17

Rede of Reed, bale morass,

Quaking path, whisper grass

Find the ways and hark the water

Ware the eel and trust the otter

Chase behind, snare before

Ever westward, find a shore .

The words were imprinted in Jack's mind.

This was indeed a bale morass. He looked behind them and realised they were already far from the solid ground. The great horse had instinctively found a pathway into the reeds and sedge, but even now they could hear the sound of mud sucking on its hooves and the animal began to struggle.

Corriwen suggested they dismount. As soon as their feet hit the ground, they realised that it was solid no more. It sank under them in slow undulations and bubbles burst through the matted old reeds in little smelly belches.

"This is not a very nice place," Kerry said flatly. "And it stinks."

Now that they were down from the horse, the reeds seemed to crowd around them, swaying and rattling, like a million grasshoppers.

They moved deeper, with Kerry in the lead and Corriwen holding the reins. Jack kept looking back over his shoulder for signs of pursuit, but the reeds behind them seemed to close like curtains and very soon there was nothing but tall thin grass and water in stinking pools.

"It's floating," Kerry said, "Like Bemersyde marsh back home."

"This is deeper," Jack said. "And a whole lot bigger." He turned to Corriwen.

"How far does it stretch?"

She shrugged. "Nobody comes here. I heard stories long ago that nobody goes into the morass, and if they do, they disappear."

"There's a cheerful note," Jack said, trying to make light of it, but even he could feel the oppressive crowding of the reeds. It was as if all the bad and foul things in this world had drained down here to fester in a quagmire. He walked carefully, the way he did snaring duck on the marshes back home, knowing that a miss-step would have him up to his knees in sucking mud. Every now and again, he would catch a glimpse of a bloated toad, grey and warted, balefully following their passage. Great iridescent dragonflies, the colour of yellow poison, snatched the teeming flies from the air. Big greasy bubbles wobbled upwards from the stagnant water and burst slowly, like tar.

Kerry led, because he knew marshes, though maybe none as baleful as this one, and because Finbar had told him he would be pathfinder. Jack knew the direction they had to travel, but that sense of direction was useless in this flat place. Kerry instinctively knew the ways.

"It's easy," he told Corriwen, showing off just a little bit, although he tried not to look her direct in those green eyes, because when he did that, his voice would stutter and slow and he would feel his cheeks redden.

"How can you see the path?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. I just know."

"Just as well," Jack said. "Must be in the blood."

They were veering south now, as hordes of swifts screamed in the air and snatched the insects that had escaped the dragonflies, and the horse was making heavy going, shaking its head and snorting as it pulled its hooves from the glutinous mud. A couple of times Jack missed the narrow track in the tussocks and went up to his thighs in black slime that felt as if it was sucking him down. It was hard going.

It got harder still after they turned west again, on a ridge of tussocks that were almost completely submerged, when a huge wading bird, grey as stone, croaked and whooped, startled into the air just beside them. The horse reared, whickering in alarm. Corriwen had the reins looped in her fingers and she was hauled into the air. The great horse turned and Corriwen slipped her grip and crashed headlong into a wall of reeds. Jack tried to grab the rope, but the horse reared again and its hind hooves slipped from the narrow track and in a split second it was thrashing in the water.

Jack jerked back, dodging its flailing hooves. Kerry reached and helped Corriwen to her feet and as soon as they turned they saw the horse, wide eyed and panicking, try to lunge back to the track. She grabbed for the rope, hoping to calm it, help it out and Jack put his weight to it, hands covering hers.

The horse plunged and reared and already it was up to its flanks in black mud.

They hauled, straining every muscle, but the mud was thick and stronger even than the great horse. The more it struggled, the more the quagmire dragged on it. In mere minutes the mud was over its withers, edging up on its back. The animal whinnied, lunging desperately, but now unable to gets its hooves clear.

"The tide's coming in," Kerry said. Jack glanced down and saw the little ridge was now an inch under water. The horse thrashed and its hindquarters went down below the surface. Its face was coated in mud, its eyes now rolling in fear and exhaustion. It stopped moving altogether and hauled for breath.

"How deep is this," Jack asked.

"To damn deep," Kerry replied. "We'll never get it out of there."

