Kastor awoke and lay with his eyes closed, listening first to the space around him. Heridan was awake. The man’s presence was solid and still, but alert: anticipation tinged with worry. Kastor shivered as a light breeze brought a chill to the copse where they had made their camp. It promised colder weather in the months to come. Beyond the copse, amidst the leaves on the forest floor and the among the boughs of the trees, barer day by day, little lives scuttled here and there foraging for food, hiding it, stealing it or nosing through the undergrowth in search of a place to burrow for the winter.

  The sleepers will burrow soon. We’ll be able to travel faster.

  He reached farther, listening for fellow humans and found nothing – except for the life that lingered at the very edge of his range. It was stiller than it had sometimes been, as though it were asleep or resting. For a moment, Kastor considered creeping towards it and seeing if he could catch it unawares, then Heridan coughed.

  “You’re awake.”

  Kastor opened his eyes.

  “How did you know?” Kastor knew he had not moved a muscle.

  “You stopped snoring.”

  Kastor stood and brushed his leather and fur clothes down. Heridan took a sip from his water pouch and Kastor reached for his own. He smelled a sweet aroma as Heridan smacked his lips.

  Surely not this early.

  “How long have you been awake?” Kastor asked.

  “I’ve barely slept.”

  “No one can approach us in secret, not even while I’m asleep. You don’t need to worry about that.”

  “No one can approach me in my sleep either, even without the magic of the medicine men. I’ve spent my life sleeping in this forest with one eye open. That’s not what keeps me awake.”

  The big warrior wanted to talk to him, but Kastor had learned how these conversations worked with Heridan. Encouraging him to speak was like nurturing baby flames on damp kindling. If you blew too hard at the start you’d extinguish the moment. He kept quiet as they shouldered their packs and began the walk, alternating between silence and perfunctory discussion of practical matters. Their journey today would take them past Oli’s old fishing spot and downriver to the ford. From there, they planned to range through the North of the forest, searching for signs of Oli and eventually sneaking Heridan right up to the Lawbreaker's Pass. Then Kastor would return along the mountain range, exploring east into what remained of the Lujin’s territory, while his familiar kept its sharp eyes on the South.

  “We’ll encounter forts and forest roads tomorrow,” Kastor advised, “and we’ll have to use more dangerous paths.”

  Heridan grunted.

  They walked, shaking the morning fog from their minds and easing the stiffness from their cold limbs. When Kastor’s legs moved more freely and Heridan’s pace picked up beside him, he returned to what the warrior had said and probed him gently.

  “What is keeping you awake, then?”

  Heridan’s next steps thudded into the ground as though his body became heavier. Instinctively, Kastor listened for sleepers beneath the soil who might feel the footsteps and race their way, sensing the opportunity to gorge before their winter hibernation. Feeling nothing, he returned his attention to Heridan, who finally spoke:

  “The last time a scout brought news from Scursditch, a young Hallin boy was spoken of by the Republican soldiers occupying it. Apparently, they talked about him as though he were a friend.”

  Scursditch, the only town in the forest, had succumbed completely to the Republic. Nevertheless, the most intrepid of the Levonin scouts found their way in and out.

  “I heard that, too. They described him as dark haired and handsome; on the cusp of adulthood.”

  “That could be any young forest man,” Heridan replied. “But they said too that he had learned the ways of the Republic faster than any of the Sullin traitors.”

  They said he had adopted those ways, too.

  Kastor kept the thought to himself. Heridan was certainly thinking it too, though unwilling to say it out loud.

  “Heridan,” Kastor said, looking ahead. “If you find Ingo and they have deceived him into their service, or worse still he has –”

  “He won’t have,” Heridan snapped. He glowered and stamped harder, forgetting his surroundings as his fears consumed him. In a low voice he said: “He won’t have forsaken his people and his gods.”

