The eagle resisted the force of will to begin with, then twitched under Walks Alone’s iron intent and spread its great wings like a protest. Hunting Wolf was fading into oblivion, but the eagle driven by his son was in the air and on the shaman’s breast before his second torpor-induced breath was drawn. The phantom bird pecked and clawed at Hunting Wolf’s face, forces at work that were greater than the mere touch of claw on flesh. He stirred like a baby dreaming and his eyes flickered. The bird put its head back and squawked, digging its claws deeper into the shaman’s skin. Walks Alone was bursting with the effort of driving the creature that drove his spirit life, of reversing the natural pattern of existence to something near blasphemy.

But he continued. His father must wake.

Hunting Wolf’s body began to twitch and jerk, and as suddenly as he had slipped into the darkness he was in the light again, blinking as snowflakes fell into his open eyes. For an instant he saw the huge wings beating above him, felt a sweeping velvet touch on his forehead, and then there was nothing but grey sky filled with the darker flakes that tumbled into his face.

On his bloodied breast a tiny soft brown feather moved in the wind, catching the breeze and blowing out of his reach before he could move his heavy arms to capture it.

Hunting Wolf suddenly felt warm, and when he narrowed his eyes to focus again, the man Henderson was standing over him panting like a thirsty hound. A dark coat was thrown over his naked body and he felt thin arms beneath him lifting him up out of the man-shaped pit he had made in the snow with the diminishing heat of his body.

It was safe. Henderson had not died. He had not killed again. Hunting Wolf closed his eyes with a sigh and gave way to sleep, knowing the difference between that sweet slumber and the black unconsciousness that brings the unthinkable.

Muir looked down at his own pale, hairy hands clutching the axe-handle and wondered for a moment what they might do. Would the hands that built and mended, pulled and pushed, hammered and dug, be capable of burying this tool in a man’s skull? He closed his eyes and thought of Peter Lorn’s body. That head that had looked at them from the edge of the tunnel wall, its mouth gaping in agony and its neck a tangle of ragged veins and sinews. There was no question of it. The murdering animal must be stopped. Johnston had seen the Reverend Henderson through the telescope and had reported him heading for the tunnel mouth. So that was where the insane savage would be, then. Henderson was drawn to him like a fly to dung, and they would follow, by God. They would follow.