Already the flames were spreading, a fierce crackling building as needles popped in the heat and the fire raced along desiccated branches, quickened by pine-men’s blood. Terrified out of whatever wits horses possess, Sleipnir and Ron bolted, stampeding across the small clearing Snorri had carved, scattering both pine-men and fire. I managed to follow Snorri’s example and roll clear, very nearly impaling myself on a couple of inch-thick stumps.

The two horses punched their own passage through the trees. I hoped they’d avoid being blinded, but it seemed a damn sight better than being barbecued. Snorri gave chase and I stumbled along in their wake. Behind me the fire roared like a living thing and the pine-men answered it with thin cries of their own agony.

For a brief while we left the fire behind us, plunging unseeing along the horses’ path. As my breath grew short I paused for a moment and, glancing back, saw the whole forest lit from within by an orange glow, countless trunks and branches in black silhouette. “Run!” I shouted uselessly, thereafter saving my breath to better follow my own order.

The inferno leapt through the trees with spectacular speed. It jumped between treetops faster than it moved on the ground, and several times we found ourselves beneath a roof of flame whilst the beast roared behind us. Trees exploded within moments of the inferno wrapping them. Literally blown apart, great swirls of orange embers rising above them. The flame rushed through the needled branches like a wind, consuming everything. A burning hand pressed against my back, driving me to greater exertions. Ron’s path split from Sleipnir’s; I chose the one to the left. A hundred yards on I saw my horse through the trees to the side, snared on something, hook-briar most like, screaming. It takes a lot to snare a horse, and Ron was a strong one, fuelled with terror of the flame. But he hung there and I raced on, cursing. At least the fire put a quick end to him. The gelding would have been molten fat and charring bones before he knew the firestorm had him.

I saw Snorri up ahead, fire-lit. Sleipnir’s strength failing her, both of them toiling up a steep slope.

“Run.” A gasp, little louder than my rasping breath.

We made the ridge before the flames, save those dancing high above us in the treetops. “Hel be praised.” Snorri leaned against a trunk, gasping. The slope ran away from us, just as steep on the way down as it was on the rise, trees thinning yard by yard and where the ground grew level, stretching out before us, mile upon mile of moonlit grassland.

TWENTY-ONE

A man can drown in the grass seas of Thurtan. In the swaying green, wind-rippled, with twenty miles and more of cold bog and saw grass on every side, it can seem that you’ve been set adrift in an ocean without end.

The fire at our back at least provided a reference point, an idea of distance and measure. These are things easily lost in the grass. As we walked, Snorri had told me the men of the pines had haunted forests like Gowfaugh for generations. The stories differed on the source of the original evil but now they perpetuated themselves, letting out the blood of their victims and replacing it with the sap of the oldest trees. The creatures kept some measure of intelligence, but if they served any master other than their own hunger it wasn’t spoken of. It seemed hard to credit, though, that the Dead King hadn’t steered them into our path.