The next morning they left the Spine, climbing carefully down the rocky slope until they reached what had been the Great Western Forest.

  Nothing of it remained, though. The soft and rotting remains of the trees that squelched under their feet were entirely hidden from sight by the first leaves the spring plants had produced, now lying flat on the ground even though they were only a few days old. The younger leaves reached upwards like a field of spears, though, and the tip of each carried a tiny, bright crimson flower like a spot of blood. Tiny flying bugs buzzed around them, attracted by the sugary nectar they exuded. Pollinating them while being careful to avoid the sticky leaves of the carnivorous plants that grew among them.

  The flowering plants objected to the carnivorous plants eating their pollinators, though, and produced clumps of feathery fluff that drifted on the wind, clogging up the sticky leaves of the carnivorous plants. The carnivorous plants in turn responded by occasionally letting their leaves go dry so that the fluff fell away.

  Tarvos contemplated the rivalry between the two plants with wonder, but then Geirrod plucked off one of the carnivorous leaves that had just replaced its coating of sticky honey. He licked off the honey with an expression of bliss. "Oh yeah, he said contentedly. "That tastes so good."

  "The more you eat, the more lethargic you'll feel," Fornjot warned him. "I'm not carrying you if you fall asleep."

  "It was just the one," Geirrod protested. "I'm hungry."

  "We're all hungry," Fornjot replied. "Talk to your idiot brother, Daff."

  "I wasn't such an idiot when I rescued you from the bandit camp," Geirrod protested indignantly.

  Fornjot sighed. "We are never going to hear the last of that, are we?"

  "Not from me," said Daphnis, patting her brother on the shoulder. "I'll never stop being grateful for what you did." Geirrod beamed happily and thumbed his nose at Fornjot, who looked away with an irritated shake of his head.

  Tarvos, meanwhile, was looking out across the landscape of blood-tipped purple leaves. In the distance, a herd of hammerhorns was moving slowly towards the mountains that loomed on the northern horizon, their peaks still tipped with ice that hadn't finished melting yet. The sky was a clear blue that was broken only by a few streaky whisps of white cloud. The tiny white specks of skylings could just barely be seen riding the thermals high overhead, if one squinted ones eyes against the brightness.

  "He called it 'a jewel of a world'," he said to himself as they climbed a line of low hills that crossed their path ahead of them. "I've never really thought about it like that. It's just the world, you know?"

  "The voice from the Storyteller," said Daphnis, moving up to walk beside him.

  Tarvos nodded, looking down to where he was holding it in his hand, angling it so that the sun fell on its largest face. The red light in the corner was glowing again, and the number that told them how much sunlight it had soaked up said six. It had been rising steadily all morning, much to his pleasure and relief.

  "We generally think that Zol, the land the First Fathers came from, was glorious and beautiful," he said. "Much better than our world, but what if it was the other way round? What if Zol was a awful place and they came here to get away from it?"

  "They came here to explore," Daphnis replied. "I suppose if you're going to explore somewhere, you'll choose somewhere you like being."

  "I wonder what Zol was like," Tarvos mused. "If it was worse than here, how was it worse?"

  "All we really know is that it's really far away. He said it takes twenty five years for a message to get there. That's a long way. It only takes us four months to make the journey to the summer lands and there's nowhere in our world further away than that."

  "That we know of," Tarvos pointed out. "There must be a place further away. The place the First Fathers came from."

  "As you go further north it gets colder," said Daphnis, "and as you go south it gets hotter. You can't go further in either direction because there are oceans in the way."

  "Maybe there are other lands across the ocean,"said Tarvos as they crested the top of the hill. "There's an ocean to the east. Maybe the land of Zol lies on the other side of that ocean..."

  The words froze in his throat as he saw what lay on the other side of the hill. The gigantic carcass of a thunderbeast, its body torn open to reveal a cave of flesh big enough that a family could have made their home inside. Skylords walked across it, their wings folded against their bodies, their heads red with blood where they'd been pushing them deep through holes in the beast's hide. One was standing beside the head, which was itself the size of a muskril. It was pecking out the beast's eyes. The air was filled with dark clouds of carrion bugs.