Corriwen still had the rope and was pulling with her slight weight and it made not a bit of difference. The horse was sinking. Big gassy bubbles broke all around it, giving off a smell of rot and sickness.

"We can't leave it here," she cried.

"We have to," Jack said. "We can't help it."

"We have to do something," she pleaded, her voice high and tight.

Kerry clapped a hand on Jack's shoulder. "It's never getting out of there."

As he spoke, the horse lunged again, making one huge, final effort and the thrashing drove it even deeper. Only its neck and head were visible above the mud, its eyes so wide they showed white all around. Foam dripped from its mouth.

"It's an awful way to go," Kerry whispered. Jack nodded, understanding now. His hands were shaking as he unshipped the bow. Corriwen looked at him, her dismay clear on her face. Jack fitted one of the Major's strange black arrows.

She shook her head, mouth open.

"I have to," he said, sadly, trying to still his shaking hand. The horse had carried them far, away from the Scree, racing from the wolfhounds, shaking off pursuit.

But Kerry said it was a terrible way to go and he was right. Jack hoped his aim was just as true.

Corriwen lunged for him, but Kerry got an arm round her and held her tight, pressing her face against his shoulder, turning her away from the inevitable.

Jack pulled with all of his strength, blinking back an unbidden tear. He had to see clearly. He let go and the black arrow took the great horse at the base of the neck and disappeared into its flesh.

For a second, nothing at all happened. Then the horse thrashed once, raising its head right out of the mud, and then it flopped and all motion stopped.

Kerry held Corriwen tight with one arm. With the other, he clapped Jack on the shoulder.

"Sure, it was the right thing."

Jack turned away, knowing Kerry was right, but feeling no better for that. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and turned back to the pool.

But the great horse was already gone. The mud had claimed it completely.

Kerry tugged his sleeve and drew him away. A few bubbles broke wetly, but except for that, the mud was still and flat and somehow very threatening. It looked as if it was waiting to eat again. After a minute, Jack turned and followed, feet sloshing on the narrow line of tussocks that was now under inches of brackish water. The tide was coming fast.

Kerry led for hours, taking them in loops and angles, and generally westwards, always finding a place where they could at least put their weight on the bobbling mat under their feet. All around them the reeds swayed in synchronous waves, stalks rubbing against each other in a strange and deathly rattle. They could smell salt on the air now and it was clear they were well into the tidal flats. It was also clear that whatever pathways Kerry had found to get them this far would be well under water by now. Jack damped down the sensation of being trapped in this dismal place while the waters rose, bringing the poisonous mud up from the depths to claim them the way it had claimed the great horse. Its rolling, terrified eyes had stayed in his mind. He did not ever want to look like that.

It was well past noon when they stopped, exhausted, in the lee of an old willow tree that had lost its footing in the quagmire and rolled over on its side. It was still green and its branches were growing upwards from the fallen trunk, thick and grey-barked. They sat on the trunk, grateful to have something solid between them and the rafts of rotting reeds and the mud underneath that quivered with every step. Kerry climbed a thick limb, shinning up with ease until he was ten feet or more beyond the tops of the swaying reed-heads. Golden swifts wheeled around his head, snatching at the clouds of flies that lifted from the leaves in a fog. He shaded his eyes against the high sun and looked back in the rough direction they had come. Great pools formed lagoons over the pathways they had walked. Beyond the marsh, miles away to the east, the land rose slowly.

"Scree," he called down. "Dozens of them."

"How far?"

"On the edge. We've got hours on them."

"If they follow us."

"Oh, they will follow us," Corriwen said, with certainty. She pointed at the sky. Black dots circled slowly. "The roaks will show them the way."

Beyond the willow, wide polders of brackwater threw back oily sunlight and the surrounding reeds rustled as the incoming water rippled at their roots. Now and then, a big frog would leap out of their way to splash under the surface, and here and there, bright red crabs crawled out of holes and held their claws agape as if ready to clamp at their feet.

Here is was flat and if not quite barren, poisonously lush. Dragonflies rattled their wings against swaying stalks, and every once in a while, Jack would catch a motion out of the corner of his eye and whip round, straining to catch what he thought he might have seen. He saw Kerry do the same.

"You see anything?" His voice came in a whisper.

"I keep thinking I do," Kerry whispered back. "But there's no track out there. Maybe it's birds."

