Aldric focused his eyes on the trail. “Simon, keep your mind on the task at hand.”
“We’re miles from the African dragons,” said Simon. “We still have to get past the next two villages. I just thought she might be lonely in there.”
“It’s hot in the sun. Why the devil would she want to be out here?”
“For the company,” said Simon unhappily. Unless he was lecturing him, his British father was never much good at conversation. Simon wondered how Aldric and Alaythia spent their time alone. He figured they must always be planning strategy, going over the old scrolls and Books of Saint George, learning the Serpentine language better or designing new weaponry. Alaythia’s skills as a magician had grown tremendously over the past few months.
Simon turned as the Jeep pulled around them and Alaythia looked out. “You have to be sick of the sun by now,” she said to Aldric. “Why don’t you tether the horses to the back and get some shade in the Jeep?”
Aldric smiled at her. “You mean step into the modern world?”
“Yes,” she said with exasperation. “You should’ve left the horses back at the ship.”
Alaythia, Simon thought, had just a touch of what he now recognised as New York attitude, with the slight hint of expectation that rich people carry around which she had yet to completely lose. (Her grandmother had left her a fair amount of money from a Manhattan property fortune, which had soon dwindled away on bad investments and charity donations.) She leaned out more, her beaded necklace clanging on the Jeep’s door. “Come on,” she prompted again. “Quit being the angry warrior and take a break in here.”
“We’ll see what you say when that jalopy gets a flat tyre or the transmission goes,” said Aldric. “We do things the St George way. We’re not going to drop traditions that have been handed down for centuries.”
Simon watched the two of them, surprised to see his father looking relaxed for a moment. That must have been the fifth time he’d smiled in the past two days – a record. Alaythia could bring that out in anyone, he thought.
“We’re coming up on the next village,” she said.
“This isn’t the way I remember it,” said the African driver and translator, as he slowed down and let the horses pass, staring at the settlement. “There should be more people out. It was a busy little place …”
Aldric looked alarmed as they neared the town, a sorry set of flat, boxy buildings in faded colours. A very old Ford sat in the high grass, ruined by time and hard rains, proof of Aldric’s claim that this was no place for motorcars.
And then beyond the junked car, a human skeleton lay in the grass.
“Halt,” Aldric said to his horse, Valsephany.
Simon stopped behind him, having a bit more difficulty with Norayiss, his own stallion.
The skeleton was clean and white, left out in the sun for a long time. Flies scarcely bothered with it. Simon noted with some disgust that an arm had been lost, most likely taken by scavengers, jackals perhaps. He’d seen the rot of death before, but hadn’t quite got used to it.
The skull gleamed, a horror made ordinary by the afternoon sun.
“What does it mean?” he asked his father.
“I’m not sure,” Aldric answered.
Aldric pulled a crossbow closer to him in the saddle, as did Simon. Alaythia had a rifle, its wooden stock covered in runic symbols. She held it closer, leaning out of the Jeep as the driver reluctantly drove it forward.
More death greeted them. Skeletons lined the twisting road, looking as if the people had fallen there in some attempt to escape the tiny town and no one had bothered to bury them. It was a strange sight and Simon felt queasy.
The path to the village became yet more riddled with skeletons and bones, and the horses’ hooves crunched over them as it was impossible to get round them. Large boulders sat on each side of the road and Simon noted with alarm that one of the huge rocks was smeared with blood.
Blood?
Two young boys ran towards the St Georges as they arrived. They were shouting something, terror in their eyes.
“Disease,” said the translator from the Jeep. “They’re yelling about disease. It is some terrible death let loose here.”
“What kind of disease?” Simon asked, suddenly wanting to turn and ride away.
“They don’t know,” said the translator. “Many diseases in Africa. This one works fast, they say. Many days at work. Many people dead. Many dying.”
“How many days?” Aldric asked.
“They want medicine,” the translator said. “They expect medicine from us.”
Simon looked at the African boys, feeling terrible, sensing the fear that swirled around them.
“We don’t have any medicine,” barked Aldric, sounding angry, and Simon recognised it as the way he always reacted when he couldn’t help. His father moved his horse onward as the boys ran alongside, pleading. “I need to know how many days since the sickness came,” he repeated to their driver.
The translator tried to get an answer. “They don’t know. They are children. They lost track of time …”
“Have there been any fires here?” asked Aldric.
The African translated. “No. No fires. Just a fire in the heart. Sickness of fire.”
Simon trailed Aldric, with the Jeep coming up behind them. The translator was becoming more agitated. “This sickness is not normal,” he said. “This death works too quickly. They should’ve got word to the last town we were in. No one did.”
Aldric kept moving.
“This is not right,” the translator yelled after him. “We should not go further; this is not right.”
“It is right …” said Aldric, “for what we’re looking for.”
Alaythia offered the boys a rune-covered canteen of special water. “Drink, splash it on you,” she advised them. “It will protect you.”
Seeing they did not understand her, the translator took the canteen and used some of the water on himself, passing it to the children with a few hopeful words.
Simon looked back. The boys seemed sceptical, but they splashed the water on their skin and drank deeply all the same.
“There’s not enough water,” Aldric complained.
“It’s something,” she said, sounding annoyed. “The mixture is weakening in the sun, but it’ll help them if they aren’t already sick. Let them have it.”
“There’s not enough,” repeated Aldric in a grim tone, for they had reached the centre of town. He was staring ahead. Amid old, broken-down cars and trucks, there was a group of low, flat buildings. Through the open doors, Simon could see many people lying on beds. He stopped his horse and surveyed his surroundings.
He grimaced. The people were choking and gasping for air. Some men lay in doorways, lifting their arms weakly. And then Simon realised that every single person there had lost all their hair. The man in the doorway, the women gathering water at the well, the sick he could see in the beds – all were completely bald. It was jolting. Simon looked back. The boys who led them in had shaven heads, or so he had thought, but now he could tell that several of the other villagers, many of them children, had lost their hair as well.
“How long has this sickness been here?” Aldric demanded. “Ask this man.”
The