  Then a head rose from where it had been hidden from sight behind the mountainous carcass. It was the head of a rex, its whole body red with fresh blood. It looked at the four humans, its yellow, slitted eyes narrowing, and then it rose to its full height to roar its fury at them.

  Tarvis felt urine running down his leg. He wanted to run, but he was frozen to the spot wifh terror. We're dead, he thought. We're dead. There's nothing we can do.

  "Don't run," he heard Fornjot say behind him. "If you run you'll trigger its chase instinct. It thinks we're scavengers, trying to steal from its kill. If we back away slowly, it'll let us go."

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  More rexes were coming into view, attracted by the first's roar. One crawled out from inside the thunderbeast's belly. Another emerged from behind the corpse's long, serpentine tail. Soon there were six of the huge carnivores lined up in a row, glaring at them, their lips drawn back to reveal rows of daggerlike teeth.

  "Back away slowly," Fornjot repeated. Tarvos felt a hand clutching at his arm and giving him a gentle pull. "Slowly. And don't run. If anyone runs we all die. Understand?"

  Tarvos knew he was right, but he still couldn't move. It was as if he'd been hypnotised by the twelve glaring yellow eyes. The hand pulled harder at his arm, but then it was removed as Fornjot hissed an urgent, fearful warning. "Gyre, don't run. Those things can run way faster than you can. Gyre! Get a grip!"

  Tarvos found that he was able to move, and he turned to see that Geirrod's face was white, and that his whole body was trembling. His eyes were wide with the onset of a mad panic. His mouth was moving, but nothing but gibbering nonsense words were coming out. His body was tensing up as it got ready to run.

  Gyre!" Tarvos whispered. He took hold of the other man's arms and gripped tightly. "We're not going to die today. Understand? We're not going to die today. Not if we stay in control. You understand?"

  The other man nodded rapidly, and Tarvos spared a glance at Daphnis to see how she was doing. She also looked scared, but didn't look as if she was close to losing control. Tarvos returned his attention to Geirrod and gently pushed him backwards. Geirrod backed away and Tarvos went with him, keeping a firm grip on the other man in case he tried to bolt. Beside them, Daphnis and Fornjot also backed away, back across the top of the hill until they were going back down its southern side. Gradually the bulk of the hill hid the rexes from view, and a moment later came the sound of the huge carnivores returning to their meal.

  Tarvos almost collapsed with relief. His legs had no strength and were trembling with the effort of supporting his body. He wanted to run. Now that they were out of sight of the rexes they could probably have fled without being pursued, but rexes weren't the only danger to be found in the wilderness and if they ran blindly there was no telling what they might run into.

  "I wouldn't have run," said Geirrod, looking guilty and ashamed.

  "I know," said Fornjot. "It's okay, we got away." He looked back at the hill as if to make sure the rexes weren't following them.

  "So what do we do now?" asked Daphnis. "We can't go that way."

  "We'll have to go further west," said Tarvos. "Make sure we keep the hills between us and the rexes. I'm guessing the smell of blood attracted every rex within fifty miles. We won't have to worry about meeting any more of them for a few days."

  They turned and began walking, all of them watching the hills warily. "What do we know about the lands west of here?" asked Tarvos.

  "We'll come across the river the bandits were camped beside before long," said Fornjot. "Hopefully the bandits won't be following it north. I'm guessing they'll stay put until the men chasing us return."

  "We might still run into a scout or two," said Tarvos.

  "A scout or two we can handle," said Fornjot. "I'm more worried about groths, lancills, mudclaws..."

  "Mudclaws?" said Geirrod, looking scared again.

  "There are rumours of wetlands west of here," Fornjof replied. "Very vague rumours. No way of knowing where they are or whether they exist at all."