They paused, waiting for Corriwen to catch up. She had been right behind Jack when they took a dog-leg southwards to avoid yet another pool. They both turned simultaneously.

She was not behind them.

Jack turned, feet slipping on the edges of the line of tussocks, almost spilling him into the mud, and retraced his steps, which was easy enough to do because they were deep and already filling with water. He turned the corner, bending the reeds back with a hand.

There was no sign of her. He felt his heart do a quick lurch.

"Where is she?"

Kerry hurried back. "Shit," he spat, meaningfully. "She was there. I saw her."

There had been no sound except for the unceasing papery rustling of the grass.

"She can't have fallen in," Kerry said. Jack nodded. They would have heard her, but even as he nodded, he imagined her slipping from the narrow track and being sucked right under without a sound. The mud would leave no trace.

A movement flicked in peripheral vision. They both swiveled, but again there was nothing to be seen, just the chirruping of dry stems.

Kerry brushed past him, eyes on the shifting ground, head low, until he came to the corner where her footprints just seemed to stop dead. He knelt, soaking his knees, peering left and right.

"That way," he said.

Kerry went off the track and in seconds he was up to his thighs in dragging mud and vegetation, but under his feet he could feel there was enough to take his weight. He pushed through the water and used his sword to slash at the reeds, forcing his own path. Every few yards he stopped, scanned the grass and rushes and saw something, when Jack could see nothing at all.

They pushed through, weary and exhausted, but unable to stop to rest, while all around them, things seemed to move, like shadows, just beyond their vision. Jack unsheathed the bow and kept an arrow loose, just in case. He said nothing at all, concentrating only on keeping his balance and forcing himself through the sucking quagmire. Kerry was too busy to speak. From behind, he looked like a hunting animal, tense as a bowstring, eyes fixed on whatever evidence he could find, a broken reed here, a slowly filling depression, a crushed crab shell. He led them away from the track they had been following, now heading northwards, although Jack couldn't tell quite where they were, and the tide kept rising.

Underfoot, things squirmed and wriggled, fish or beetles, Jack didn't want to imagine. He forced himself to ignore that and the horror of suddenly blundering into a soft spot and sinking into it before he could grab anything to brace his fall.

Kerry led him on, fighting through the morass, until he paused, motioned Jack forward, parted the reeds and they both held their breath, peering out across a wide black tarn.

Across the water, a small, bare island rose up above the reeds. It towered high above the marshes, like a dome of solid earth and for a moment Jack thought they might have reached for far side of this swamp.

But when he looked more closely, he realised it was not an island at all. It was a huge mound of grass and reed-stalks and willow-branches, piled high. It reminded him of the swans nest on Bemersyde Marsh where the birds had piled dead vegetation into a high pile over the years.

This island dwarfed the swan's nest. It was a hill of broken reeds. From its top, it gave a clear vantage right across the expanse of the marsh.

And on its top they could see movement. At first they thought it was a wall of rushes waving in the wind, and that's exactly what it looked like, until Jack rubbed his eyes. Kerry nudged him.

"You see her?"

Jack shaded his eyes. There was a dark shape in the middle of the rushes, which clicked and rattled in the breeze.

"You see them?

Then he saw them, stick-thin shapes, the exact colour of the marsh grasses, moving all in unison as if blown by a slow wind. They had legs like the heron that had startled the horse into the swamp and knotty arms like slats of bamboo, and elongated faces, so narrow that their eyes were almost vertical brown slits. They hissed and crackled and their spindly legs gave them a strange, insect-like gait.

They crowded round Corriwen and they could see her arms were bound by grassy ropes. The thin people, walking broom-handles, clicked and rustled. Jack could see no clear way over the deep water to the island.

"That'll be the Rushen folk," he whispered. Beside him, a black snail, big as a fist crawled in front of a wide red crab and was instantly snared with a snap of hard claws. Jack crouched and looked back at the mound. The marsh people, if they were people at all, had three wide-splayed toes on each foot, and he understood now how they could get through the marshes so quickly. They were so light that they could skitter across the vegetation with hardly a thought.

They might look strange, but Jack knew that he and Kerry and Corriwen were the strangers in this infested place. And they had to get Corriwen out of there.

