Else wakened instantly. Someone was approaching his tent stealthily. He grasped the hilt of a dagger. A silhouette formed at the tent's entrance, limned by the campfires beyond.

"Else! Captain! We need you." A hand parted the flaps beyond Else's toes. The firelight leapt inside.

"Boner "Aye. We have a situation shaping up, sir."

The blazing campfires had told him that. "What kind of trouble?" It was nighttime. The fires were up. That was all the answer he needed, really. "Supernatural."

Of course. Here in the wilds of the Holy Lands, amongst the Wells of Irhian, the most supernaturally infested corner of the earth, human danger seldom prowled the Realm of Night.

Else dressed quickly, slid out of his tent like a big cat, six feet tall, lithe and hard, with striking blond hair and blue eyes, at his physical prime.

"Where?" A glance at the horses told him they were not yet troubled.

"There."

Else jogged. Bone could not keep up. Bone was too old to be in the field. He should have stayed home to teach the youngsters coining up. But Bone knew the Holy Lands better than any other Sha-lug. He had fought the Rhfln here for two decades, long ago.

Else joined al-Azer er-Selim, the band's Master of Ghosts. Az stared fixedly into the darkness.

"What have we got? I don't see anything."

"Right there. The darkness that hides the trees behind it."

He saw it now. "What is it?" He saw more as his eyes adapted. Vague black wolf shapes prowled beyond the fringes of the light "It's a bogon. The master spirit of the countryside. In a more settled land it would be a local deity, probably confined inside an idol in a town temple. To limit the amount of evil it could do.