Convinced that these would lead him into the unknown territory, Ross's
desire to explore overcame the grafted superstitions of his briefing.
There were other signs that this was an often-traveled route: a spring
cleared of leaves and walled with stone, a couple of steps cut in the
turf on a steep slope. Ross moved warily, alert to any sound. He might
not be an expert woodsman, but he was learning fast, perhaps the faster
because his false memories now supplanted the real ones.
That night he built no fire, crawling instead into the heart of a rotted
log to sleep, awakening once to the call of a wolf and another time at
the distant crash of a dead tree yielding to wind.
In the morning he was about to climb back to the trail he had prudently
left the night before when he saw five bearded, fur-clad men looking
much the same as Ulffa's people. Ross hugged the earth and watched them
pass out of sight before he followed.
All that day he wove an up-and-down trail behind the small band,
sometimes catching sight of them as they topped a rise well ahead or
stopped to eat.
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