"How do we get there?" he asked.

Over on the island, the Rushen-folk had driven thick willow branches into the surface and were binding Corriwen's wrists to each of them. When they had done that, they pulled back and began a strange, clicking chant that sounded like a hundred crickets all chirruping at once.

"What are they doing?" Kerry wanted to know. Jack shook his head.

"I don't know, but I don't like it."

The hairs on the back of his head had begun to crawl again, and underneath his jerkin, he felt that odd double beat of his heart. The obsidian stone was pulsing in tune with his own, and he knew now what that meant. Suddenly the stick-thin beings who swayed and chanted across that stagnant water did not seem as fragile as they looked.

Something was going to happen. And when Jack looked again at Corriwen's delicate form, stretched and vulnerable between the two posts, one word sprung to mind.

Sacrifice.

All of a sudden, the reed-creatures turned on the summit of the island and looked down into the pool of water.

Something moved deep under the oily surface. Something big.

Kerry pointed. A bow wave rippled on the tarn, a hump of black water as something underneath displaced it. Something really big and moving very fast.

The chittering chant rose to a crescendo.

The waters roiled very close to the island and a shiny black shape slithered out of the mud and onto the shallows at the island's edge.

It was an eel.

It was an eel like Jack and Kerry had never seen in the pools up in the marshes back home. It was bigger yet than the huge congers the trawlers brought in to Ardmore harbour from deep down in the depths off the peninsula. It was as big around as the Scree jailer, black as night down its back, and as it slithered and writhed through the marsh marigolds and algae, they got a flash of sickly yellow of its belly. Its skin shone with a slimy luster and its eyes were as big and flat as saucers.

And when it opened its mouth in a gaping yawn, they could clearly see the rows of glassy backward-pointing teeth.

Behind its flat and ugly head, a froth of bubbles broke the surface and another huge eel slithered out.

And the tide was rising.

Sacrifice. The word came again, like big black letters blaring at the front of his mind.

They had tied Corriwen to the stakes and they were waiting for the tide to rise. The two monster eels coiled and slithered, trying to gain height on the huge mound.

But it was only a matter of time, with the speed of this incoming tide, that they would not have to gain ground. The water was rising so fast it would carry them up to where she was bound.

A third massive eel, glistening slick, looped into the shallows and slithered upwards, trying to climb. A fourth appeared, black eyes flat and deadly. The reed people were clicking and rustling, chanting encouragement.

"We've got to get her out of there," Jack said, unable to draw his eyes away from the gaping maws of the slimy coils that looped around each other. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the thin people turned, jabbering away like twigs breaking and vanished beyond the hump of the mound, leaving Corriwen spread-eagled on the framework. Her eyes were wide and almost as glassy as those of the eels which yawned wide and hungry.

"What are they waiting for?" Kerry asked.

"The tide's coming in."

Already they could see the water inching up the mound which undulated slowly in the rising flow.

Corriwen's face was pale. She was struggling with the grassy ropes that pinned her wrists top the spikes, hauling this way and that, trying to get free. Another huge eel poked its head out, this one truly monstrous, as thick as a man's shoulders.. It lazily rolled over the first ones and oozed its way up the bank in slow coils. Behind it, the water was seething with more of them, looping out of the mud and water like sea-serpents. Jack could feel their hunger.

And the tide was rising now, faster than he would have believed. He pulled Kerry.

"Which way?"

"I dunno. It looks like an island.."

"Well, they got across." His voice was rising.

"They're like moorhens," Kerry said flatly. "You see those feet. They can skim across."

"You're the bogtrotter," Jack said. "Come on, man. Find a way. And fast."

"I'm thinking."

"Do it faster." They could hear Corriwen grunt and gasp as she hauled uselessly at the bonds. The water was no more than three yards from her feet. She squirmed, horrified eyes fixed on the devil eels.

Kerry pushed right to the edge of the tarn. They were maybe fifty feet from the mound. A big eel popped its head out, inches from his face, yawned like a crocodile and snapped at him. Its teeth closed together with the sound of a steel trap.

He jerked back and pushed towards his left.

