The whine of a mosquito startled him out of his meditations, and made him strike out instinctively. He realised with astonishment that it was already dawn, and that the fire had long ago turned into a pile of white ash.
A hundred feet away, he could see the outline of the bush behind which the hungry animal was still lurking. The vibrations of its hunger were like a cry of misery. It would surely be doing it a kindness to destroy it. . . But even as he raised his Reaper, he knew this was impossible; instead, he fired at the tree behind the bush, and sliced off an overhanging branch. There was a flurry of movement; then, with a single powerful bound, the creature vanished among the trees; Niall caught a glimpse of a green, scaly back, and of long legs like the legs of a giant frog.
The others continued to sleep peacefully. Niall picked up a dry branch, and stirred the fire until he uncovered red embers; then he coaxed it back into life. The sense of excitement still glowed inside him, but his vision had disappeared. He was back in the present moment, with only a confused memory of that domain glimpsed from the towers of his inner citadel. But as he felt the flow of the underground force that awakened the Delta into life, he experienced a disturbing sensation that was a mixture of anger and excitement: anger at the force that had created this grim joke, and excitement at the power of his mind to see beyond its short-sighted purposes.
Manetho’s face was now so swollen that he was scarcely recognisable; he looked like a man who had been brutally bludgeoned and battered. But when he inserted his fingers into the bloated rolls of flesh that concealed his eyes, and forced them apart, he said that he could see the daylight. This raised their spirits; somehow, the thought of permanent blindness was more frightening than the thought of death.
But Milo was still weak, and said his legs felt numb; when he tried to stand up, he immediately collapsed. His feet and legs had turned a dull blue colour; when Simeon examined them, he looked grave. But he decided to try a remedy that he had learned from his grandmother: boiling the leaves of the tree that had caused the injury, and using them as a poultice.
There was no time for Niall and Doggins to wait to learn the result. They knew they had a long day before them, and that lingering could be dangerous. After a light breakfast of dried meat, biscuits and a potation of herbs sweetened with honey, they set out once more towards the strange hill that looked like a giant’s head.
Simeon accompanied them to the edge of the forest. The sun had only just risen over the hilltop behind them, and the central basin of the Delta was still covered in silver mist. Simeon said:
“A word before you go. I would have preferred to go with you, but that is impossible. So let me content myself with a word of advice. I know there are many dangers in the Delta, but somehow, the greatest danger lies in your own mind. The Delta has a habit of destroying those who are ready to be destroyed, and sparing those who refuse to become victims. Your chief guarantee of survival is determination. So be courageous without being foolhardy. May the gods protect you.”
They clasped forearms, and Simeon’s grip was so powerful that it made Niall wince. Without intending to probe Simeon’s mind, he was aware that the old man suspected he would never see them again. Simeon stood and watched them until they disappeared among the reeds.
Before they set out, they had already decided to retrace their steps as far as the western edge of the marsh. What they had not expected was to find the path of the previous day almost obliterated. Where they had used the Reapers to cut down the reeds, new reeds, more than a foot high, had already sprung up to replace them. They were able to trample their way through these without any difficulty. But where the toad-faced saurian had bulldozed a path for them, most of the smashed reeds were already upright again. At least they were less dense than elsewhere and, when mowed down with the beam of the Reaper, could be trampled underfoot. Because they were feeling fresh after their night’s rest, they moved forward with slow deliberation, halting periodically to listen intently for signs of pursuit. But there was no sound except the wind among the tall reeds.
It took them more than two hours to reach the place where the feeding saurian had blocked their path. The only sign of the creature’s presence was the red stain in the water of the pool where it had eaten its prey; on the far side of this pool, a path of crushed reeds revealed that it had continued on its way towards the edge of the marsh. They wasted no time trying to by-pass the pool, but instead turned and followed their previous path to the place where they had been attacked by the frogmen.
And here, where they had expected to see piles of charred remains, they were startled to discover no sign of the conflict. Not a single body remained. There was not even a sign of the grass that had been charred by the blast of the Reapers; only fresh green grass now grew out of the marshy soil.
Doggins frowned. “That probably means there are more of the frogs around — they must have taken the bodies away.”
But Niall was staring in puzzlement at a neat round hole in the mud at his feet; what intrigued him was that it was slowly filling with water. He took his machete, drove it into the wet earth, and twisted it in a circle to remove a cone-shaped segment of mud, which he pulled out by its grass. What he saw made him jump back. A large white worm, about an inch in diameter, had been sliced in two by the blade, and one of its halves was already tunnelling into the mud; as they watched, it disappeared. The other half wriggled helplessly in the bottom of the crater, which was slowly filling with water. Then another worm slid out from the side of the hole, and Niall caught a glimpse of a shark-like mouth filled with pointed, backward-sloping teeth. Without hesitation, it attacked the wriggling segment. Lunging forward with its jaws wide open, it bit out a chunk of flesh as large as its own head, which it tore away with a sudden twisting movement. Moments later, two more worms appeared and joined in the feast. The ground under their feet was obviously seething with these creatures. As he watched with disgusted fascination, Niall felt a light touch on the back of his leg, and jumped with alarm; another of the worms had emerged from the ground behind him, and was coiled like a snake. With a single slash of the machete, Niall decapitated it. As the headless body writhed on the ground, more worms emerged and attacked it.
Doggins spat. “It’s a good thing we didn’t try to sleep in the marshes. The damn things are like piranhas.” In fact, the headless worm had disappeared before he finished the sentence. The mystery of what had happened to the frog-corpses was solved.
They hurried on towards the rising ground, pausing to stare with mistrust at the scum-covered pool from which Manetho had been attacked; but no sign of movement disturbed its green surface. Five minutes later, their feet were once again on solid ground.
Here they paused to survey their surroundings. They were standing on coarse, wiry grass, whose dark-green colour contrasted with the yellow-greens of the marsh; it seemed out of place in the Delta, as if it belonged to a colder climate. In front of them, the ground sloped up to a low ridge, from which granite rocks emerged. To the south, the ground also rose gently, but the dark green of the grass ended about a mile away and gave way to the lighter green of the jungle, which seemed to be exhaling a silvery mist. Beyond the jungle they could see the gap in the hills that formed the southern limit of the Delta. To the north, the ground sloped gently towards the sea, and the dark-green grass soon gave way to a marshy terrain. In the distance, the sea reflected the sunlight. They seemed to be standing on a kind of island of dry, rocky ground in the middle of the Delta basin.
Doggins looked round distrustfully; he was holding his Reaper at the ready.
“I can’t believe it’s as quiet as it looks. There’s got to be a catch somewhere.” He looked at the rocky ridge, half a mile away. “I wonder what’s on the other side of that.”