They spent a short while surveying the structure without identifying any way in. Here and there the stone was decorated with more carved script that provided no information or solution to their predicament. After an hour or so Clay called a halt and they started into the forest.
He took the lead with Loriabeth on rear-guard and Sigoral in the middle. The forest floor proved a tricky surface to navigate, featuring too many roots and constricted avenues to allow for a decent pace. Birds chattered in the trees above as they moved, a continual medley of different calls, the volume of which stayed constant despite a human presence. When they stopped for a brief rest a small red-breasted bird landed on the ground at Clay’s feet, blinking the black beads of its eyes up at him in evident curiosity. Clay crouched and extended a hand to it. The bird hopped back a few inches but failed to fly away.
“No fear of man,” Sigoral surmised as the bird darted closer to Clay’s hand and jabbed its beak into his palm. It hurt more than he expected and left him sucking a trickle of blood from his punctured skin.
“So I see,” he muttered.
“Why wouldn’t it fear us?” Loriabeth wondered.
“I’d hazard that it’s never seen our kind before,” Sigoral said. “Nor have any of its kin for many generations.”
“Sounds a little like Scribes, don’t he?” Clay commented to Loriabeth, drawing a curious frown from the Corvantine.
“Who?”
“A friend lost along the trail,” Loriabeth said in a tone that didn’t invite further inquiry. She straightened and scanned the surrounding trees with a critical eye. “If he’s right, it ain’t good, cuz.”
“Yeah.” Clay flicked a drop of blood at the red-breasted bird, which finally took sufficient alarm to fly away. “Probably best if we try to move a mite quicker.”
“Why?” Sigoral asked.
“We know there’s Greens in here,” Loriabeth replied. “Stands to reason they also got no fear of us. Not that the others we’ve met had much either.”
They covered another four miles before Clay noted that the light had begun to dim. He found a gap in the canopy and saw that the glare of the three suns had faded. “Think night’s about to fall,” he told the others. “Time we made camp.”
Sigoral chose a resting spot, a huge tree with a matrix of roots thick enough to create a raised platform. It offered only a marginally improved view of their surroundings but was the sole near by spot with any vestige of defensibility. They sat close to the trunk and shared what food they had, amounting to a few strips of salted beef and some jaw-achingly-hard ship’s biscuits Sigoral had kept with him since disembarking the Superior.
“Not like that,” he said as Clay came close to cracking a tooth on a corner of biscuit. “Soften it with water first.”
He demonstrated, tipping a few drops from his canteen onto the biscuit. Clay tried a bite and found it chewable if hardly appetising. “I’m thinking we’re gonna have to do some hunting before long,” he said, swallowing a mouthful with some difficulty. “Plenty of birds about, and they won’t be tricky to catch.”
“Means we’d have to light a fire to cook ’em,” Loriabeth said. “Greens can smell smoke from miles away. There’s a chance they’ve already caught our scent anyways, but I’d still rather not send out an invite.”
“We should sleep in the trees,” Sigoral said. “Tie ourselves to the branches.” He frowned as Clay and Loriabeth exchanged an amused glance.
“Greens climb better than people,” Clay explained. “Tie yourself to a tree and you’ll just be offering up an easy kill.”
“Then what do we do if they come for us?” Sigoral asked.
“Shoot ’em,” Loriabeth said, patting the butt of one of her revolvers. “Right in the head, sailor boy. Anything else is a waste of ammo.”
“I told you, I’m a marine.”
“What’s the difference?”
Sigoral glared at her, face reddening. “Quite a lot, actually.”
“We’ll take turns on watch,” Clay said, seeing his cousin bristle and hoping to forestall an argument. “Two sleeping, one watching. I’ll go first.” He glanced up at the dimming sky through the web of branches. Pity they didn’t craft moons to go with the suns, he thought.
? ? ?
Sigoral woke him after a fitful doze that couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of hours, but even so the shadows had lengthened and the air grown decidedly cooler. “I heard more cries,” Sigoral reported as Clay shook Loriabeth awake. “They sounded a long way off, though.”
“Let’s hope they stay there,” Clay said. He gulped water from his canteen, noting that it was now only a quarter full. “Gotta find a stream or something, soon,” he said. “Has to be water here, else how does everything grow?”
The answer came a short while later. The rain arrived with no warning patter of droplets or change to the air, a heavy deluge falling unheralded from the sky with sufficient force to strip leaves from the trees. The ground turned to mud in an instant, forcing a halt as the three of them took shelter under the branches of a particularly broad tree Sigoral named as a yew.
“They live for hundreds of years,” he commented, features bunched as rain-water streamed over his face. “From the size of it I’d estimate this one’s at least two centuries old.”
“No clouds,” Loriabeth said, blinking as she peered up through the deluge. “So where’s this coming from?”
Clay could fathom no explanation and the deluge stopped soon after, dwindling to nothing as quickly as it had arrived. They pressed on, slogging through mud and stumbling over slippery roots until the ground finally began to harden. He had hoped to be clear of the forest by the time the three suns faded but it was clear they would have to endure another night beneath the trees. Long, dark shadows had begun to merge and the atmosphere grew more chill with every passing second.
“Nothing else for it,” he said, shrugging free of his pack. “Can’t get through this in the dark.”
“Do Greens hunt at night?” Sigoral asked.
“Depends on the pack,” Loriabeth said. “Some are day hunters, some aren’t. But any Green sees a damn sight better in the dark than we do.”
They found another thickly rooted tree to huddle around, this one with a thinner trunk that enabled them to stay in sight of each other. The dark descended with an unnatural swiftness, reminding Clay that this wasn’t actually night, at least not as he had always understood it. The light of the false suns didn’t fade completely, retaining a slight glow that left glimmering pin-points of moisture on the leaves that seemed to shine like stars in the gloom.
“Don’t s’pose you got any product about your person?” Loriabeth asked Clay in a chilled whisper.
“There’s about a quarter of Black left in the flask the captain gave me,” he replied. “And the Blue heart-blood. But I ain’t touching either lest we got no other option.”
“Are you sure about not lighting a fire?” Sigoral asked Loriabeth.
“Light one if you want,” she replied. “But do it far away from me.”
Sigoral grunted in frustration but stayed where he was. Clay could see a bead of moisture on the foresight of the Corvantine’s carbine barrel, shimmering a little as it trembled in his grasp.