Makemin consults with Nikhinoch.

We move out in the direction I indicated, moving quickly to get out of the open.

The air all round us is thick with that feeling of watchfulness; a baleful sniper stare I can feel drop down on me like a lead mantle.

A wave from one of the scouts—they’ve found some empty ration boxes hastily buried in the loose earth. Makemin inspects them personally, then throws a sharp look at me.

We go on, following the course the charm indicated. Makemin calls me to the front, takes me familiarly by the shoulder—he keeps me close—sends me out to scout ahead telling me to report back directly to him. I can run out ahead and check my charm easily.

The day passes without seeming to. Nothing changes, not even the light. The land ahead is blackened, sprinkled with flat shapes, dark against the pale ground; they are slashed and bullet-riddled bodies of wild men, their upturned faces powdered with blue mold. Saskia strides indignantly among the bodies.

“Those monsters!” she snarls, drawing a Yashnik sabre out of a dead body she holds down with her foot. No dead blackbirds, but here’s one of their caps.

I orient us again and we move out, trying to put the site of the massacre behind us before the sun is gone. Makemin walks with me. I feel his probing eyes every moment, with hate. Finally, he orders us to set up camp on a low rise and the men collapse in silence. Makemin takes me aside and we stand looking out into the mist.

“If you try to undermine my authority with the men, I’ll shoot you. If you try to leave us, I’ll shoot you. You will always be watched, and if you are shamming, if you are leading us into their hands, I will shoot you in the head. Understand—you are my man. You are not inexpendable.”

He looks at me, preparing some further words he plainly does not want to say.

“One more thing. If you guide us correctly, I will see to it that you receive whatever you want.”

*

Empty, colorless expanse.

Sandy gravel under our feet. Damp, stale air in our mouths, that leaves a drably insipid film on the tongue, like rebreathing your own breath. The iron birds appear to make wide circles at the extremity of our field of vision, keeping us in a vast, invisible ring. They are not watching us themselves—they may not have eyes—but their circling seems to attract a monstrous gaze to us. As the interminable day wanes, trees break through the mist before us like ocean cliffs. We pass through them almost obliviously ... there’s that old clacking sound again, that until this moment I had thought I missed, and no reduction of the feeling of malevolent watching.

The trees give way in a few hundred yards to an oblong, clear spot, like a barren meadow, open at one narrow end, trees thick all round. Despite the exposure of the spot, the sun is going down and Makemin feels we risk being divided if we camp in the trees.