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They had finally got above the cicadas. The circle of constant sound lay spread below them, wide-spaced and encircling, but in this higher place the normal racket of the bush was disrupted, a wide pool of quiet. Flies rode with them, of course, hitching lifts on swinging hands and thighs, quiet companions on backs and shoulders and landing, more and more, around Jack's neck, wondering from where he bled.

The afternoon light strained through the canopy, gaining a slight green-gold from the leaves above them. Neither man could see O'Leary, who had told Ngarungadurung he was being called away and might be held there awhile by the focus of the Sleeper's attention, though would return when he could. The strange uphill gravity persisted, quiet and persistent in Ngarungadurung's sense of direction and strong as an itch to Jack, who was sometimes on the verge of breaking into a run. He was needed, he knew.

The two pull up over a rocky slope and are slammed by scent from a quirk of the breeze: old blood, rot and fermentation sharp as vinegar. A couple of stick-forms hang from a bush a little way ahead, a set of three badly-cleaned horse teeth aligned on a cleared place below with absoloute, maniac precision. A little thread of a track winds towards them from their left and then splits both onward towards that awful smell and the urging upward pull, and off to the right near the bush, skirting the edge of a drop steeper than that they had just climbed then vanishing among the trees. The air feels very thick.

After some moments' standing, both men begin to hear a dim thrumming, barely different to the push of blood through the ears and general body. It's a more visceral sound than the cicadas below, and it comes from up ahead.

Ngarungadurung shakes his head slightly, as if to wake himself from a reverie. He kneels lightly and, placing his possessions beside him, mutters a long string of words under his breath—a prayer or invocation—accompanied by some equally arcane hand gestures and the rubbing of dust onto his person.

It takes less than half a minute, then he exhales deeply, grasps his bag and tools and rises again.

He turns to Dugganfellah, holding one of his spears vertical with the pommel in the dirt, in a warrior’s pose.

He extends his arm, offering the other spear, laying flat in his supine grip.

Grateful for the pause (and a bit prideful that he has been able to match the tracker's pace), Jack wipes his streaming face with his sleeve and draws in deep breaths of welcome air. When the cicada-keen ceased, he was uncommonly grateful for the comparative quiet, but the drumming has taken its place with a portentous beat. He doesn't like the idea that he has certainly been here before but that his logical mind cannot confirm this. Worse, he dreads the known-unknown that lies ahead, needing to push down the gorge that threatens to rise into his throat.

He is surprised that the blackfella would offer his precious weapon. He hesitates, looking into the other's gaze and finding only a fellow man. He nods and reaches out to take it.

"'Tisn't a thing I'm useta, mind, but I'll try t'deserve it," he says levelly, nodding to emphasize his intent.

He takes the shaft, hefting it to try the weight and balance. Having a weapon in his hands calms him somewhat, foolish though the feeling might be.

"Let's get to it, Garundy," he says with a look of grim determination.

Beyond Jack's tension of prophecy reversed and Ngarungadurung's prayer there remains the subtle to ascend. The straight path would get there faster, though it mounts straight into the low sound and the smell. The curve off along the rocky rise might get there, too, or lose them entirely.

Ngarungadurung narrows his eyes as he considers the road ahead: what pitfalls and snares might await.

Would the second path be any safer? Or give them the chance to sneak in undetected? They would not lose the way. Not with the gravity pull of the place and his nose to guide them.

He points to himself then uses his chin to point to the ridge-line path. Then he points to Jack and raises an eyebrow.

Jack points a finger at his chest and then at Ngarungadurung's, nodding to indicate he will go with the tracker.

The two set off along the curving path and leave the dull thrum and meat stench to fall behind, sifting into relative quiet like something hunkering down behind their backs. Jack tries not to remember himself running, and the clenching of his hand on the spear for a moment brings a thin thread of relief: a more distant memory of being a boy playing heroics with sticks, the full-throated rush and gurgle of a springtime Irish stream, slithering dangerously on rocks and jumping to the bank.

Ngarungadurung sees no immediate assistance, but there is a feel in the air-beyond-the-air of another set of footsteps when his feet touch the country, even if it is a stranger to him. They pass back under the trees, still following a long curve, still wearing flies like slow trickles of blackness from something dripping on them from the dapples and dried clear. The forest smells clearer, dry grasses, eucalypts and warm rock, though the faint insistence of rot and death teems beneath.

They have been walking quietly for some minutes when from somewhere up ahead there comes the sharp, echoing bark of a shot.