A Whisper of Southern Lights by Tim Lebbon Page A

thirty miles inland—we’d been stopping and starting down from there, fighting, killing, dying—and Gabriel said we could make it in two days.
    The way I felt right then, I was thinking two weeks.
    Gabriel never let up. He was constantly on edge, talking very little but always looking as though he expected an attack at any minute. We hid from Japanese patrols, using side streets whenever we could, spending an hour here and there in abandoned gardens, and he never seemed to tire.
    Now and then, I tried to question him again. “Centuries, Gabriel?” I asked. He mostly said nothing, or if he did reply, it was to tell me I would never understand. I wished he would let me be the judge of that.
    We passed several areas that had been flattened by bombing and shelling, and which now were all but deserted. A few people wandered around, blasted into shock, seemingly aimless but always needing to move on. Dogs scampered through the rubble, and they looked well-fed. We never saw any Japanese patrols in these places—almost as if they had no wish to occupy the ruins—and so, we travelled through them as much as possible. It slowed our progress but made it less dangerous.
    “Is he close?” I asked as we rested in a rubble-strewn garden.
    Gabriel shook his head. “Not right now. I think he’s still back on the island.”
    “Then we’re away from him!”
    “It doesn’t work like that. He’ll find out where we are, and he’ll come.”
    “How will he find out? No one else knows.”
    “He has his ways and means.”
    I thought of Sergeant Major Snelling running from that house, the terror on his face, and then the demon thing flexing his hand as he followed. Ways and means. I had no wish to witness them myself.
    Gabriel seemed able to move without being seen. He knew the correct routes to take, sensed his way past Japanese units or gatherings of locals, steering us safely on a midnight journey through a place that should have offered us danger. The night was not without its tensions—sometimes, I was afraid to breathe lest I be overheard by the enemy—but as dawn tinged the horizon, I truly began to believe that Gabriel would see us through.
    And I was growing more afraid of him with every hour that passed.
    On the second day, we moved away from the built-up areas and the landscape turned more to jungle. We stopped for breakfast and I broke open a tin of processed meat. I offered some to Gabriel, but he was uninterested. I drank, and Gabriel refused the water.
    “How long can you go on without eating or drinking?” I asked.
    “Until I’m hungry and thirsty.”
    I ate more meat. As the sun rose, I realised that I knew this place. “A mile up there is where Davey bought it,” I said. “Brave bastard.”
    “He said nothing else to you about the man in the jungle?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “We’d just been machine-gunned and my friend was dying. I can’t remember every word he said, so, no, I’m not sure. Can’t you see into my head to check?” I leaned forward and tried to stare at him, but I looked quickly away. His eye was just too strange.
    “No, I can’t see into your head.”
    “Then trust me. He told me about something he’d written down, said it was important. Then mentioned the man with a snake in his eye. Whatever that means.”
    “Whatever, indeed.” Gabriel reached for the water canteen and let a few drops speckle his tongue. He touched his forehead and sighed. “We should go. He’s coming.”
    “How come you know when he’s after you?”
    “He gave me these wounds. They remember him.”
    Just what the hell had I got myself mixed up in there?

    We followed a road into the jungle. Occasionally, the roar of a motor forced us to hide in the undergrowth, but by mostly staying to the road, we made good progress. This was the way we had come days before, shoved ahead of the Japanese force like the bow wave of a boat. We were passing places where men I knew had died, and