He shouldn’t be able to qualify for the regiment, either, Slvasta thought guiltily. But Ingmar had been so desperate to prove himself capable of living independently from his family, and the recruiting sergeant was always keen for new troops.

‘It’s a cart track,’ Slvasta pointed out reasonably. ‘The Shilos use it to get in and out of the valley.’

‘I know that,’ Ingmar said defensively. ‘I mean this cart was here in the last couple of days.’ He pointed at some wheel ruts in a patch of damp ground. The lingrass had been crushed into the mud. ‘See? The breaks are fresh.’

‘Well that’s good,’ Slvasta said. ‘It means they’re still around.’

Ingmar gave the ruts another glance. ‘Nobody moves round after a Fall. All the farms and villages wait for the all-clear.’

Slvasta threw his arms wide and gestured at the immense forest. ‘Because anyone living here is really going to know what’s going on, right?’

Ingmar ducked his head.

‘There aren’t any beacons out here,’ Slvasta persisted. ‘The Shilos won’t even know there’s been a Fall.’

‘Okay,’ Ingmar said sullenly.

‘Come on, you two,’ Jamenk said. ‘You’re arguing about crud. We can ask the Shilos if they came in or out when we get to the croft.’

‘Yes, corporal,’ Ingmar said. He stood up, not looking at Slvasta.

After a minute of silent walking, Slvasta used a private ’path to say a very direct and humble: ‘Sorry,’ to his friend. Before they’d signed up, they would sometimes spend days on end squabbling about the most ridiculous things as they learned about the world: Did Skylords drop Fallers? Was there an outside to this universe like the first ships claimed, and if so where was it? Why was maize yellow? Would Asja kiss either of them? Was rust a disease from space? Would Paulette kiss either of them? How could coal possibly be squashed wood? What gave every nebula its own shape when stars were all the same? Mynea was a great kisser – oh no she wasn’t – yeah, how do you know? Why do tatus flies always go for blond hair to spawn in? Crud like that. It didn’t mean anything, and Ingmar with his logical brain won most disputes anyway; Slvasta just got in a whole lot of fun from trying to ruin his friend’s argument.

He sighed. Life in the regiment was a fast lesson in growing up.

‘It’s okay,’ Ingmar ’path spoke back, equally direct, so Jamenk couldn’t sense their conversation. ‘I just didn’t understand, that’s all.’

‘Understand what?’

‘If they were leaving the valley, going to town for supplies or something, then we would have known, either passed them or that last village would have told us they’d driven out of the valley. If they were coming in, then why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why come in? The whole county knows there was a Fall; surely they would have stayed in the village until the Marines announced the all-clear.’

Slvasta grinned at his friend. ‘Because they really believe this squad is going to make the valley safe for them.’

‘Oh. Yeah,’ Ingmar’s expression was sheepish. ‘You have a point there.’

‘I always do.’

‘So can’t you tell which way the cart was going?’

‘No not really. It was just luck I saw that rut.’

‘Do you think they train Marines to read a trail properly?’ Slvasta asked wistfully. He’d been awestruck by the Marines back in Prerov. They were smart and decisive and overloaded with genuine authority; no screw-ups in their ranks. And those black uniforms had looked amazingly cool. When they walked down a street, girls didn’t even bother glancing at anyone wearing a regimental uniform. Marines were the toughest troops on Bienvenido, responsible directly to the Captain himself. Slvasta desperately wanted to ask how you joined. But even he knew he should wait until he had a couple of successful egg hunts under his belt. Maybe even axed one open himself.

‘Not that again?’ Ingmar moaned.

‘Why not? Don’t you have any ambition?’

‘Sure I do. What I lack is delusion.’

Slvasta licked along the bottom of his teeth. ‘Hey, corporal?’ he asked loudly.

‘What?’ Jamenk said.

‘How do you get to join the Marines?’

‘I . . . What are you talking about?’

‘I was thinking of joining.’

Ingmar laughed out loud. Slvasta dropped the shell round his thoughts to feign hurt feelings.

‘They wouldn’t take you,’ Jamenk said irritably.

‘Why not?’

‘Firstly, you have to be sponsored by a Marine. Do you know any?’

‘Ah. No.’

‘Well, then. Now keep watch, please. This isn’t a drill.’

Slvasta smirked at Ingmar, who winked back – amplified enormously by his glasses. They both started studying the surrounding woods with mock alertness.

It was the longest two kilometres Slvasta had ever known, taking an age to stride through the lingrass and then tougher undergrowth as the ground became wetter. The slope they were walking down became more pronounced. Stones and boulders were more prevalent. It grew even hotter, the humidity climbed ever upwards. There were thick vines tangled in the gaps between the trees, black creepers with tattered moss-like sponge for leaves. They gave off a sharp salty smell.

Slvasta was cursing Jamenk for his piss-poor navigation skills – they’d done at least five klicks, surely – when the forest ended abruptly. A huge swathe of trees had been felled, leaving a field of pointed stumps sticking up out of the muddy ground, softened by the puffy fungus that had smothered them. They were over a kilometre from the swift-flowing river which cut a curving line along the floor of the valley. The forest rose up in wide undulations on the other side of the water, its canopy seemingly untouched. Native birds drifted about overhead, long black and green triangles with upturned wingtips. He was sure the specks right at the end of the valley were mantahawks; anything smaller would have been invisible at that distance. His ex-sight wasn’t nearly powerful enough to perceive them and confirm the sighting. But he gifted Ingmar his optical sight anyway; one of their big arguments as kids was that the mantahawks were just a myth, that nothing of their alleged size could actually fly.

‘Neat,’ Ingmar muttered.

Slvasta took a good long look round Romnaz valley, taking in the size, the steep undulations, the trees that packed every square metre. There was no way the three of them were going to sweep it properly for Faller eggs, not in eight days, not even with the mod-bird’s keen eyes.

‘Oh, crud.’

The track was more distinct through the expanse of felled trees. Jamenk set off with long strides, allowing a degree of confidence to show through his shell. He certainly hadn’t shown much conviction before.

A hundred metres into the clearing, and Slvasta saw his first waltan fungus. It was a huge fan-shaped piece, looking like perished leather the colour of sour milk, moving terribly slowly as it crawled across the track. It had taken Bienvenido’s botanists and entomologists a long time to agree, but the botanists had ultimately triumphed. The waltan fungus was an ambulatory plant, moving between lumps of rotting cells. They mostly digested dead vegetation, but some varieties also consumed animal flesh.

‘There’s the croft,’ Jamenk said. He frowned, looking down at the track they were on as if seeing it for the first time, then looking round the slope of tree stumps to the river at the bottom. ‘How do they haul so many trees out along the track?’

Slvasta and Ingmar exchanged a look.

‘I think they tie them together in rafts and float them out on the river, sir,’ Ingmar said. ‘It’s a tributary to the Colbal, so they can go all the way down to Varlan if they want to.’

‘Ah, yes, right,’ Jamenk said. ‘Of course.’

The Shilo family’s compound was on the edge of the clearing, three hundred metres above the river. There was a sprawling lodge in the middle. The original cabin had clearly been added to over the years, with new sections getting progressively larger and more solid, until it now formed a disorderly E-shape. The only stone structure was a chimney stack in the middle, sending up a ribbon of blue-grey smoke. Sturdy wooden stables and barns formed two sides of the compound, with a slat fence marking out the rest of the area. The ground within it was laid out in the green strips of terrestrial vegetation.