Nita Qwan paused, his tinder box in hand.

Ta-se-ho shrugged. “I’m wet through and he’s lost a lot of blood. We can die right here, in a couple of hours, or risk the fire.” He shrugged.

But even frozen and afraid, they did not lack cunning. Nita Qwan’s hastily chosen campsite was close to the base of the spire of worked rock, in what was virtually a chamber cut into the living rock, closed on three sides. It took him four tries to get his tow to burst into flame, but he did—and he got a beeswax candle lit in the still air, and then put the flame to a scrap of birchbark.

In minutes, he had his companions stretched out under the canopy of a whole tree fire, the heat over their heads too much for a man to bear. The only way to be near it was lying flat, and the stone walls around them reflected the heat.

Nita Qwan bent over Gas-a-ho, but the younger man managed a weak smile. “I’m patching,” he said.

Ta-se-ho nodded. “Leave him, Nita Qwan. He’s deep in his art. Now that he’s warm, he’ll have more spirit.”

“Will the fire bring more foes?” Nita Qwan asked.

Ta-se-ho made a face. “We are at the base of the Tu-ro-seh. We will have strange dreams tonight.”

Nita Qwan shifted—his back was actually against the carved monolith. The carving was both bold and minute, and went in long whorls with no symmetry up the sides—but the closer that he focused on it, the more he saw. His eyes began to follow—

“Do not look too closely,” Ta-se-ho said.

“Who made it?” Nita Qwan asked.

“The Odine,” replied the hunter.

Nita Qwan shook his head. “I am new to the People, Old Hunter,” he said. “Who are the Odine?”

“Better ask, who were they?” Ta-se-ho said. He got out his pipe and began the lengthy process of filling and lighting it. There was silence punctuated by the exuberant sounds of birch burning. The smell was delicious—the very smell of warmth and comfort.

In the firelight, the shapes on the monolith seemed to move. The illusion was greater than it should have been. The surface of the stone appeared to have a million snakes crawling over it, and each snake to be covered with worms, and each worm with centipedes, and each centipede with some tiny creature—on and on.

“Do not look too much,” Ta-se-ho said again. He leaned back, fumbled for a burning stick, and found, like thousands of men before him, that a large fire is the worst place to light a pipe.

Finally he found a burning twig.

“Do you know how the People came here?” he asked.