"This way," he finally said. Jack followed. There was nothing else to do but trust Kerry. His eyes were drawn back in horrid fascination to where Corriwen strained and struggled, and he had to force himself to look away and follow Kerry who cut off a long length of thick dry reed and probed ahead of him, moving round the ragged edges of the pool. They could hear the gurgle of the inflow and the looping roll of the eels as they fought for position.

"Faster," Jack thought, then realised he had spoken aloud.

"Doin' my best," Kerry muttered, concentrating. He was doing his best. Somehow these stick-thin creatures had crossed to the island, so there had to be a way. He tried not to look over at the floating island, knowing if he did so, he wouldn't be able to look away, and looking wouldn't help her in the slightest..

It seemed to take forever, up to their thighs in mud, until Kerry noticed a thin line of tussock grass, barely six inches in width.

"Root-bank," he said.

And there it was. A line of posts driven deep into the vegetation. Like a fence, each post only a foot or so apart, a narrow causeway that only the sharpest eyes could have seen. Kerry hauled himself up, and his weight caused the first post to bob up and down and he almost pitched headlong. He swung his arms for balance and then stepped gingerly to the next.

"Take it easy," he said, more to himself than to Jack, and began to make his way slowly across the tops of the posts. Jack followed, heart hammering, urging Kerry faster yet knowing they couldn't risk it.

And the tide was in full flow, swirling through the rushes. Hordes of small fish fluttered on the surface and red crabs clambered up the stalks. Getting across this thin causeway seemed to take forever. It twisted and swerved away from the island and then veered back towards it. There was only a metre or so of the mound above the water now, and the tide seemed to be dragging it downwards under its own waterlogged weight The eels rolled and squirmed, trying to haul their way upwards, mouths gaping like traps.

"Too late," Jack thought, tense as a wire. "Too damn late."

Kerry was moving faster now. He could see the direction to go. One foot, then another, swinging for balance. He was ten feet or so from the far edge of the tarn when the post wobbled under his weight and then it cracked with a snap and he was in the water. Instantly the surface thrashed and the looping backs of the eels came undulating across the surface. Kerry grabbed for the causeway, got to hands to it. Something big and black opened a gaping maw and clamped on his thigh. He gasped at the sudden pain and all the blood drained out of his face.

Jack was paralysed with shock for a split second, then he risked it all. He scuttered across the posts, bent in one fluid motion and grabbed for the pommel of the sword that stuck up from the sheath on the backpack. Without any pause now, he plunged it into the water, only inches from Kerry's shoulder.

He felt the blade bite hard and something bucked, so strongly it almost wrenched the blade away. He jerked upwards and cut the thing clear in half as it twisted to bite at him.

He hauled Kerry up. Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw a motion on the far side of the pond and his breath stopped in his throat.

The silver back of a huge eel was snaking across to the island, bigger than any of the others that were lunging up to get the first snap at the bound girl. It was moving so fast it left a huge wake in its trail and as he watched aghast, knowing it would get to the island before they did and that its speed would probably carry it up the slope. All he saw were five or six silvery humps coming out of the water, all in a line and he knew they would be too late.

"Kerry… " he started. Kerry turned, black from head to foot.

The bow-wave hit the floating island and the first silver back broke the surface and was on land in the blink of an eye. Jack saw jaws open and white teeth grab the head of the biggest eel, and close with a snap that crunched skull and jaw. The eel quivered violently as if a powerful electric shock suddenly surged through it and Jack saw for the first time that the silver thing was no eel at all, but a huge pale otter. Behind it, a family of them had swarmed out of the pool and onto the island and were crunching and snarling and snapping and tearing the hungry eels to shreds, shaking them in their jaws, grunting and ripping.

The words of the rhyme in the Book of Ways came back to him, even as he hustled ahead on the narrow causeway and made it to the island. The huge otter closest to Corriwen turned to look at him with pale blue eyes before it plunged into the rippling mass of eels and started to savage them again.

Jack reached her and used the sword like a saw, cutting the braided grass that pinioned her wrists and then sliced through the bonds at her ankles. All around them was motion and snarling and the gasping of dying eels, and blood and mud and carnage. They watched, breathing hard.

Whoever had sent the otters had waited until the last moment, but, Jack was very, very grateful. He and Kerry held Corriwen tight, feeling her trembling subside.

