Free Quest Beyond Time by Tony Morphett Page B

side, back, and also up. She had counselled Mike on this. ‘Remember. They never look up.’
    ‘Who don’t?’
    ‘The people who don’t survive. They never look up.’
    After that, Mike had got into the habit of looking up. Even then he did not see it first. Katrin did. She froze, and nodded in the direction of her line of sight. Mike looked, but all he saw was a faint movement in the upper foliage of some tall trees ahead of them.
    ‘What?’
    ‘They’ve seen us,’ she said.
    ‘Where’s the nearest exit?’
    ‘Come on!’ She hurried the pace.
    Mike followed, and then he saw him too. He was a pale human male, dressed only in a loin cloth. The hair and beard were full-grown, and he had the muscles of a gymnast. There was a knife at his belt. He was in the upper levels of a tree, ahead of them, looking down. He was fifteen metres away, but Mike never forgot the face. That was what chilled him. The face would haunt his dreams for years to come.
    It was malevolent. Evil.
    At the sight of it, Mike felt the breath go from him as if he had been punched in the stomach.
    And the Forest Man smiled at him.
    The teeth had been filed into points.
    Mike was frozen where he stood. Katrin grabbed his arm and pulled him off balance. Mike started moving again.
    With a terrible, easy grace, the Forest Man swung on a vine to a tree above their heads. He looked down at them, smiling.
    ‘Out! Out before sun sets!’ The voice was high, and chattering.
    Katrin was moving her bow to her left hand.
    ‘Death if you do that! Death! Death! Death!’ The Forest Man looked up and around, and from the treetops around there was a
chittering
echo of, ‘Death! Death! Death!’
    Mike knew then that they had been followed for some time. Perhaps since they entered the forest. All the precautions had been for nothing, and they were surrounded by the forest’s cannibal inhabitants.
    ‘All around,’ chittered the creature in the tree. ‘Brothers. Death! Death! Death.’
    ‘I thought you slew all who came here!’ Katrin’s voice rang with challenge.
    ‘Just keep it cool, will you?’ Mike murmured. ‘No stuff about spitting on his mother’s womb or anything?’
    ‘Not Murrays! Not Clan Murrays!’ And again there was an echo from the unseen members of the speaker’s band. ‘NotMurraysNotMurrays NotMurrays…’
    ‘Why not Murrays?’ she asked.
    ‘Who cares? Let’s get out of here!’ He had a terrible suspicion that if the reason did not accord with her ideas of honour, she might reject the safe passage they were being offered.
    ‘Murrays led fight for Covenant! Murrays have start till sundown. Then eat!’ The Forest Man bared his terrible filed teeth. ‘For what do we say, Sister Murray? But that all meat is black in the dark?’ And with a hideous giggle, the creature grasped the rope it had arrived on, and swung back, and out of sight into the foliage.
    Mike and Katrin looked at each other, and then back toward where the creature had been. It was gone. But from the trees they could hear the whisper, ‘Sundown, sundown, sundown sundown …’
    They ran.
    For their lives.
    And as they ran, they heard the movement of the people in the trees above them and in the forest around. They ran at the bottom of a great rolling bubble of rustling leaves which moved with them as the Forest People followed them. They were enveloped by that faint zoo smell that Mike had noticed upon entering the forest. It drove out the scent of decay and became the only smell around them as they ran.
    And ran for the edge of the forest.
    The sun was dropping down the sky.
    The light was fading.
    And Mike and Katrin ran with the whispering and rustling in their ears.
    They ran, enveloped by the invisible company of forest dwellers.
    ‘Hungry Hungry Hungry,’ came the whispers.
    ‘Sun is setting Sun is setting Sun is setting,’ answered the whispers.
    ‘Hungry Hungry Sun is setting Sun is setting Hungry Hungry . . .’
    Mike had thought he had known fear