The butchery was over. The Sadew Valley was now a vale of the dead. Brother Candle knew the mind exaggerated horrors but still thought there were at least a hundred dead. Moans and whimpers came from hiding places in the undergrowth. Brock ignored them. After excusing six men who had been injured, he murmured, "I'm going after the men behind this."

"Oh. No," Brother Candle muttered. "That'll only make it worse."

"Brother, nothing will make it worse. They mean to kill us, take everything we own, and make the Connec part of Arnhand. With no leftover heretics. Self-defense is not a sin. Your own Synod of St. Jeules so ruled."

The Perfect bowed his head. That was true.

And he no longer deserved the title Perfect. His thinking had become dominated by emotion.

Rault continued. "We aren't asking you to cut throats. Just get out of the way." Irked.

"That I can do." But he did not stay behind when the healthy and willing headed for the meadow camp.

The camp was a sprawl of pathetic shelters built of deadwood, brush, reeds, and ragged blankets. A nest for misery unimaginable.

The new arrivals were not alone. Scores of sick, elderly, women, children, and even healthy men had not joined the rush down the Sadew Valley. The camp was in an uproar.

Socia glared at Brother Candle. "Booga booga."

"What?" Brock asked.

"Private joke."

Brock looked at her askance but addressed Thurm. "You know this ground. Can mounted, armored men operate on it?"

"Not most places. Not well."

After consultation, Brock chose a direction from which to attack the camp. He approached boldly. His archers launched fire arrows, starting several blazes. Some Grolsachers came out, angry. They accomplished nothing. Several got killed for their trouble.

Brock let fly a few more fire arrows, then began a slow withdrawal.

"Ah. Here they come."

A parade of horsemen left the camp, spread out abreast. Knights, squires, and mounted sergeants, they numbered eighteen. Thurm said, "They don't look much more prosperous than the Grolsachers."

"Paid fighters," Brock said.

"Most likely." Meaning they would be clever and cruel.

Changes were going on in Arnhand and the Empire. Younger brothers with nothing to inherit traditionally went to the Holy Lands or joined the Grail Knights in their wars to convert the pagans of the east. But those journeys into a brief, brutal, lethal exile had lost their emotional appeal. Still, one had to make a living. Having been raised up to follow only one trade.

Thurm said, "They plan to carve out chunks of the Connec for themselves."

"Let's see if we can't disappoint them."

The Connectens kept backing away. The day was near its end. The sun's lower limb settled into the pines behind them.

Brock had his archers launch a flight at the Arnhanders. Most of the shafts fell short. The few that did not miss or, in one instance, strike a shield, shifted to intercept it.

Socia complained, "These damned mosquitoes are driving me crazy!"

Swallows ripped the air overhead. Soon bats would come , to the feast. But not ravens, Brother Candle hoped. Ravens lived on both sides of the boundary with the Night. Human faith had endowed the birds with vast symbolic and oracular power.

The horsemen began their advance. In no hurry. Measured. Which was not what Brock wanted. "Loose another flight, then run for the trees. But watch where you put your feet down."

The horsemen were closer. Most of the arrows reached. Only one found a living target, however, and that a horse when a shaft ricocheted off a shield.

Several Arnhanders spurred their mounts, knowing the odds were too dense for a successful pursuit there.

Others followed.

Within a minute two-thirds of the animals had bogged down in the narrow, sluggish streams meandering under masking surface vegetation.

Those hazards were obvious enough in a good light, when one was unhurried and watching.

Brock ordered, "Archers, turn and loose. Concentrate on the horses."

There was grumbling. The animals were more valuable than the men riding them. But there would be no prizes taken here.

Rault's order was sound tactically but difficult practically. The archers had scarcely a dozen arrows left amongst them.

Brock swore. "Damn! I was hoping more would go down. And that some would drown. That we could finish them off while they were tangled in their harness, in the peat and the mud."

The Arnhanders did not let that happen.

One man and four horses did suffer. Those Arnhanders who remained mounted declined further pursuit.

"At least their damned camp will burn down," Socia grumbled.

Brock Rault insisted on traveling through the night. Progress was slow and exhausting. And often painful. In the wee hours Brother Candle told Seuir Brock, "Leave me. I can't keep up. I'll be all right. They won't harm a holy man."

"You're whistling in the night, old man. You're exactly what they're hunting. The only way you'd survive is if they sent you to Salpeno for a show trial."

Rault ordered an hour's rest. While he and Thurm scouted ahead.

The break gave Brother Candle a chance to become so stiff he could hardly move. Nor did he have the energy to swat mosquitoes. "They're going to suck me dry," he muttered to no one in particular.

Despair threatened him. He thought about Margete, began suffering worldly regrets about the choices they had made. Margete was now Sister Probity in the Maysalean convent at Fleaumont. He had not seen her for years. Had she seen any of the children lately? He had not. One of his sons, the wholly materialistic Aimechiel, refused to acknowledge him because he had given his wealth to support the Seekers.

He was ashamed. He no longer knew where to find any of his children.

The Perfect jerked out of his reverie, smitten by sudden fear. There was a huge absence in the night. The mosquitoes were gone.

The Sadew Valley lay in the embrace of a silence as absolute as that of a crypt. As the darkness grew deeper.

No insects buzzed. No owls gossiped about where to find the fattest mice. Nothing scurried through the leaves and needles, trying to find a meal without becoming a meal. And the darkness deepened.

Leaves crunched, then, as Brock and Thurm returned. Brock whispered, "We're two hundred yards from the edge of the woods. We'll be home before dawn, easy. Even if we have to carry our chaplain. What?"

Brock froze, finally sensing the horror. The deep horror. Which came without accompanying menace.

It did not come near enough to be seen. It wore darkness like a disguise. But darkness did not mask its smell, nor the soft sounds it brought along when it came close.

The stink was that of summertime death a week old. The sound was the hum of ten thousand flies.

Brother Candle shook his head violently, as though to fling the stench out of his nostrils while rejecting the power of ancient Night. Those old gods were gone! Rook had been disarmed, dismembered, constrained, in the very earliest days of the Old Empire. Not even another god could shatter the mystic shackles holding defeated Instrumentalities.

Those harsh old gods had been conquered by men. Only human instruments could loose them again.

The stench drifted onward, following the trail of corpses down into the Connec. The darkness faded back to normal. Sound returned.

The Connectens resumed travel. Not one of them believed the real Rook had passed by, dripping maggots on the forest floor. They would rather believe their priests than their senses. To them that Instrumentality was too awful to bear thought. Someday they could garner the notice of the Lord of Flies. Unless they prayed very hard to their own greater god.