The otters moved like lightning, faster than the eye could follow, like one sinuous beast, rending and chewing, too fast for the sluggish eels, but ferocious in their attack. In mere minutes, the mound was crawling with crabs and littered with torn pieces of flesh and then, as one, the otters, all in a line, loped down the slope and back into the water, crossed the tarn in a fast looping line, five silver backs breaking the surface in unison and were gone.

They held on to each other, gasping for breath. Kerry wiped some of the clinging mud from his eyes and they stood there together on the high hummock. All around them, the sea of grass and reeds and willow-stumps rolled flat to the horizon. Of the stick-thin marsh creatures there was no sign, but that meant nothing at all. Their gait and shape and colouring meant they could be anywhere at all amongst the swaying reeds. Jack stopped scanning the tussocks and reed-banks, dismissing them from his mind at the moment. If they stayed close they could probably prevail against whatever ambush they tried next. He was more concerned about the real pursuit that they had seen from the willow tree. He stood on tip-toe on the highest point of the island-mound and when he looked out to the east, he could see signs of movement where the pursuing Scree were beating their way towards them.

They were much closer than he would have thought.

He spurred them on, ever westwards, and the marsh became denser, and somehow bleaker. The swell of the tide made the going very difficult, an exhausting trek through mud and mats that sank underfoot. Jack wished, if only for a trudging, grudging moment, that he had the kind of feet the Rushen-folk had, to let them skim the surface and make better headway.

Behind them they could hear the crashing and thrashing of the Scree hunters, who seemed to be making much better progress, despite their weight. Jack wondered if their wolf-hounds were better than Kerry at finding a way through, or whether some eye in the sky was able to give directions.

The distance between hunter and hunted was narrowing. None of them wanted to be caught in this place.

After several exhausting hours, Jack called a halt by the fallen root of a willow and Corriwen insisted they all had a drink. They were tired and hungry and weak from the hundreds of mosquito bites and the leeches that would cling on until their were bloated with their blood.

Beside the track, a steady stream of big bubbles burst like mud in a geyser.

"Methane," Jack said.

"Smells worse than farts."

Corriwen giggled, but Jack began to open the backpack and drew out the big polythene groundsheet they had used to bar the door of the cave.

"But we can use it," he said. "This might buy us time."

He got the others to spread the sheet over the small erupting pool and Kerry fixed the ends with lengths of nylon fishing line. In mere seconds, the gas bubbling from the rot below the water began to raise the sheet skywards. They waited until it began to fill, like a cumbersome balloon, then Kerry led them out onto the path.

A hundred yards away, another dead willow angled to the sky and Jack chose this for his stand. He nocked an arrow to the bow, and wrapped some grass stems to the end. He had used perhaps half a dozen of the black arrows from the Major's collection. There were only a few left, including this one, but there was nothing for it. They waited in silence, Jack leaning against the dead trunk, watching as the polythene filled and bloated and began to wobble upwards on its guy ropes as the wind tried to drag it eastwards towards the pursuing troop.

A half a mile beyond it, the Scree were advancing, clumsy and noisy, but fast. The reeds shivered and crackled as they beat them down. They could hear their stone-grind grunts and hoarse muttering across the flat. Kerry tensed. Corriwen had her hands on the hafts of her knives.

Kerry unscrewed the flask. It was half empty, but it was still half full. He poured a drop of the illicit whisky onto the bound grass on the arrowhead, flicked his Bic lighter and the grass caught instantly.

Jack stood, braced his legs and drew back. By now the Scree were only a quarter of a mile from at the billowing polythene that rose up on its tethers high above the waving reeds. They stopped in a group, thirty of them, maybe more, staring curiously at the big plastic bubble that danced like a ghost in the light breeze. The howling of the wolfhounds boomed across the swamp.

The arrow soared in an arc high above the tussocks, trailing a bow of white smoke across the lowering sky.

From where he stood Jack saw the Scree troop turn almost as one herd, heads craned up to the arcing arrow.

There was no noise, not at first. The arrow disappeared into the ballooning gas-trap and then the gas trap itself disappeared instantly in a ball of pink flame that first blasted downwards then rolled up into the air, shedding burning drops of plastic.