  To the Seveners, their faith was everything. They worshipped none of the gods but honoured them all, and they kept to the teachings and instruction of the first dispensation, before priesthood and singular worship began in the world. For centuries, the Seveners had lived in their isolated forest, shunning the company of those in the West who worshipped the Summer Trinity, or those from Terras – Kastor’s own country far in the South – who worshipped Terlos. But worse to the Seveners than either of those was the Sundered Republic, ruled from the city of Dombarrow. The Godless City. The city whose citizens rejected the gods entirely. Heridan’s son had been captured by their soldiers at the outset of their war of conquest against the forest. But rumours ran that he was no longer a prisoner: that he travelled willingly with his former captors.

  “Whatever’s happened, Heridan,” Kastor said, “remember that he was captured. He’s been alone amongst them for months. He has done well to survive.”

  “If he is one of them now,” Heridan growled, “then he has not survived. Perhaps we are both chasing ghosts.”

  Kastor looked down as he walked and replied in a low voice:

  “You don’t mean that.”

  But Heridan only stamped his feet harder as he walked.

  Kastor smelled the Scursrun before they reached it. He approached the bank by the bend in the river and stood beside Heridan as they watched it, each lost in the different memories it evoked.

  The Scursrun flowed from east to west, from where the River Levon separated into the Sevarun and the Scursrun. It was a slow, dark and murky river that bubbled in places but concealed rich fishing beneath its surface and serpents in its banks.

  It was here where Kastor first met Oli. The boy had been fishing by the very bank on which Kastor now stood. Kastor had never seen anyone fish with a rod before. The practice had looked cruel and dishonest to his eyes: luring a fish with the promise of food, and catching it on a vicious hook. Nets and spears were surely more honourable.

  It was not really that which had shocked him, though; the boy's presence had drawn him in and warmed him from within. He had felt the presence of a force which could heal his heart. And he had feared: what if that, too, was a trap? There was a time when it seemed to Kastor that every good thing in the forest concealed a hidden danger.

  “I frightened him when I first saw him,” Kastor reminisced. “The way he fished reminded me of how I became a medicine man: how I was tricked when the blessing of the lake was still a curse. Then I asked him a question and he refused to answer, and I chased him halfway back to your village.”

  Heridan looked down and his expression darkened.

  “I frightened him, too. When he returned to the village I thought he knew something about Ingo’s capture. I spread the word among the clan that Oli had lied. I drove him away.”

  Heridan’s pain made Kastor wince. It was the pain of guilt and shame, and he knew it did not pass easily.

  “You already repented those mistakes, Heridan. You made peace with his parents and their daughter, too.”

  “I never broke my peace with Adalina in the first place,” Heridan replied. “She never lost her faith in me, even when she should have.”

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  Kastor glanced at the warrior, worried about his mood, but the big man now smiled as he spoke of the girl he considered a daughter. Kastor placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “We both made a terrible mess. But if the gods smile on us, we could yet make it right.”

  Heridan met his gaze and his smile faltered. His eyes held sympathy – perhaps even pity.

  “You said that you saw a body, Kastor. You said that Elder Joturn remained to bury Oli. What are you really looking for in this forest? Who do you hope to find?”

  “I came back to help you find Ingo and finish another task that I started – the one that brought me here in the first place. But ever since we returned, I’ve felt him. I can’t explain it, Heridan. It’s like hearing the footsteps of someone I know, even though I can't see them. It's like recognising the smell of your own home. Oli is still alive in some way. I'm sure of it.”

  “If he died and yet he’s still alive, what is he?”

  The river gurgled and bubbled in front of them. Its current moved beneath the surface – old, soundless and strong. Dead leaves blew onto the black water and floated downstream or bobbed about in the reeds by the shallows.

  “I don’t know, Heridan,” Kastor sighed. “My old master taught me so much in such a short time, but I was never a real apprentice. When he died, the secrets of the medicine men died with him. I’m the last of them, but also the first. I’ll have to discover what they spent centuries learning. I only know that Oli is part of it. Something waited at Lake Silence for him, and if it seems to us that it was death, it seems so because we can only see a part of it.”

  He knew the look Heridan gave him. It was the same sceptical look the Levonin gave him when he told them of his search. They had buried the body with Elder Joturn, before he vanished into the trees. They believed what the Hallin believed – that Oli’s sacrifice had healed the forest and lifted the curse that had fallen upon its medicine men. They believed his death marked a turning point in their fortunes, though that belief now wavered as the Republic pushed steadily south.

