Northern reached the lip of the valley an hour before dawn.
It had taken the Hunter a whole day to run there. It took him most of a night, and he did not run at all. He went the way Eclipsing Dread let him go, from shadow to shadow.
He stepped into the dark under one pine and out of the dark under another a hundred paces further north, over and over, through a forest that had nothing but dark in every direction. It was tedious. By the fortieth mile, he had started counting the steps out of spite.
Now he crouched among the roots at the top of the southern slope, resting his elbows on his knees, and looked down at the city of the Forest Hunters.
It was quieter than it had been the night before. The cooking fires had burned down to embers in their clay pits, ticking faintly as they cooled.
