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‘Come,’ said Tighe.

‘All right,’ said Mulvaine through his closed teeth. ‘All right.’ He held out his arm for Tighe to help him up and Tighe had to lean backwards away from the wall to apply enough force to raise the larger boy from his sitting position.

They resumed their slow stumble along the shelf. Soldiers hurried past them in ones and twos, rushing eastward along the shelf to join the fighting. Then first one and then several soldiers hurried past them in the other direction, rushing away from the battle towards the shelter of the Mesh-wood.

‘They’, said Tighe, taking a breath after every syllable because of the effort of carrying Mulvaine, ‘leave. War. Lost.’

‘
Don’t
say it, you – you barbarian,’ said Mulvaine in an agony of physical
suffering and mental anguish. ‘We’ll – we’ll rally, push through, they’ll – they’ll
beat
back the Otre.’

Tighe didn’t say anything. They were coming to the far end of the shelf now and there was a ledge that sloped away down. Ati was waiting there, crouched close against the wall with his arms tightly crossed. He leapt up when he saw Tighe and Mulvaine approach.

‘What happened? What happened?’

‘Mulvaine,’ said Tighe, gasping. ‘Hurt.’

‘My leg, my leg,’ moaned Mulvaine. ‘Shot through the knee, I think. It hurts, it hurts.’

Ati pushed up against Mulvaine on the other side from Tighe and helped to carry his weight. ‘The others are near, Tighe,’ he said. ‘They are close to the entrance to the Meshwood. We will find shelter there, won’t we Tighe?’

‘We will find shelter there,’ said Tighe.

The three of them limped on. The noise of battle was distant behind them now. Meshwood loomed ahead: the sun was high in the sky and it carved shadows out of the irregular surface of the wood that made it look more extreme in relief patterning. The leaves were darker in the late daylight, and as the three of them made their way along the ledge they could see the entrance to the tangle of meshwood trunks. It stared at them, a black oval like the socket of a skull.

Pelis and Ravielre came running up the ledge towards them. ‘The guard eyrie is deserted,’ shouted Ravielre.

‘We saw six soldiers run along the ledge and go into the Meshwood,’ said Pelis.

‘The war is lost,’ said Tighe. ‘We have lost.’

‘It hurts, it hurts,’ moaned Mulvaine in time with his steps.

‘We must hide ourselves in the Meshwood,’ said Pelis, firmly, ‘or the Otre will capture us.’

This thought silenced all five of them. They knew what was likely to happen if they allowed themselves to be captured by the Otre.

‘Come,’ said Tighe. ‘Help me with Mulvaine.’

He passed the weight of Mulvaine’s sagging body on to the shoulder of Ravielre and staggered before them, down the ledge towards the Meshwood.

The guard eyrie was empty, as Ravielre had said. There was a part of Tighe, an older part, that responded to the wealth the eyrie represented: all that wood! But more pressing was the need to get off the ledge, to get out of the way of the oncoming Otre army.

Once they were in the shade of the Meshwood they paused, leaning Mulvaine against a trunk. He was no longer chanting, ‘It hurts, it hurts,’
with every step. He appeared to be on the edge of drifting off to sleep, or losing consciousness.

‘The Otre,’ said Tighe. ‘They will come this way. We cannot stay on this path.’

Mulvaine’s eyes were closed now, his breathing was shallow. But the eyes of Ati, Pelis and Ravielre were all focused tightly on Tighe.

‘What shall we do?’ asked Pelis.

‘We cannot climb up,’ said Tighe, gesturing with his right arm at the canopy of interwoven Meshwood trunks over their heads. ‘Mulvaine is too ill. We must drop down – find some quiet place and be still. The Otre will pass us by.’

He locked gaze with each of the three of them in turn to underline his words. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘we must help Mulvaine down through these trunks.’ Ati took one arm and Ravielre the other, and together they started the laborious process of lowering the now unresponsive body of Mulvaine from trunk to trunk, away from the overgrown ledge and into a more hidden place. ‘God is testing us,’ Tighe said to them in both his native tongue and in the Imperial language.

Through the Door, creaking wide on its enormous hinges. Stepping up to the face of God, an enormous face, large as the world. Carved like a gargoyle visage in the side of the wall, massive, marmoreal, except that a great rumbling low breath escaped from between its lips, that its eyelids closed and opened like the passing of day and night.

The silver calabash: strange apparition, more dream than reality. Floating through space.

Somebody’s face: his pahe’s, except that the face was that of an Imperial soldier and that the face disappeared in a splutter of bloody droplets.

