With the dragon out of the city in its vain pursuit of their friends, and with the hundred or so Shadowsoldiers spread so thinly trying to cover the whole city, it was relatively easy for Drake and Thomas to make their way unseen to a city gate and escape into the forest. Soon after, though, a small group of human Shadowsoldiers emerged after them, and the priest and the wizard had to hide behind a small mound of earth beside a hole dug by some kind of burrowing animal. More Shadowsoldiers followed, and soon the majority of them were in the forest, searching for the questers. “Now for the hard part,” said the wizard mirthlessly. “How do we find the others? They won't dare remain near the rendezvous point.”

     “They won't go far without us,” replied Drake. "Even if they're not worried about me, that demi shae won't let them leave without you. I've noticed that she's gotten quite attached to you."

     "The feeling's mutual," said Thomas. "They’ll have to pull back quite a considerable distance, though. A few miles at least.” He raised his head to look around. There were no Shadowsoldiers in sight at the moment, but they wouldn’t be far away.

     “We'd better get a bit of distance ourselves," said Drake. “Let's move while we can.”

     They crept a few hundred yards further into the forest, hiding whenever they saw Shadowsoldiers, then moving on again when the enemy had gone past. They came close to being discovered on a couple of occasions, when Thomas could have sworn that the cover they were hiding behind wasn't anything like enough to hide them from view, but somehow the enemy never spotted them. Perhaps the gloomy darkness of the forest, along with the dappled patches of light and shade, make it hard to make out the shape of objects, he mused as a pair of shologs shambled past a mere dozen or so feet from them. They might be looking right at us and, so long as we keep still, they mistake us for mounds of earth or a fallen branch or something. It was a comforting thought, but his heart still leapt into his throat every time they saw members of the enemy force combing the area for them.

      The Shads spent three days combing the forest around the city, but Drake and Thomas kept moving around whenever they could, never hiding in the same place twice and a couple of times even going back inside the city when the search got a bit too intense. They had no food with them, their trail rations were hidden with their sleep rolls and camping gear near where they'd entered the city, but there was plenty of fruit growing on the vegetation in the city streets and once they caught a short tusked tree dog in a snare set by the priest, and although its meat was bitter it made a welcome change from the vegetarian diet. Eventually, though, the Shadowsoldiers gave up the hunt and headed south, and after waiting a while to make sure they really were gone, the fugitive pair were able to come out of hiding.

     "Careful," warned Drake. "The dragon may still be around. It won't soon forget what we did to it, and it could hang around for weeks and still catch up with the others. Don't go anywhere open to the sky."

     Later that day, they heard the distant sound of voices, and there in the distance were the others, coming back for them as the priest had promised. "Sorry we were so long," explained Shaun as they met joyfully with much hugging and slapping of backs, "but we didn't dare come back until they'd all gone. We just had to pray you were all right."

     "No need for worry," said Thomas, shrugging it off nonchalantly. "They never had a chance of catching us. It was you we were worried about. That dragon came so close to catching you. By the way, I'm sorry about all your treasure."

     "Don't be ridiculous! I said it would come in useful, didn't I?"

     He looked at Diana triumphantly, who smiled back. "You certainly did," she admitted. "From now on, we keep whatever valuables we come across on our journey. It is becoming clear that the Gods put them in our path for a purpose, intending that we use them."

     "Now that really is a miracle, to hear you say that," said Matthew, and they all laughed together. Not so much from humour but from sheer relief that they were all alive and together again. There might be more dangers ahead, but they'd survived this one, and that gave them hope that they might make it through the whole mission, eventually to return safe and sound to their homes.

     "Well, we'd better be off," said Petronax when they'd all calmed down. "Thanks to that goblin, we're still in a race and we can't let them get to Sen Camaris before us. Damn that goblin! If it hadn't been for him, we could have crept out of the city without them ever knowing we were in it! They would never have found out where the Orb was, and we could have strolled down there at our leisure to collect it! Damn him!"

     "It's possible that they still don't know where it is," pointed out Thomas. "We don't know that he heard anything we said."

     "We have to assume that he did, and that they know where the Orb is," said Drake. "We dare not assume anything else."

     "Right," agreed the soldier. "So we carry on going as fast as we can. Come on then, there's no time to lose."

     So saying, he led the way, followed by the rest, and the eight of them set off to the south.

      They hurried across the dry river bed, glancing nervously up at the forest canopy above them. Although the dry riverbed was now thoroughly overgrown with trees, they weren't as old as all the other greybeams in the forest and the canopy they formed was thinner, with blue sky showing through in places. All of them imagined the dragon looking down at them through one of the gaps, and burning them with a blast of flame before they could get away. It was with great relief that they reached the far bank safely, therefore, and entered the older, denser forest once more.

     As they were leaving the dry riverbed, though, Petronax looked upwards one last time and saw the two suns, now separated only by their own diameter, shining through a gap in the overhead foliage. It was the solar conjunction, when the two suns were closest together in the sky. Now they would begin moving apart again, and in a week's time would come the first day of spring. Perhaps it doesn't matter whether we get the Orb or not, he thought dejectedly. Our journey to Sen Camaris is only half over, and we've still got to get the blasted thing all the way back home again afterwards. That'll take months, and the invasion is, in all likelihood, only a week away. What if we make it back with the Orb only to find nothing but a pile of smouldering ruins?

     Don't think about it, he told itself. Don't even consider the possibility. But as he rode southwards with his seven travelling companions, he found that he couldn't help wondering and worrying about what was happening back home.