Tark's quick thought answered. "It is cleared."
"Then it is time to go!"
She looked for a moment at her father, stretched out as though in sleep upon the dark mantle, his head pillowed on the grass.
"Leave him here in his city," she said.
She turned and sprang to Hatha's back. Nelson also mounted, and they galloped northward out of Vruun after the Clans. Smoke coiled thick among the trees, lit by the strange red glow. Ash fell more heavily and the wind brought burning showers of sparks.
Looking back minutes later, Nsharra cried, "The city burns!"
Nelson looked back also and saw the flames leaping triumphant behind them. They flared in great twisting banners from the treetops, turning the forest-ways into red rivers of fire that flowed northward. The crest of that fiery flood raced after the fugitives, roaring, dancing, eating the trees as it pursued.
"Faster or we'll be trapped!" Nelson shouted.
He saw how the glassy bubble-roofs back there had turned smoky red as the flames washed over them. They did not burn or crack but they glowed in the terrible heat, the minarets throwing back the crimson glare.
Choking, coughing, burned by flying sparks, Nelson and Nsharra and the Clan-leaders raced ahead of the leaping flames. Nelson clung desperately to his mount as the Hoofed One smashed through brush, leaped dry gullies, bucked and scrambled over fallen trees. He could barely see the others in the smoke.