The next time he awoke Derro was directly overhead, casting an eerie, crimson glow across the forest. That meant that dawn was not far away, and a few songbirds were already in voice, heralding the approach of a new day. The last day his parents would ever see. Tak was ravenously hungry, but he didn't need to be told how lucky he would be to see any food that day. A few windfall nuts and brambleberries, maybe, but nothing more than that, and they might be hiding here for a long time.

     They were all stiff and cramped, and after taking a few minutes to make sure there were no shologs nearby his father allowed them to leave the hollow to stretch their limbs. "That was no sholog we saw last night," he said, speaking for whoever might be listening, but Tak's ears pricked up immediately. "I've no idea what it was. I've never seen anything like it. It may have been a beast man, I've heard they run with shologs sometimes."

     "Are they worse than shologs?" asked his wife anxiously, a protective arm wrapped tightly around each of her children.

     "Well, it's not good," he replied soberly. "The good news is that they have even less patience than shologs, if what I've heard is right. If they don't find us in a day or two they're likely to just wander off and the shologs will be under pressure to go with them."

     Even at that young age, Tak could see how his father was trying to keep his fears from showing on his face. The other good news, Tak learned many years later, was that beast men tended to kill their victims quickly, whereas shologs could keep them alive for days. The bad news was that beast men had an insatiable lust for human women, particularly girls. Older Tak remembered younger Tak seeing his father fingering the knife he wore on his belt. Younger Tak hadn't understood the significance of that motion, but older Tak did. If all hope was gone and capture seemed imminent, it might be kinder to put an end to his family's suffering before it could begin.

     After some thought, Tak's father decided that they had to leave the hollow. It had been a good emergency bolthole and a place to spend the night, but in the full light of day it was too obviously a hiding place. It was sure to be searched before long. If this forest was like others he'd seen, there were bound to be places where the trees were thinner and the undergrowth formed dense, impenetrable tangles hundreds of yards across. Such a place was still an obvious place to hide, but there would be a much greater area to hide in and their enemies would have to come to within a few yards of them to see them. The question was, how to find such a place? He stared into the forest, searching for some clue that would lead him in the right direction, but all he saw were trees, the same everywhere. He couldn't even remember which direction they'd come from. They were well and truly lost.

     He explained the situation to the rest of his family and they nodded numbly. Then, after a last look around, he led them in the direction he thought was probably west. The shologs might not expect them to double back the way they'd come.

     They were a sorry sight as they trudged along in single file. Grimy and scratched. Their clothes torn and stiff with mud. Their heads bowed in misery. They spoke not a word as they filed through the increasingly oppressive woodlands, and none of them noticed that the trees they were walking under were much larger than those they'd spent the night under, that it was growing increasingly dark even though, above them, the yellow sun had to be riding higher in the sky.

     It was only when they paused to rest that it occurred to him that all traces of undergrowth had disappeared. No plant could survive in the darkness of the dense, impenetrable canopy. Consequently, vision was unobstructed for hundreds of yards in every direction. Tak's father felt as though he'd been walking in his sleep and was only now coming back to his senses with a jolt of horror. What in the name of the Gods had he been thinking of?

     "Get up!" he cried frantically, pulling the others bodily back to their feet. "We've got to find some cover! Quick!"

     Tak was the first to see the shologs, a moment before the shologs saw the homesteaders. He gave a wild cry and his father stared at him, then followed his gaze. There were six of them, all shologs, and all six were running in their direction, bellowing in savage delight.

     "Run!" cried Tak's father, lowering his spear so that its point was aimed at the nearest sholog. "Scatter! Just keep running!"

     "No!" his wife cried in horror and despair, but then she remembered her children and ushered them before her. "Run, dears!" she cried, pushing them along. "We have to go now!"

     "But daddy..." wailed Tak.

     His mother pulled him too hard to resist and the boy was almost dragged along. There was no strength in his legs. All he wanted to do was stand and stare at his father, who was running to meet the leading sholog. There was a sickening, squelching sound as the spear sank deep into the creature's hairy flesh and Tak's father pulled it out again in an attempt to ward off the second sholog before it could get inside the circle of its bloody point.

