Malenfant smiled coldly. “It’s all I have.”

The hunting party returned.

Two of the Runners carried limp, hairy bodies, slung over their shoulders. They looked to Malenfant like the chimp-like Elf-folk. One was an adult, but the other was an infant, just a scrap of brown-black fur. The other two Runners bore a net slung on a horizontal pole. A third Elf squirmed within the net, frightened, angry, jabbering, a bundle of muscle and fur and long, human-like limbs. Malenfant could see heavy, milk-laden breasts.

Praisegod got up to greet the party, an expression of anticipation on his cadaverous face. His Ham boy clung to Praisegod’s robe and stayed behind him, evidently frightened of the Elf’s jabber. Under Sprigge’s sharp commands, two of the Runners and the Hams set to constructing a large fire, with a spit set over it.

McCann approached Malenfant, his hands scratched by branches and brambles, his face red with exertion. His mood seemed to have swung again. “Quite an adventure, Malenfant! — you should have seen it. The Runners are remarkable. They crept like shadows through that forest, closing on those helpless pongids like Death himself. They caught these three, and though the Elves fought, our fellows would have despatched them all in seconds if not for Sprigge’s command…”

The Hams had wrestled the live Elf to the ground, and were cautiously lifting away the net. The Elf squirmed and spat — and Malenfant thought she looked longingly at the corpse of the infant, piled carelessly on top of the adult’s body. Perhaps she was the child’s mother.

Praisegod walked around the little campsite until he had found a fist-sized rock. He turned to Malenfant, holding out the rock. “Sir, you omitted the hunt. Will you share in the kill?”

Malenfant folded his arms.

“No?” Praisegod motioned to Sprigge.

Now, at a sharp command from Sprigge, a Runner approached, bearing a fire hardened spear. With a single powerful gesture he skewered the Elf, ramming the pole into her body through her anus, pushing until its tip emerged bloody from her mouth.

This time it was Malenfant who had to restrain McCann.

The Elf was still alive when the Hams lifted the pole onto the spit frames Malenfant heard her body rip as it slumped around its impaling pole — and, he thought, she was still alive, if barely, when a burly Runner went to work on her skull, curling back the flesh and cracking the skull as if it was the shell of a boiled egg.

Praisegod studied Malenfant. “Perhaps it would have been merciful to kill it first. Or perhaps not; this creature cannot comprehend its fate in any case. It is the brains, you see; freshness is all for that particular delicacy.”

McCann broke away from Malenfant. He strode towards Praisegod Michael, his fists bunched, his face purple. “Now I know what you are, Praisegod. No Bay, no Ramose! Him the Almighty Power I Huri’d headlong flaming from th” Ethereal Sky I With hideous ruin and combustion down I To bottomless perdition. You are no man of God. This is Hell, and you are its Satan!”

Sprigge slammed his fist into the back of McCann’s head, and the Englishman went sprawling.

Praisegod Michael seemed unperturbed. “Blasphemy and anarchy, sir. Flogging, branding and tongue-boring will be your fate. That is God’s law, as I have interpreted it.”

McCann tried to rise. But Sprigge kicked his backside, knocking him flat again. Two of the Runners ripped McCann’s jacket from his back, exposing an expanse of pasty skin, and Sprigge loosened his whip.

Malenfant watched this, his own fists bunched.

Don’t do it, Malenfant. This isn’t your argument; it’s not even your damn world. Think of Emma. She is all that matters.

But as Sprigge raised his arm for the first lash, Malenfant hit him in the mouth, hard enough to knock him flat.

He didn’t remember much after that.

Shadow:

For days after her latest beating at One-eye’s hands. Shadow had stayed in her nest. There was a little fruit here, and dew to be sucked from the leaves. She found something like contentment, simply to be left in peace.

But the child developed rashes on his belly and inner thighs, and Shadow herself lost a lot of hair around her groin. Her hair, and the child’s, were matted with urine and faeces. In her illness she had failed to clean the child, or herself when the child fouled her.

She clambered down from the tree and set the child on the ground. When Shadow propped him up the child was actually able to sit up by himself — wobbling, his legs tangled, that great strange head bobbing like a heavy fruit, but sitting up nevertheless. She bathed him gently, with cool clean water from a stream. The coolness made the rash subside. The child’s infection was subsiding too, and his nose was almost free of snot.

The child clapped his little hands together, looked at them as if he had never seen them before, and gazed up at his mother with wide eyes.

Shadow embraced him, suddenly overwhelmed by her feelings, warm and deep red and powerful.

And a great mass caromed into her back, knocking her flat.

Her child was screaming. She forced herself to her knees and turned her head.

One-eye had the infant. He was sitting on the ground, holding the baby by his waist. The child’s heavy head lolled to and fro. One-eye was flanked by two younger men, who watched him intently. One-eye flicked the side of the child’s skull with a bloody finger, making the head roll further.

Shadow got to her feet. Her back was a mass of bruises. She walked forward unsteadily, and with every step pain lanced. She stood before One-eye and held her hands out for her child.

One-eye clutched the child closer to his chest, not roughly, and the child scrabbled at his fur, seeking to cling on. The other men watched Shadow with a cold calculation.

Shadow stood there, bewildered, hot, exhausted, aching. She didn’t know what One-eye wanted. She sat on the ground and lay back, opening her legs for him.

One-eye grinned. He held the child before him. And he bit into the front of its head. The child shuddered once, then was limp.

Shadow’s world dissolved into crimson rage. She was aware of the child’s body being hurled into the air, blood still streaming from the wound in his head, as limp as a chewed leaf. She lunged at One-eye, screaming in his face, clawing and biting. One-eye was knocked flat on the ground, and he raised his hands before his bloody face to ward off her blows.

Then the other men got hold of her shoulders and dragged her away. She kicked and fought, but she was weakened by her long deprivation, her heatings and her illness; she was no match for two burly men. At last they took her by an arm and a leg. They swung her in the air and hurled her against a broad tree trunk.

The men were still there, One-eye and the others, sitting in a tight circle on the ground. They were working at something. She heard the rip of flesh, smelled the stink of blood. She tried to rise, but could not, and she fell back into darkness.

The next time she woke she was alone. The light was gone, and only pale yellow Earthlight, filtered through the forest canopy, littered the ground.

She crawled to where the men had been sitting.

She picked up one small arm. A strip of gristle at the shoulder showed where it had been twisted from the torso. The hand was still in place, perfectly formed, clenched into a tiny fist.

She was high in a tree, in a roughly prepared nest. She didn’t remember getting there. It was day, the sun high and hot.

She remembered her baby. She remembered the tiny hand.

By the time she clambered down from the tree, her determination was as pure as fast-running water.