The noise came a second later, a low whoosh, not quite the explosion that Jack expected, but by then, the marsh was already afire as the down-blast scorched the dry reeds and rushes. A bright orange flame licked up from dense smoke and the wind caught it, sending a cascade of sparks out in a line and in a matter of seconds the flames began to roar like a pack of beasts and began to eat into the thick mats of dry foliage.

Kerry whooped in excitement.

"You did it man. Burn them all."

He jumped up onto the willow trunk and watched as the fire leapt from tussock to tussock, from bank to bank, sending cascades of embers high into the air and twisting the tall rushes with such intense heat that they sang high notes as they shriveled and died.

The Scree had stopped dead in their tracks, watching as the arrow sped towards the wavering balloon, but now they had turned about and were crashing back, away from the flames.

Corriwen grabbed Jack's arm.

"No time to gawp," she insisted, hauling him down to the flat. "We must move…NOW!"

She pointed way to the east, to the hazy far side of the swamp, maybe ten, perhaps twenty miles away.

A black cloud was rolling down from the high rills where they had lost pursuit in the flash flood.

"Jeez…" Kerry breathed. "What is that?"

The cloud moved fast, swirling as it tumbled down the boulder-strewn hill.

"She sent a storm," Kerry said. "She won't give up."

"Neither will we," Kerry bawled. "There's only one female who ever scare the bejasus out of me. Or two if you count old Iron Britches."

"Who scares you?" Corriwen asked.

"Me poor dead mother. Sure, she could stop a clock with a dirty look."

Jack grabbed her by the hand before she could ask what a clock was and they skittered along the track just as the cloud rolled fast across the marshy plain and turned the flames back on them. They made about a mile before the smoke began to catch up with them, blanketing the marsh in a grey smog that rasped in their lungs. The fire had veered north and then west and was now eating up the distance between them. Behind the fire-break, they knew the Scree hunters would be making even better progress than before.

They ran, fast as the marsh would let them with Kerry in the lead, picking out the safest routes and the strange, circular storm carried the fire towards them ever faster until they could feel its heat and hear the singing crackle of tortured reeds. They ploughed on, stumbling their way, tiring with every step, through the sucking quagmire. The air was filled with burning and rot as flocks of marsh-birds blurted upwards in panic.

Jack's instincts squeezed at him.

Something wrong. Something wrong.

On one side the Rushen folk were streaming across the causeway. Behind them he could hear the clamour of the approaching Scree. And something was hurtling through the reeds, sweeping them aside like a runaway train.

The final otter arrowed into the lagoon and veered away and it was clear something colossal was right behind it.

"I think we'd better get a move…" Kerry started to say.

And behind the otter a whole bank of reeds was flattened in the blink of an eye and a scaly thing, festooned with barnacles and seaweed, great webbed arms clawing at mud and roots came lurching over the bank.

It had a face like a gargoyle, slimy as a fish, thick lips parted to show grinding teeth, bloated eyes glaring ahead as it tried to gain on the otter family which looped and swirled all around it, too fast to catch, mere blurs in the water.

The creature looked half man, half fish and perhaps with a fraction of something else thrown in.

"Kelpie!" Corriwen cried.

The ugly thing thrashed through the water, intent on grabbing the otters that were harassing it. It skimmed past them, smelling like old fish and things dead on the seashore, dripping slime. It missed them by inches while the otters looped away, drawing it towards the throng of Rushen folk who scattered like chaff into the reeds. The motion caught the creature's baleful eye and it swerved towards them, just as the Scree troops came barging through the charred reeds, right into its path.

It roared like a fog horn, making the whole march quiver and quake.

Jack and Kerry and Corriwen stood paralysed for a moment.

Behind them a voice called out.

"Come on, you three. Hurry."

They spun as one. A tall old man, thin and tall, stood by the edge of the path. " It's hungry and it's pretty damn angry."

They ran. Behind them, the kelpie was roaring, scattering the reeds and the Rushen folk and the Scree indiscriminately. They ran, following the tall man's long strides, panting hard to keep pace with them.

After a while, their feet were on solid ground for the first time in what seemed like ages.

The three of them flopped down in a heap, gasping for breath, so weary they could hardly move.

The tall man let them lie for a while, then told them they should follow him.

"You lot look like you could use a bath, and maybe a hot meal," he said.

They could do nothing except agree to that as they turned and put the awesome swamp behind them.