     Three more shologs were running at him, the death of their colleague seeming to drive them on into a battle fury. The other two, meanwhile, ran around him to get his family. Tak's legs seemed to come alive and he found himself running with all his strength, no thought in his head but wild, animal terror.

     Shologs can run faster than humans, though, and they were soon caught up. One of the shologs had gone after Laira, who was nowhere to be seen, but the other was hard on the heels of Tak and his mother and grinning with savage anticipation.

     "Run!" his mother cried, and she turned to throw herself on the sholog. The creature was so surprised that it was almost knocked off its feet. It tried to throw her aside but she clung on with desperate strength, stabbing with the knife she'd had hidden in her dress while howling vile profanities. Mad with fury at the monster that had dared to threaten her family.

     Tak knew he should have been running, knew that she was selling her life to buy him a few precious moments to escape, but he was paralysed with horror. Frozen with fear. His young mind was overloaded with images and sounds he should never have known. Then he heard a sound that stayed with him the rest of his life. A shriek of pain that echoed in his head like a wailing ghost in a haunted house, and then his mother was slumping slowly to the ground, fresh blood added to the other stains marring her once pretty dress.

     Tak wanted to scream, but now even his throat was paralysed and he could only stare in dumb, hopeless terror as the creature strode towards him, grinning toothily. It wouldn't have been recognised as a sholog in Thomas's day. The race had changed and evolved as it fell even further from the almost civilised state its ancestors had known. The shologs of Thomas's day bore a greater resemblance to the beast man Tak had seen; a race of creatures that would be driven to extinction during the glory days of the Agglemonian Empire.

     In contrast, the sholog advancing upon Tak might almost have been human, although a member of an inbred, degenerate race that knew nothing of the most basic civilised standards. Its arms were long and hairy, with stubby fingers and long black nails. Its body was massive and powerful with just the slightest trace of a stoop. It had a heavy lower jaw bearing massive crunching teeth and long yellow canines and its eyes were a dull, muddy brown, although the iris was surrounded by clear white, a relic of its ancestors that would have disappeared by Thomas's day.

     It wore leather and homespun wool which the shologs made themselves. Domestic skills which would also disappear over the next few thousand years as they increasingly stole what they needed or got slaves to make for them.

     "Well, what have we got here, then?" it grinned, hanging its scimitar from a loop of leather on its belt. "It's a young human! Fancy that. What's a young human doing in the black forest?"

     Tak backed away, unable to take his eyes off the huge, advancing monster. He was held in the sholog's gaze like a mouse under the eye of a cobra. Suddenly the sholog's arm shot out and grabbed Tak's shoulder in a vice like grip. Tak's paralysis broke, too late to do him any good, and he screamed and struggled like mad, but the sholog simply threw him over its shoulder and sauntered back the way it had come, leaving the corpse of Tak's mother lying on a bed of fallen leaves.

     Tak's father had killed a further two shologs, but the last had gotten under his guard and opened his belly with a stroke of its scimitar. He sat with his back against a tree, his hands pressed to his stomach, trying to hold his bowels in.

     The surviving sholog grinned at him and licked his lips. "This one was a mighty warrior," he said as Tak's captor joined him and dumped the boy on the ground. "His flesh'll make us strong, yes?" He fingered the muscles of the man's thigh. The human reached for his spear, but he didn't have the strength to raise it.

     Tak flew into his arms. "Daddy! Daddy!"

     His father put an arm around him. "I'm sorry, son. I failed you." Then he whispered in the boy's ear. "There's a knife in my belt. Move your body so they..." He had to pause to get his strength back. "So they can't see what you're doing. Take the knife out and give it to me."

     Tak did as his father instructed while the shologs watched in amusement. "Pity we couldn't take the adult alive," one of them said. "He'd have given us days of fun."

     "We've got the male cub," another replied. "Maybe the female as well, if Grosh caught her."

     Tak pulled the knife free and put it in his father's hand. "Mummy... Mummy's..."

     "I know," whispered his father, "but we'll all be together again very soon. Very soon." He raised the knife and touched it to his son's throat. "I'm sorry, son. Forgive me."

