Free Beyond the Burning Lands by John Christopher Page A

was unvarying and seemed endless. The tiny trickles of water would surely do little against this vast oven we must gallop over. I tried to shut my mind to such thoughts, concentrating on my own mount and that one in front. I got too near and sand, thrown up by the horse’s legs, weirdly cased in leather, stung my face.
    Then from ahead Greene’s voice called “Halt!” I pulled Garance in near him; the pass was wider and we could assemble. The ground no longer smoked; at least not here though higher up one saw white plumes lifting. Greene dismounted, knelt and pressed a hand into the dust. Straightening himself he said to the peddler:
    â€œIt does not get hot again, lower down?” The peddler shook his head. Greene spoke to us all: “Then get these things off before we cripple the beasts. We are through.”
    Only then did I look ahead and see that the pass ran downhill to a desert plain like the one we had left behind. But beyond the plain there was a forest, the trees stark yet but with branches budding green.

FIVE
BEYOND THE BURNING LANDS
    I T WAS IN A MOOD of relief and relaxation that we headed north. We rode in a chatter of voices that measured the tenseness there had been before. We reached a river and forded its shallow, tepid waters. Halfway across one of the horses put a foot in a hole, stumbled and fell. This was greeted with a roar of laughter, all the louder as the rider picked himself up, cursing and dripping, and berated his mount’s stupidity. We knew what such a mishap could have meant at the top of the pass and so were glad to see it now. Even the one who had fallen laughed with us in the end.
    The desert gave way to a scattering of sickly bushes and shrubs, to thicker undergrowth and at last to the forest edge. The trees looked normal enough at first sight though much twisted in shape; but that might have been due to the blistering breath of wind blowing down from the hot slopes so little distant.
    It was necessary to ride through untracked woodland before reaching the route the peddler knew. But it was not so dense as to present any great difficulty and in places opened out into glades bearing only plants and low bushes. These were further advanced in growth than similar ones in the south, and I wondered if the underground fires which fueled the Burning Lands might lie nearer to the surface on this side, tempering the winter for them. I asked the peddler and he agreed it could be so: even much farther north, he said, there were warm pools and springs which bubbled, steaming, out of the earth.
    Our talk was interrupted by a cry from one of the men. He had sighted what we soon saw was a wild boar, half grown. Greene called us to the hunt and we pursued it through brush as it ran for cover. It would be good to have a supper of roast pork instead of the salt meat we carried in our pouches but I was not optimistic of our catching the beast, especially lacking hounds.
    But it moved more slowly than one would have expected and the ground stayed fairly clear. We ran it down within five minutes, Greene himself leaning from his saddle to drive his sword point in behind its shoulder. The boar died with a single ear-wrenching squeal, and the rest of us rode up to the spot.
    The peddler had fallen well behind and we had time to look at the body before he reached us and dismounted. Peering between Bristow and one of the men, he said:
    â€œWell done, Captain! That one looks as though he will provide good eating.”
    â€œGood eating!” Greene echoed in disgust. “Are you blind, man?”
    â€œBlind? I see a fat young porker.”
    â€œLook at the tusks. And those legs!”
    The legs showed why he had been easy to run down. The rear ones were all right but those at the front were short and twisted. I had thought there was something funny in his gait; he had scampered more than run. The tusks were doubled, a second set growing behind the first.
    â€œDo you eat