  "We have to turn north again as soon as possible," said Tarvos. "As soon as we're a safe distance from the rexes."

  "What's a safe distance?" asked Daphnis.

  "Let's keep going west for the rest of today," said Tarvos. "Turn north again tomorrow morning. What do you think?"

  "You wanted to be the leader," said Fornjot with a sly smile.

  Tarvos nodded unhappily. "We turn north tomorrow morning," he said. "Assuming we make good time today. Hopefully we'll find a good spot to spend the night."

  "And something to eat," said Geirrod.

  "There's plenty to eat," Tarvos told him. "Stop thinking about your stomach."

  "I'm trying, but my stomach won't let me."

  The others smiled with amusement, but then they fell silent as they carried on walking across the purple, flowering landscape. Above them, the sun beat down on their heads, somehow looking larger than it ever had before. From somewhere distant came the faint sound of mating hammerhorns.

  ☆☆☆

  At around midday they saw clumps of tanglebushes dotting the land ahead. Most of their fruits had died and rotted, but there were some late-flowering branches high on top still bearing elderly but still edible fruit. Getting to them required considerable effort as they risked getting helplessly tangled in the bush and facing a slow death by starvation, but eventually they were walking away with handfuls of the sweet fruit and with only a few scratches to their hands and faces to show for it.

  Later they saw a herd of rabbucks scampering between the tall spring plants, plump and lethargic with the fat they'd put on for their fifty year dormancy in their deep underground burrows. "That's a bit of luck," said Geirrod as he loaded a stone into his sling. "I wasn't sure there'd still be any about this late in the spring."

  "There's plenty of other creatures to eat," Tarvos told him. "Creatures that don't turn to stone until the sands start to appear."

  "Yeah but I like rabbuck," Geirrod replied. "Especially the fatty meat, and they look like they've got plenty of fat on them."

  "That's summer fat," Fornjot pointed out. "It might not taste the same as ordinary fat."

  "Soon find out," said Geirrod as he began whirling the sling around his head.

  Soon they were all carrying a fat rabbuck slung over their shoulders, but the smell of blood carried on the wind and soon they found a pack of forest groths pacing them as they walked. "We can fight them," said Tarvos as the creatures started edging in closer, drool dripping from their jaws as their greedy eyes fixed on the rabbucks.

  "There's twenty of them," Fornjot pointed out.

  "They're forest groths," Tarvos replied. "Only half the size of common groths."

  "But there's still twenty of them," his clan-mate replied. "If we fight them, we'll die."

  "So what do you suggest? Give them the rabbucks?"

  "No way!" Geirrod replied indignantly. "They're our rabbucks. They can go get their own."

  "Groths generally hunt by scent," Fornjot told him, "but rabbucks have no scent. Groths can't find them. Not unless someone crushes their skulls with slingstones." He took the rabbuck from around his neck and held it in his hands. "Humans are bigger than their usual prey. They won't risking losing members of their pack attacking us if we give them something else to eat."

  "Then what do we eat?" asked Geirrod, almost in a wail.

  "There's plenty more game to be found," Fornjot told him. "Don't worry, we'll find something."

  He threw his rabbuck towards the groths and they leapt on it with yelps of excitement. Fornjot then looked at Geirrod expectantly, and with a moan of unhappiness the younger man did the same. Tarvos and Daphnis did the same, and then the four humans ran as the groths circled around the offerings. None of the creatures followed, and within a few minutes the humans were able to slow to a walk, looking over their shoulders to make sure they'd gotten away.

  "When we catch something else, what's to stop them from just stealing it from us again?" asked Geirrod, glaring at Fornjot accusingly.

  "Those ones will sleep when they've finished eating," Fornjot replied. "And they're territorial. There won't be any more on the immediate vicinity. Don't worry. The next rabbucks we catch, we keep."

  "I hope so," said Geirrod unhappily as they continued to walk across the purple, scarlet-flowered landscape.