     The shologs started forward in alarm when they saw what was happening, but Tak never found out whether they would have succeeded in stopping his father. As soon as the sharp metal touched his throat both shologs were struck by bolts of fire that came flying out from the forest. They yelped in pain and jumped to stand back to back, scanning the forest for their attacker. More bolts of fire followed, bolts identical to the one that had killed the reacher a few weeks before. The shologs ducked and jumped, but the bolts homed unerringly in on them, striking them in the upper body and burning deep into their flesh. They screamed again and collapsed. One of them dead, the other gasping and curling up into a ball, his arms wrapped around his chest as if trying to squeeze the pain out.

     Tak's father, meanwhile, had died. The boy stared down into his face, tears streaming down his cheeks and making clean channels in the dirt and grime. "Daddy! Daddy!"

     "I'm sorry," said a voice, and Tak looked up in alarm. "If only I'd been a little sooner."

     There was a man standing there. An old man with a bushy grey beard, dressed in flowing black robes and carrying a gnarled wooden staff. He strode over to stand above the still living sholog, pointed a finger at its head and spoke a single word. There was a flash of light and the sholog was dead.

     Tak clung to his father's corpse as he stared up at the grey man. Later, he would realise that this was the same man who'd visited their cabin all those years before. The man who'd been spying on him in a crystal ball and saved his life by killing the river reacher. Right then, though, he was in such a state of shock that he could only stare as the man reached down a creased, leathery hand. "Come on, you can't stay here."

     "S-sister. My sister..."

     "I'm sorry, she's dead. I passed her body back there." He pointed into the forest, but Tak just kept staring at him almost catatonic with shock.

     "Come on," the grey man repeated, taking the boy's hand.

     Tak allowed himself to be pulled to his feet, and he stared back at his father one last time as he was gently but firmly led away.

☆☆☆

     "Why did he wait so long before showing up?" asked Lirenna. "I mean, it was him who sent the shologs, obviously, to kill Tak's parents so he could step in heroically to rescue him, but he must have been worried the shologs would kill Tak as well, by accident perhaps, even if they had orders not to hurt him. He was taking a great chance with Tak's life to leave it so long."

     "I can only speculate," replied Thomas thoughtfully, "but I think he wanted to give Tak time to understand that his parents were dead. He wanted him to know, deep down inside, that he was alone now. That he had no home to run back to. The boy had no-one but him to turn to."

     "Monster!" hissed Lirenna. "You say all wizards were like him back then?"

     "Not all. There were some good ones, but most were like that, yes, and some were far worse. He was a saint compared to some. We don't understand how far wizardry's come thanks to the University, thanks to Lexandros. Many externums are still like that today."

     Lirenna nodded and shuddered.

     Thomas looked back through his notes. It had taken longer to tell than he'd expected. New memories and additional details had come to him even as he was telling it, and even now he was remembering more. Enough biographical detail to fill several volumes. It was full night outside, though, and he had a full day to get through tomorrow. All of a sudden weariness crashed down upon him and his eyelids were growing heavy.

     Lirenna, in contrast, was as bright and fresh as ever. The shae folk were capable of going without sleep for several days. Several months if some of the more unlikely folk tales were to be believed. She was ready to listen to the unfolding tale until the yellow sun rose again.

     "Tak wasn't suspicious that the wizard just happened to be there when the shologs attacked?" she asked.

     "He was in no fit state for any kind of coherent mental activity," Thomas replied. "Neither would you be if something like that happened to us. The wizard had planned it that way." He yawned and rubbed his eyes. "I'm going to have to stop there, I think. For now, anyway. I remember a lot about what happened next but I need to work it out on paper again, get it straight in my head. Also, I'm about to fall asleep right here. Time for bed. I'll carry on with the story in a day or two, if you're still interested."

     "I am," replied the demi shae, her eyes shining. "You should write it out properly. Make a book out of it. As a window on pre-Amafrykan humanity you'd have sages and historians from all over the world falling over themselves to read it."

     "Maybe," smiled Thomas. "Maybe one day. Right now, though, I'm ready for bed. Coming?"

     She came.