I had hardly to twitch the reins before, with that complete almost pre-understanding which has always existed between us, he had turned in the direction I wanted.

He picked his way, claws spread, over the mangled dead, separate arms and ears, horses’ nostrils, smeared together, the flotsam of every battlefield.

Behind us the funeral fires churned up russet-purple into the sky.

CHAPTER NINE

THE POSSESSION

As we left the environs of the City behind us and came among the high, harsh, black pines, I think we were pursued by animals like big pumas. It was strange. They were never near enough for me to know what exactly they were, and whether they were after us or busy with each other. I thought even that it might be one swift one, as we didn’t see more than one at a time, but it would have to be in such different places so quickly. I don’t know if Urns noticed, he didn’t turn, only his crest was laid back. Then in a burst of eruption-light I saw three big pumas bounding at us. In some lights they seemed silver, in some glaring golden. I was not sure if they were really white like mine in the mountains. Later we went among many trees, and didn’t see them again.

We slept against each other, way past where the town gathers in the hoop of the lazy, slavering moors. On the long journey from here to the coast, there would be no more civilization. I did not know what I could do when we reached the coast; meanwhile it was enough to get there. The night was full of sounds of wilderness. The wind screamed through the stark, purple grasses. Urns was very warm. We had eaten a good meal, I’d cooked the lizard, nearly three feet long, which he’d killed. I’d had to stamp out the embers, the wind would have carried them everywhere in an instant like dangerous seeds. It had been hard work keeping the fire from blowing out or getting too big. We had fallen back easily into the old way of his taking half the raw meat of his kill, letting me take the rest for my cooking. Actually I always take less than half, as he needs more, though like all magnificent fighting animals he is lean and can exist on a minimum.

Somehow I’d thought I’d never have another nightmare after Ooldra’s exorcism. Yet there was a sense of warning which made me sulky.

I suddenly started awake; the warning receded and there was only stillness flowing into and into and into the bowl of the night, and the thin, high kreeep-kreeep, kreeep-kreeep of the crickets was the pattern on the side of the bowl.

Dawn is falling into the night.