  They stood musing a while longer on the bank, then began the steady, careful walk north towards the ford.

  The first signs of the Republic's presence, in the form of roads and forts, began in these parts and when some high, wooden palisades came into view they slunk deeper into the trees and walked more quietly. Whenever Kastor detected soldiers nearby, he led Heridan on a path that circumvented both their view and hearing. Near the ford, the trees thinned slightly and another danger arose in Kastor’s mind.

  “Slow down,” he hissed. “Walk gently.”

  Heridan slowed and placed his feet carefully, not even snapping twigs as they moved.

  “There’s a sleeper up ahead. Maybe even the beginnings of a nest,” Kastor whispered.

  “We’ll have to go around. How far East will it take us? Are there other sleepers already nesting there?”

  Kastor shook his head slowly.

  “Perhaps we can go through, if we wait. Soldiers are approaching it!”

  Heridan grinned and Kastor returned the smile. When their two enemies weakened each other, it saved lives – at least, the lives they cared about.

  “Let’s get closer,” Heridan said. “We'll see how they fare and finish off the victor.”

  Kastor nodded. He took the lead, moving quickly and quietly. The soldiers converged on the location of the sleeper almost as though they approached it on purpose. He could not believe their luck.

  They reached a place where the river quickened and the ground fell away into a low gully. Kastor dropped to his hands and knees, shrugged the pack off his shoulders and inched forwards. Heridan followed and he whispered over his shoulder:

  “The sleeper is down there. She won’t hear us, not with the soldiers coming.”

  They poked their heads out from behind a rock and, as an added precaution, Kastor let a veil fall around them, shrouding them from view.

  “I hate it when you do that,” Heridan muttered. The effects on the mind were not pleasant to everyone. The first time Kastor had done it to Oli, to shield them from the view of a group of soldiers, Oli had drifted into the vast and expansive world that existed behind the curtain of this one. He had gone so deep that he had pulled Kastor with him. How it felt to Heridan, Kastor wasn’t sure, but it was worth any temporary discomfort.

  The ground thirty yards ahead of them was bare, and bore the signs of recent burrowing. The freshly turned soil contrasted to the fallen leaves on the forest floor elsewhere. They waited. Kastor listened as the soldiers neared. Something about their mood was unusual. They did not feel like soldiers on patrol, bored and anxious. Instead, their nerves were taut and their minds determined.

  They’re not walking into a trap. They’re hunting.

  The soldiers appeared from the left, in the direction of the big fort on the other side of the river. They did not travel like the patrol the day before. They moved in formation, swords already drawn, in two ranks of ten. In the middle of the front rank a square block of a man with hair almost as red as his tunic commanded the group with silent gestures. Beside him walked a sickly, pale soldier who carried no weapons, but whispered into the ear of the leader as they moved and pointed at the ground in front of them.

  Yet another change. Now they hunt the most dangerous predators of the forest.

  The lead soldier held up a flat palm and they stopped. The tall, pale soldier took out a tiny device that he opened and held up. A little flame danced on the top of a metal cube. These apostates had such a command over flame that if they were not so utterly opposed to the gods, you could have believed them to be priests of Hurean. Torches instead of shields appeared in the left hands of the soldiers and they took it in turns to light them against the flames. They fanned out and moved forward in a single, long line which encircled the ground where the sleeper lay beneath the earth.

  Kastor placed his ear to the ground and listened. He did not like to listen too closely to a sleeper. Sometimes they heard him poking around as though his thoughts intruded on their slumber. Sometimes they listened back, and on those occasions he recoiled into his own body with a slick, clammy feeling of an alien presence in his mind. But he needed to understand what was happening. Beneath the earth a cold malevolence waited: a hunger and hatred that would both be slaked only by blood, though never satisfied entirely. The soldiers stepped carefully closer, until they surrounded the area with a circle of torches. The red-haired leader raised a hand. One man retreated and produced a firearm, which he pointed into the centre of the circle. Kastor’s heart thudded. He could not decide if he wanted them to win. The lead soldier lowered his hand and the man opposite leaped into the middle, jumped, stamped, and leapt back to his place in the circle outside. Or at least, he almost did.

