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led away.
    In the Council Chamber Helmuth listens disdainfully to what has occurred. What fools these men are, not worth their keep.
    He is puzzled by accounts of this boy. He does not appear to be like the usual fugitive, but older, cannier. Helmuth wonders whether it is by chance that he is going in the direction of the community. He suspects not. This suits him well. Its stubborn dissidents are a thorn in his side, the last remnants of his erstwhile enemies. If they are harbouring the boy they will in time be eliminated. But not quite yet. There is a reluctance in Helmuth for this final deed.
    *
    The moon cast a clear light above the wood. Joe spent the night in a tree, the mysterious pads and rustles, the odd painful cry of an animal, the hoots and screeches of birds, preventing any hope of sleep. A grey owl, sharing his eyrie, brushed his face with outspread wings. Once he thought he heard hounds baying.
    With the first light he jumped to the ground, relieved to be on the move. He walked all day, pausing only occasionally to gather berries at the forest’s edge. The ground was rising and the stream changing into a fast flowing torrent, tumbling headlong towards its destination. Broad-leaved trees gradually gave way to darkening conifers, firs and pines. Their tangy resin smell reminded him of other places, other times.
    When night fell he tried lighting a fire but the matches were still damp from his plunge into the stream and failed to ignite. Angry and frustrated, he threw them to the ground, unable to combat any longer the misery and fear that overwhelmed him. He sat in the enveloping dark for countless hours while invisible night creatures bustled round, slithering, creeping, flying, an unheeding world at his feet and above his head. Eventually he fell into a light slumber, only to be invaded by nightmares in which he saw his mother’s face loom over him while he lay, pinned to a bed, imprisoned in a straitjacket, trying to explain, to speak, feeling his lips move but knowing that no sound came. He strains to warn her that there is danger, danger but he is gagged and as he struggles against his bonds an unearthly cry, a long, low howl, pulls him back into conscious thought. A tremor starts in the base of his spine, speeds through his body, his eyes bulge, his skin prickles and his hair stands on end. The cry rises again and again, culminating in a long high crescendo like the howl of a banshee, predatory and primeval.
    Six pairs of yellow eyes glower through trees. Joe stares at them. Wolves. The leader of the pack crouching low, creeps towards him, growling, tail sweeping the ground, fangs bared. Mesmerised, Joe watches its savage shadow approach. Others in the pack are circling round. He is trapped.
    Joe springs to his feet and advances on the wolf. Raising arms and head to the sky he lets out a primordial shriek that reverberates through the forest; then with the pent-up terror of his plight, another and another.
    Man and beast are locked in confrontation and, as he has always done, man wins. The wolves turn tail and slink into the forest.

Chapter Three

    THE morning found Joe scrambling for his discarded matches. He recovered twenty-three and the box, damp but still intact. Pushing them gratefully into his jeans pocket he set off up the hill. Conifers converged on either bank, somber, impenetrable and threatening. He hurried on along the thin strip of sunlight beside the stream and stopped at midday to rest and allow his matches to dry. He needed urgently to light a fire in the coming night and cook more fish but made do with handfuls of wild raspberries and small, sharp strawberries. It was a sparse meal; he did not want to stop a minute longer than was necessary.
    Nothing in Joe’s existence had prepared him for the ordeal he was now experiencing. There had been no premonition, no warning that his ordinary life, spent in a kind of scowling indifference that, he knew well enough, masked other deeper and