“If the boy had brains, he’d be with the column,” Stryker said.

“He’s twelve,” De Witt said. “He was worried about his dog.”

Stryker gave a shrug. “Dog would’ve found its way back eventually. Boy’s a fool. He should’ve known better.”

“He got off his horse,” Fitch interjected, before De Witt could think of a reply. “Walked around a spell. Their tracks are mixed in, so I reckon the boy and the hound found each other.” Fitch dropped on to his haunches and laid his palm across a small area of flattened leaves. “Here’s where the dog lay down.”

“So it was injured?” De Witt asked.

Fitch shook his head. “Don’t reckon so. Like I said; tracks are too clean. No sign of slippin’ or slidin’, and there’s no damage round about. If’n there was a scrap here, the ground’d be all mussed up. Ain’t nothing like that. No blood trail, neither. I’d say the boy found his dog and took a rest. Stopped to get his bearings, maybe.”

“Then which way’d they go?” Stryker asked.

Fitch pursed his lips. “Back.”

“Back?” De Witt echoed.

“The boy got what he came for,” Stryker said. “He found his dog. Now he’s trying to find his way to the column.”

The pastor frowned. “Wouldn’t we have come across them?”

Stryker looked at Fitch.

The private shrugged and spat into the dirt. “Easy enough to take the wrong path. Shouldn’t be too hard to track ’em, though.”

“Sun’s goin’ down,” Stryker observed. “Be dusk in a couple hours, dark in three.”

“Best get a move on then.”

They set off once more, Fitch in the lead, following the new trail.

De Witt wasn’t sure how long they’d been walking or how far they had come since discovering the bear tracks when Fitch, who’d been studying the forest floor, paused, straightened and held up a hand for them to halt.

They were strung out in a line in a steep gulley, the walls of which were plaited with roots and boulders. Ferns grew thickly around them while the leafy canopy high above gave the illusion they’d entered some kind of vaulted nave. It reminded the pastor of his church back on the bank of the Dadenoscara, even more so when he realized how still the woods had become. Before, he’d been aware of bird calls and the occasional clatter of wings, but when Fitch raised his hand it was as if the woods were obeying the order to be silent, too. Had a single leaf fallen, De Witt felt sure he would have heard it land.