Ciaran dragged down an unsteady breath. He was sweating, but where his hands and Mouse's touched, locked together, they were cold as death.
"What was it, Kiri?"
"I don't know." He got up, slinging the harp across his back without thinking about it. He felt naked suddenly, up there on the high ridge. Stripped and unsafe. He pulled Mouse to her feet. Neither of them spoke again. Their eyes had a queer stunned look.
This time it was Ciaran that stopped, with the stewpot in his hands, looking at something behind Mouse. He dropped it and jumped in front of her, pulling the wicked knife he carried from his girdle. The last thing he heard was her wild scream.
But he had time enough to see. To see the creatures climbing up over the crest of the ridge beside them, fast and silent and grinning, to ring them in with wands tipped at the point with opals like tiny sunballs.
They were no taller than Mouse, but thick and muscular, built like men. Grey animal fur grew on them like the body-hair of a hairy man, lengthening into a coarse mane over the skull. Where the skin showed it was grey and wrinkled and tough.
Their faces were flat, with black animal nose-buttons. They had sharp teeth, grey with a bright, healthy greyness. Their eyes were blood-pink, without whites or visible pupils.
The eyes were the worst.
Ciaran yelled and slashed out with his knife. One of the grey brutes danced in on lithe, quick feet and touched him on the neck with its jeweled wand.
Fire exploded in Ciaran's head, and then there was darkness, pierced by Mouse's scream. As he slid down into it he thought: