Nearby, a foot crunched on a beetle. Jean-Claude dodged. A gun barked. The bullet slammed into the leaf litter. Horns sounded in response to the gunshot, and the hunting party whooped and yelled, crashing through the bushes toward him. Jean-Claude turned and charged the scout who’d found him. He was a younger man, tall, lean, and fit. He wielded a boar spear and Jean-Claude was the boar he meant to gut. But Jean-Claude had lived through more battles than the youth had years. He swatted the spear aside and slammed into the boy with his shoulder. The scout reeled back to set his stance, but Jean-Claude gave him no rest or quarter, hacking his arm with the cutlass and then cleaving his skull.

The scout fell and lay twitching, blood pouring from his wound. The umbrella trees flashed with longer pulses in red instead of blue, and the gathering swarms retreated. They cared nothing for the brawling men, only for the defeat and destruction of the stick that had prodded them.

Jean-Claude grabbed two cartridges from the scout’s bandolier, fetched the pistol from the ground, and overcharged it. He snatched several rabbit snares from the man’s belt and tied them together into one long cord, then looped one end around the trigger. He carefully wedged the gun in the tree entrance and cocked it. The other end he tied to a broach on the scout’s shirt front and flipped him facedown.

The nearby trees shook with the rumble of the approaching hunt. Jean-Claude ran. He lumbered around the back side of a boulder just as the dogs broke cover. He kept running, or at least limping enthusiastically. His booby trap might work or not, but he wanted to be as far away as possible when—

Bang went the gun. The trees flashed blue, brighter this time. Jean-Claude imagined he’d done much more than pop a honeycomb. Chances were the trunk had exploded. He pushed himself faster until his lungs burned. Swarms of insects leapt from the canopy. White blooms on the trees opened up and glowing pollen filled the air. The ground quaked under Jean-Claude’s feet, and the hillock he just stepped on shuddered and stood up, revealing itself as a beetle the size of an ox. It rubbed its wing carapaces with a sound like someone sawing down a tree and lumbered off toward the hunting party. More gunshots erupted. Men cursed and dogs yelped. Battle cries turned to shrieks of pain and terror.

Jean-Claude’s legs turned to lead, but he did not stop until he’d left the last of the blue flashing trees behind him, and the forest sank back into silence.