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Ah. He was holding the bow.

Time to leave.

He turned and ran across to where his horse was tied. It was nervous and skittish – the reins to its bridle were pulled tight as it had tried to back away – but it wasn’t panicking yet. Quickly he retrieved the ends of the reins from underneath the rock that held them and pulled himself up into the saddle.

With luck, he could get back to town and pretend that he’d been there all the time. Nobody need know what he’d done.

He pulled the horse’s head around and headed away.

The journey down out of the hills was easier than the journey up. The horse seemed more sure-footed now, and it was glad to be getting away from the fire and the smoke.

The horse could see its way by the light of the stars, now the sun had set, and Sherlock let it choose its own path down. Once they got to the flat grasslands he could work out a course back to town.

As the horse picked its way through the rock-strewn landscape of the foothills, Sherlock found that the gentle rocking motion was causing him to nod off. The tension was draining away from him, leaving him empty and melancholic. He wasn’t looking forward to the long trek back to Perseverance.

Doubts began to set in as he rode. What if the Unionist Army failed to intercept the Confederate invasion force? What if the invasion went ahead and he’d facilitated it?

No, Amyus Crowe had told him that the Unionist forces were already preparing to stop the Confederates, if they advanced, but that Secretary of War Stanton had personally decided that he wanted the Confederates slaughtered. Unless something went badly wrong, Sherlock’s actions had only saved lives. They wouldn’t lead to a diplomatic incident.

Somewhere in the darkness, an animal screamed. The sound startled him. It sounded too much like a person screaming. It didn’t sound like a coyote. More like a big cat of some kind.

The horse was picking its way along the bottom of a gully between two steep slopes now. Sherlock thought they were close to the bottom of the hills, nearly ready to make their way across the open grasslands towards the town. The sides of the gully were just black shapes, with only the stars shining in the sky above marking where their jagged edges cut the night sky.

One of the jagged edges moved.

Sherlock jerked awake. Part of what he’d thought was the top of the gully had suddenly shifted sideways and pulled back.

Something was up there. Something was tracking him.

Nerves stretched and quivering, Sherlock looked around. Nothing. Just darkness, thrown into sharp relief by the starlight filtering down from above.

A pebble skittered down the steep slope, bouncing off the floor of the gully.

Sherlock’s horse was looking around now. It knew there was something else out there. Its ears were pricked up, and Sherlock could feel its muscles quivering beneath his legs.

The gully began to broaden out ahead of them, leading on to a flat section of rock with a sheer drop at the far side stretching down to the grasslands. Light from the low moon cut across from one side like a spotlight. Sherlock recognized where they were: despite the appearance of a sheer drop straight ahead, there was a path off to one side that sloped down to the grasslands. He and the horse had come up it earlier.

Another pebble fell, bouncing from rock to rock. Sherlock’s horse edged to one side, and speeded up. It wanted to be out on the plains as badly as he did.

Something above Sherlock’s head screamed, and leaped down on them from the blackness.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The horse leaped sideways in shock, saving both of them. Whatever it was that had jumped towards them fell past and hit the ground off-balance in a flash of slashing claws, stumbling to one side but immediately springing back up to its feet. Sherlock had a momentary, confused impression of eyes reflecting moonlight and pointed fangs wet with saliva, gleaming in a slavering mouth.

He ripped the knife from his belt and held it out. It wasn’t much consolation, but it was all he had.

A voice from up ahead said something