The one-eyed man nodded. ‘Could be a whole lot of reasons,’ he said to Mildred. ‘Kind of irrelevant now. The fact that they’re close together and warring with us in the middle is all we need to really know.’
‘I would agree with you. I know not of the places of which you speak, but I do know that the night will soon be upon us, and to be out here in the unprotected forest would be a bad thing,’ Affinity said softly.
Ryan looked up at the sky. The sun was beginning to sink and it wouldn’t be long before twilight became dusk became night.
‘Can we make it to your ville before the sun goes down? And if we did, would they welcome us?’ he asked.
‘As to the latter, I can assure you that the earlier conflict would be forgotten if you brought me home in one piece. It would be, as it were, an act of faith on your part, and accepted as such by my people. But as to the former, I’m not so sure. This is a dense forest and it is easy to lose direction.’
‘So what are you saying?’ Mildred asked. ‘That we should make a camp here and wait for these Nightcrawlers to sniff us out?’
‘It’s not, I agree, an ideal solution. It is, however, a preferable one to roaming the forest at night. At least we can mount some kind of guard if we stay in the one spot,’ Affinity answered.
‘Seeing as we don’t know exactly who we’re dealing with, then that might be the best thing,’ Ryan agreed.
He signaled to Jak, who appeared as if from nowhere. The albino had been up a tree, keeping a watch on the surrounding area, and had been able to pick out every word that had been spoken. Relieved that there was little need to fill in the details, Ryan selected a watch and, as usual, took the first for himself.
The companions made a small fire in as much of a clearing as they could muster in among the twisting growths. There was little space in which they could comfortably bed down together, yet it was important that they weren’t split up. Their proximity to one another was vital for security.
As Ryan began to recce the darkening surrounding woods, Doc sidled up to Affinity.
‘You interest me very much,’ he began in an undertone. ‘I find the names of your villes, and your name, of much interest. Also your garb. I suspect that there is some purpose to the coloring of your robe, which on the face of it would seem absurd to wear while on a hunt. The red and white combined are elements that ring distant bells in the recesses of my memory, and things begin to come back to me. I suspect that it ties on very well with the use of the names Atlantis and Memphis. I wonder, could it be possible that this construction on which you were once enslaved has something to do with the idea of being prepared for those who have been waiting to rise again?’
Affinity eyed the old man shrewdly. ‘Are you seeking to play tricks upon me? I am sure that I mentioned the idea of the people from which I come waiting to be claimed—’
‘Ah, yes, but you did not mention the idea of rising again…having once been of this land, and then sinking below before awaiting the moment when they can once more come to the surface and claim what is rightfully theirs.’
Affinity narrowed his gaze, as though seeking to peer inside Doc’s mind. When he spoke, it was slowly, with every word measured carefully.
‘You seem to know a lot about our old legends. I wonder how this could be, as we have always been taught that none outside of our closed community had ever heard them. Your mode of speech, and your seeming knowledge, what do you know of the lost continents and—’
Doc quieted him with a gesture. ‘Not here and not now. Perhaps when we reach your ville on the morrow. There is much I would ask of you, and perhaps much I will be able to assist you with if you can but assist me in turn. But first we must have some privacy. There are things to which my companions are not privy.’
‘I believe I understand you,’ Affinity said carefully. ‘I shall speak to you more of this when we are in Memphis.’
Doc smiled and left the young man alone. It left Affinity uneasy. He was in the middle of the forest with people he didn’t know, one of whom appeared to be plotting against the others. And although he had seen at firsthand their fighting skills, he was still uneasy at spending the night outside of the safety of his ville. He knew the quality of the Nightcrawlers. There was a part of him that suspected he would never get the opportunity to find out just what it was exactly that the old man knew of the history of his people.
As Ryan kept watch, Affinity tried to settle to sleep. But try as he might, he couldn’t. Instead he focused on the sounds of the one-eyed man who was their leader checking out the immediate area. Even though the forest was deathly quiet because of the lack of wildlife—the secret of which he was sure the old man had guessed—he could hear Ryan’s movements only as the slightest echo of a whisper. He was good, there was no denying that.
But it was still enough. The Nightcrawlers made no sound.
And it was more than likely that they were out there right now, advancing toward where he lay with the unsuspecting others.
Chapter Six
First watch passed without incident, and the exhausted Ryan was only too glad to hand over second watch to Mildred and J.B. It was unusual to take a watch in pairs, but both had agreed that neither would rest that easy in the forest that night. Both were aware that they didn’t share Krysty’s and Jake’s heightened senses. This being the case, both figured that doubling the watch would make detecting any intruders easier in a strange environment. The density of the woodlands and the maze-like nature of the paths that could be forged was a major concern.
Yet this seemed a concern that was a thousand miles away as they both prowled the silent forest. The night above was clear, the stars lighting up a sky that was further illuminated by a wan half-moon. Yet much of this light couldn’t filter through the canopy of foliage cast by the forest, so that underneath, where the companions kept camp, it was a world of gray shrouded further by deepening shadows.
The lack of anything living—other than themselves—meant that the shadows were still and it should be easy to detect any movement within. The only sounds were the distant rustle of the foliage in night breezes.
Despite this, both J.B. and Mildred were on edge. They had little doubt that Affinity had been serious and accurate in his description of the Nightcrawlers they had to guard against. Every slight rustle, every trick of the shadows that seemed to move or to deepen that little more, became something that made their nerve endings jangle.
For much of the watch they avoided each other, dividing the area around the camp into two 180-degree arcs that they would take individually. Each knew the other’s footfall, the sound of each other’s breathing and movement so well that they were able to filter out those sounds that they knew to emanate from the other.
It didn’t make the watch any easier, and after nearly two hours, both felt that they were at breaking point. As their patrol arcs came close to each other, Mildred moved across into J.B.’s territory.
‘What is it?’ he demanded sharply as she approached. His voice was too low to carry farther than a few yards, but the fact that she was close enough to catch his words gave him cause for concern.
Something she was swift to allay.
‘Chill, John. There isn’t a problem. I’m just getting a little too strung out on my own. Kind of think that I’m going to be believing my own breathing is a freakin’ Nightcrawler if I’m not careful.’
The Armorer gave a wry chuckle. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean. I haven’t felt this paranoid since I was left alone with a bunch of stickies on human fry night.’
Mildred gave him a bemused look. ‘John, what the hell are you talking about?’