encounter had little effect on Susullil. He seemed neither to regret it nor to court a repeat. Cutter was self-deprecating enough to find humour in that. Three nights on, Cutter went to him again. It was an awkward coupling. Cutter had to learn his partner’s proclivities. Susullil liked to kiss, and did it with a novice’s enthusiasm. But he would only use his hands. He reacted to Cutter’s insistent tonguing descent with distaste. Cutter tried to present his arse, and when the nomad finally understood he laughed with sincere hilarity, waking the others, who pretended to sleep.

They became inured to strange fauna. Things like limbed fungus that made sluggish progress half-climbing half-growing on bark. Chaotic simians that Pomeroy called "Hell’s monkeys," clutches of gibbon limbs exploding from conjoined cores, in varying numbers, that brachiated at insane speed.

"You know where we are, yes?" Cutter said to Judah and to Drogon.

The woodland density was lessening. Rain kept coming, and it was cooler. The air was less like steam, more like mist. "We’re still on the paths," Drogon said. Do you know where we’re going? Cutter thought.

When they heard something approach they held up their guns; but there was shouting, no attempt to hide, and Susullil answered excited and accelerated. When the others reached him he was slapping hands with Behellua, and behind him were two cowed-looking men in forest camouflage who nodded careful greeting.

The returned man smiled at the travellers. The wineherds talked.

When at last Susullil turned he spoke carefully to Judah, though they all understood some now. "He’s come from the forest town," Judah said. "They want help. Something’s coming for them… wiping them out. Behellua told them about us, what we did for them. They think we’ve powers. They’re offering something. If we help them…" He listened again.

"If we help them their god will help us. Will give us what we need. They say their god’ll tell us the way to the Iron Council."

Hiddentown was huts in a clearing. Cutter had visioned an arboreal metropolis, with raised walkways between boughs and children spiralling down vines from the leaf sky.

At the edges of the village were attempts at stockades. Hiddentowners in forest-coloured clothes stared at the travellers. Much of the village was tents tarred or painted with gutta-percha. There were some warped wood huts, damp fires, a midden pit. Most of the inhabitants were human, but several of the child-high insects scuttled through the mud trails.