  As the man was about to reach his place, he tripped and fell. Kastor pushed forwards and strained to see. A black, thin line wrapped around his ankles, like vines that had twisted around a trunk. It pulled and the man sped backwards. One of the soldiers ran forwards to help and the commander shouted:

  “Hold the circle!”

  The ensnared soldier slid across the ground, grasping after something solid to hold as his hands slipped through the freshly turned soil. He yelled:

  “Nooooo!”

  The ground in the centre of the circle trembled, then erupted.

  Kastor had not seen a sleeper emerge from a distance before. It was like the solid ground became water and fell away in ripples as the body of the creature emerged. This was a big one. Its black body, which wobbled and pulsated, was the size of a small boat. At the thick ends of its eight limbs, where they joined the body, they looked to be the width of a young tree. They writhed and twisted, each one with a life of its own, whipping in all directions down to the thin, vine-like ends. The limb which held the struggling soldier lifted him in the air and swung him like a flail at his own companions. Two soldiers fell under the impact but staggered back up. As one, the soldiers advanced with their torches.

  Sensing danger and, perhaps, perceiving at last the trap, the sleeper barrelled forwards, attempting to break through the circle. As it moved, two of its limbs wrapped around soldiers to the side and made a sound like a wolf's jaw crunching through bones. One screamed, then spluttered as blood issued from his throat. Both of the bound men struggled, and then went slack.

  The sleeper collided with the pale soldier and another who stood beside him, and both fell. It appeared for a moment that it would escape, dragging the bodies of those it had slain.

  Heridan whispered with grim satisfaction:

  “They’ve bitten off more than they can chew.”

  Kastor nodded but shuddered. It was no joy to see such a sport made of men, even his bitter enemies.

  As it passed the soldiers in the circle, though, and moved in between two trees, the sleeper collided with an unseen barrier. The black body distorted in the centre like a bag of curd thrown against a cheese string. The sleeper hissed in pain and recoiled from the wire which, Kastor now saw, was tied between the two trees. Some light-footed soldiers had prepared the battleground in advance. But why risk more lives by forcing the fight to continue? And why did the man with the firearm not shoot it? They had brought their most deadly weapon to this fight, yet held back from deploying it.

  The sleeper recoiled from the barrier, pressed itself against the ground and began to slither underneath it. It turned almost completely flat, like a piece of rolled out dough. Two soldiers ran to the other side and struck it with their torches, and the creature hissed again and retreated into the centre of the circle.

  They struck it from all sides. Flaming torches danced up and down, thumping against the body and thrashing limbs. Some remnant of the torches' fuel adhered to the body, for where they struck the flame continued to burn. The creature ensnared another soldier, but he cut the leg with his sword and it whipped back. The severed section crawled into the ground.

  The red-haired leader took something loose and heavy from his back and threw it into the air.

  A fine net opened above the alarmed, embattled sleeper and fell over it. The sleeper hissed again and its black mist filled the air. The sickly, sweet smell reached Kastor and Heridan’s hiding place. Even with their vision hampered, the soldiers still moved in unison.

  They took hold of the net and ran clockwise, twisting and pulling it tighter around the sleeper’s body. A limb escaped and found the neck of one man, crushing the life from him like snapping a thin candle. But the rest of them kept running, pulling and twisting. A different soldier threw over a second net, and then another after him. This was the power of the Republic. It did not rest on one great hero or even in their seemingly limitless numbers, but in their machine-like coordination.

  The terrible predator pushed and bulged against its constraints and then, finding no exit, went suddenly still. What had a moment ago been terrifying and deadly was now absurd and powerless. It looked like a black pudding inside twine.

  Under the instruction of their leader, the soldiers gathered their dead companions into a neat row. Then three of them tied a rope to the netted sleeper.

  Kastor turned to Heridan and they looked at each other with mouths agape. They watched in disbelief as the soldiers dragged the sleeper away, back towards their forts and roads.

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