Tiny droplets marking Tighe’s skin. Dew from the Meshwood leaves.

Tighe woke with a shiver. Mulvaine was there, next to him, breathing shallowly. Pelis was pushing handfuls of leaves into her mouth, sucking off the moisture. Ravielre was grunting.

Tighe’s stomach was hurting. He was hungry and he had wedged himself in the coign of a double-stemmed meshwood trunk to avoid being blown off the world by the dawn gale – none of them had their belts or their blankets. When he lifted his shirt to look at his stomach he saw bruises, like patches of shadow, running round the lower part of his torso. He had evidently been wedged in too tightly.

‘We have no food,’ said Ati, dropping down from above. ‘I thought we might fetch some insects, but there are no insects here.’

‘We must have food,’ said Pelis, wiping her mouth.

Tighe reached for some leaves from the branches at the end of his trunk and crammed them into his mouth. The moisture soothed the inside of his mouth. He bit, tentatively, into the leaves themselves, but the flavour was savagely bitter and he spat the leaves out.

Mulvaine moaned.

‘Tighe,’ said Ati, swinging down and settling on his haunches on Tighe’s branch, ‘what shall we do?’

‘What shall we do?’ repeated Pelis.

Tighe looked from face to face. He did not know what to do. Ravielre looked worn, as well as distracted; as if the brute fact of Bel’s death – a fact
only days old – was ageing him, minute by minute. His eyes were sunk in his skull, resting on a grey ledge of skin, overhung with eyebrows. Pelis had scratches on her pale face and her large hair was tangled and matted. Everybody looked exhausted. Only Ati had anything of the bounce, the elasticity of spirit, of the platon from weeks ago.

Tighe’s mind was hurrying with memories of the previous day; the tumult of battle, the strange apparition of the silver calabash. Something, with a voice that sounded like God, had called his name;
Tighe, Tighe
. None of it felt real. Nothing felt real.

He took a deep breath. He had to say something. ‘First we find food,’ he said.

Ati and Pelis looked intently at him.

‘We look for food and find it. Do you have flasks? For water?’

They both shook their heads.

‘Well, we must travel from spring to spring. Or find spring and stay. Find food.’ He gestured over at Mulvaine. ‘He must become well and then we can travel through the Meshwood to the west. Yes? We can go home.’

‘Home,’ said Ati, dubiously.

‘Pelis. Your home?’

‘The Imperial City,’ said Pelis. ‘Ravielre comes from there too.’

‘Then you can go there. Ati, your home is downwall?’

Ati nodded.

‘Then you can go
there
. I will go back and speak with the Pope,’ said Tighe, his head fuzzing with the excitement of the thought, a sense that was something like sudden inflation at the prospect of his resolution. He would go to the Imperial City, would call upon the Cardinelle who had visited him when he was back in the hospital; would call upon one of the Popes themselves, and would persuade them to take him up the wall in a calabash. He would go back to the village, a hero, with his adventures to relate.

‘Speak with the Popes?’ said Ati dubiously. A grin ran across his face. ‘You are mad barbarian! Why would the Popes speak to you?’

Tighe stiffened. ‘They will speak to me.’

‘The War Pope thought
I
was the boy who fell from upwall!’ said Ati. He started laughing. Pelis was chuckling too. The noise woke Ravielre, who groaned and rolled over.

‘Stop,’ said Tighe, although the laughter was affecting him. He tried for a stern voice, ‘Stop this!’, but his mouth was widening into a smile against his will. He struggled to shrink his lips to a severe purse, but then he was laughing and reaching forward to slap Ati on the side of his head. Ati was laughing so hard now he could barely evade Tighe’s blows.

‘What’s the laughter?’ asked Ravielre.

Mulvaine gave a sudden shout and trembled violently. All the laughter
stopped. Tighe, Ati and Pelis gathered round his sweating figure. He was not awake; his eyes were wrinkled tightly shut and his fists were squeezed hard, but he was moving, jerking from side to side. The night before the four kite-pilots had wedged him into a cradle that was half-formed by a series of smaller branches but now he was shaking so hard it looked as though he might dislodge himself from that.

‘He’ll fall,’ said Pelis.

Tighe took hold of Mulvaine’s shoulders. The force of his trembling transmitted itself through Tighe’s joints up his arms, and made his teeth knock together. ‘Mulvaine! Wake you! Mulvaine!’ He gestured to Ati with his chin, ‘Take his legs, his legs.’ Ati grasped each ankle and the two of them pressed Mulvaine down.

