Turning his head slowly to his right as he tried to locate the source of the odor, his gaze fell upon the black litah. As was its manner, it had awakened noiselessly. Now it was sitting back on its hindquarters, nose in the air, inhaling silently.
“You smell it also,” Ehomba murmured.
The big cat nodded once. “Something burning. What, I can’t guess yet.”
“Can you tell where? Which direction?” Knowing how much more sensitive the big cat was to odors of every kind, Ehomba ceased his own efforts in favor of the litah’s.
There was a pause, then Ahlitah lifted a forepaw and pointed northward. “That way. And coming closer, fast.”
“Better get everyone up.”
While he roused Simna, the black litah prodded Hunkapa Aub to wakefulness. By the time the swordsman was sufficiently conscious to communicate, the sharp, acrid smell of burning vegetation was thick in Ehomba’s nostrils.
“Etjole?” Raising himself up on his elbows, Simna blinked once, then wrinkled his features. “Somebody making breakfast?”
Satisfied that his friend was awake, the herdsman straightened and gazed soberly to the north. “I think this grassland is on fire.”
It came roaring toward them like a wall, advancing in a solid line from horizon to horizon. Orange flames framed in red fed hungrily on the dry grass. Their superhot crowns licked at the sky, rising fifty feet and more before transmuting themselves into gouts of dense black smoke that obscured the clouds. Fleeing before the blaze was a rampaging menagerie of terrified creatures large and small. Broad-winged raptors and agile dragonets swooped and darted in waves before the flames, feasting on the insects and small game that were being driven from their hiding places by the onrushing conflagration.