He woke at this, from the pressure on his wounded leg, screaming. His arms flapped, and his mouth opened more widely than looked possible. ‘Ahh! Ahh!’

Ati let go of his legs.

‘Mulvaine,’ shouted Tighe. ‘Mulvaine. Hello, in the name of the Popes! Wake up!’

Mulvaine’s eyes spun like pebbles flicked by fingers, his pupils arcing round. They fastened on Tighe, and he said, ‘Thirsty.’ Then he closed his eyes and was still.

There was a pause. ‘Mulvaine?’ said Tighe.

Mulvaine’s breathing was very slight, his chest hardly moving at all. ‘Thirsty,’ he said again.

Tighe grabbed a handful of leaves and pressed them against Mulvaine’s mouth. Their moisture, carried up and deposited upon them by the dawn gale, was drying off, but there was enough to wet Mulvaine’s lips. He groaned as Tighe removed the wad of leaves. ‘More.’

‘Shall we take you to a spring?’ Tighe asked, leaning close to Mulvaine’s head. ‘A spring?’

‘Spring,’ groaned Mulvaine.

‘Then you can drink all you want. Ati and Ravielre, take him gently. Is there a spring?’ Tighe aimed the question at Ati, who had been around exploring earlier that morning. Ati shrugged. He had a panicked look in his eye; Pelis had the same look. Mulvaine’s injuries were alarming.

Tighe looked from face to face. ‘He will be well again,’ he said, insistently, ‘if we move him to a spring so that he can drink. Drink and food.’

But it was no easy matter shifting Mulvaine’s trembling, sweating and complaining body through the tangle of the Meshwood. Tighe put his arms under the injured boy’s shoulders, Ati and Ravielre grasped him each side
of his torso. But if anybody touched his injured leg he screamed and writhed, and he could barely be held in one position let alone moved if he did that. So his legs trailed behind, which meant that when the three carriers made the precarious step from one trunk of meshwood tree to another, his legs flopped and banged and he screamed even more.

Tighe told Pelis to go on ahead and seek out a spring. She made her way westward, straight through the tangle of branches and soon vanished. When she re-emerged it was with a glum expression on her face. ‘I can find no spring. Maybe we should go down?’

Ati groaned. ‘Not down, that is where Waldea said the claw-caterpils live.’ Tighe nodded.

‘Perhaps upwards?’ Pelis suggested. ‘There might be a spring upwall from us?’

Tighe shook his head. ‘We cannot carry Mulvaine upwall. It is impossible. Look again.’

Pelis hurried away. Tighe hauled again and they moved Mulvaine’s whimpering body on to another trunk. There was a short ledge, a little overhung and shadow-filled, which made it easier to carry him along. Mushrooms grew in the crevices of this space. ‘Should we eat them?’ Tighe wondered aloud.

‘Perhaps they are poison,’ said Ati. ‘Do you know poison mushrooms from healthy ones?’

‘I am hungry,’ was all that Ravielre replied.

‘It would be foolish to poison ourselves,’ said Tighe, uncertainly. But he was hungry too, his stomach clutching in his belly with little stabs of pain.

At the far end of the little overgrown crag was a long step to a broad meshwood tree trunk. Tighe took a breath and reached out with one foot; he could only just span the distance. He was straddling the gap. ‘When I speak,’ he said, straining through his teeth, ‘push with me, and I will complete the step.’

‘What?’ asked Ravielre.

‘Now!’ said Tighe and lurched to try and haul Mulvaine over on to the trunk. Something high in his groin twanged and pain shot down his leg and up his spine. He howled and his grip on Mulvaine’s body loosened. He was still spreadeagled, straddling crag and trunk with his legs wide apart, but the posture was now causing him the most extraordinary pain. He fumbled, felt Mulvaine slide from him, scrabbled to regain his hold. His bad foot went over. He stumbled, letting go Mulvaine altogether and reaching out blindly with both arms.

He struck the trunk and grasped instinctively. Behind him he heard shouts, and crashing sound, but his own eyes were shut. He clung to the trunk, his burning legs dangling free. For a long moment he hung there,
clutching desperately and then he started pulling himself upright. His chest and belly rasped up over the curve of the trunk, and he swung himself round to lie face down panting.

His groin spat and bubbled with pain, pulses of agony that tremored down his thighs and up his abdomen. He had done himself some injury. For a lengthy moment all he could do was lie and be taken by the agony. Then, with a nauseous feeling at the pit of his throat, he turned to see what had happened to Mulvaine.