'You cannot fight!' Jin hissed. 'You have no weapon to use against them!'
'I won't let my priests die in their beds!' he spat. Shaking her off, he stood up and fired his rifle into the air. The report was deafening in the silence. The glowing eyes of the shin-shin fixed on him in unison.
'Demons in the temple!' he cried. 'Demons in the temple!' And with that he primed and fired again. This time the priest disappeared from the window, and he heard the man's shouts as he ran into the heart of the building.
'Idiot!' Jin snarled. 'You will kill us both. Run!' She pulled him away, and he stumbled to his feet and followed her, for the sensation of the shin-shin's eyes boring into him had drained his courage.
One of the demons hurled itself from the roof of the temple and came racing towards them. Another broke from the treeline and angled itself in their direction. Two more shadows darted across the clearing, slipping into the open windows of the temple with insidious ease, and from within the first of the screams began.
Tane and Jin ran through the trees, dodging flailing branches and vaulting roots that lunged into their path. Things whipped at them in the night, too fast to see. Behind they could hear the screeches of the shin-shin sawing through the hot darkness as they called to each other. Tane's head was awhirl, half his mind on what was happening back at the temple, half on escape. To run was flying in the face of his instincts – he wanted to help the priests, that was his way, that
was his atonement for the crimes of his past. But he knew enough of the shin-shin to recognise the truth in Jin's words. He had no effective measure against them. Like most demons, they despised the touch of iron; but even the iron in a rifle ball would not stop them for long. To attack them would be suicide.
'The river!' Jin cried suddenly, her red and black hair lashing about her face. 'Make for the river. The shin-shin cannot swim.'
'The river's too strong!' Tane replied automatically. Then the answer came to him: 'But there is a boat!' 'Take us there!' Jin said.
Tane sprang past her, leading them on a scrabbling diagonal slant down the hillside. The decline sharpened as they ran, and suddenly he heard a cry and felt something slam into him from behind. Jin had tripped, unable to control her momentum, and the two of them rolled and bounced down the slope. Tane smacked into the bole of a tree with enough force to nearly break a bone, but somehow Jin was entangled with him, and as she slithered past he was dragged down with her. They came to rest at the bottom of a wide, natural ditch; a stream in times gone by. Jin hardly paused to recover herself; she was up on her feet in an instant, dragging Tane with her. She scooped up her rifle as it clattered down to rest nearby. The screeches of the shin-shin were terrifyingly close, almost upon them.
'In here!' Tane hissed, pulling against her. There was a large hollow where the roots of a tree had encroached on the banks of the ditch, forming an overhang. Tane unstrapped his rifle – which had miraculously stayed snagged on his shoulder during the fall – and scrambled underneath, wedging his body in tight. There was just enough space for Jin to do so as well, pressing herself close to him.
Mere moments later, they heard a soft thud as a shin-shin dropped out of the trees and landed foursquare in the ditch.
Both of them held their breath. Tane could feel Jin's pulse against his chest, smell the scent of her hair. Ordinarily, it might have aroused him – priests of Enyu had no stricture of celibacy, as some orders did – but the situation they were in robbed him of any ardour. From where they hid at ground level, they could see only the tapered points of the shin-shin's stilt-legs, shifting as it cast about for its prey. It had lost sight of them as they tumbled, and now it sought them anew. A slight fall of dirt was the only hearld of the second demon's arrival in the ditch; that one had followed their trail down the slope, and was equally puzzled by their disappearance.
Tane began a silent mantra in his head. It was one he had not used since he was a child, a made-up nonsense rhyme that he pretended could make him invisible if he concentrated hard enough. Then he had been hiding from something entirely different. After a few moments, he adapted it to include a short prayer to Enyu. Shelter us, Earth Goddess, hide us from their sight.
The pointed ends of the shin-shins' legs moved this way and that in the moonlight, expressing their uncertainty. They knew their prey should be here; yet they could not see it. Tane felt the cold dread of their presence seeping into his skin. The narrow slot of vision between Jin's body and the overhang of thick roots and soil might be filled at any moment with the glowing eyes of the shin-shin; and if discovered, they were defenceless. He fancied he could sense their gaze sweeping over him, penetrating the earth to spot them huddled there.
Time seemed to draw out. Tane could feel his muscles tautening in response to the tension. One of the shin-shin moved suddenly, making Jin start; but whatever it had seen, it was not them. It returned to its companion, and they resumed their strange waiting. Tane gritted his teeth and concentrated on his mantra to calm himself. It did little good.
Then, a new sound: this one heavy and clumsy. The shin-shin stanced in response. Tane knew that sound, but he could not place it in his memory. The footsteps of some animal, but which?
The yawning roar of the bear decided the issue for him.
The shin-shin were uncertain again, their reaction betrayed by the shifting of their feet. The bear roared once more, thumping on to its forepaws, and began to advance slowly. The demons screeched, making a rattling noise and darting this way and that, trying to scare it away; but it was implacable, launching itself upright and then stamping down again with a snarl. There was the loping gallop as the bear ran towards them, not in the least cowed by their display. The shin-shin scattered as it thundered along the ditch, squealing and hissing their displeasure; but they gave the ground, and in moments they were gone, back into the trees in search of their lost prey.
Tane released the pent-up breath he had been storing, but they were not out of danger yet. They could hear the bear coming down the wide ditch, its loud snuffling as it searched for them.
'My rifle…'Jin whispered. 'If it finds us…'
'No,' he hissed. 'Wait.'
Then suddenly the bear poked down into the hollow, its brown, bristly snout filling up their sight as it sniffed at them. Jin clutched for the trigger of her rifle to scare it away; but Tane grabbed her wrist.
'The shin-shin will hear,' he whispered. 'We don't fear the bears in Enyu's forest.' He was less confident in his heart than his words suggested. Where once the forest beasts had been friends to the priests of Enyu, the corruption in the land had made them increasingly unpredictable of late.
The bear's wet nose twitched as it smelt them over. Jin was rigid with apprehension. Then, with a final snort, the snout receded. The bear lay heavily down in front of their hiding place, and there it stayed.
Jin shifted. 'Why did it not attack us?' she muttered.
Tane was wearing a strange grin. 'The bears are Enyu's creatures, just as Panazu's are the catfish, Aspinis's the monkeys, Misamcha's the ray or the fox or the hawk. Give thanks, Jin. I think we've been saved.'
Jin appeared to consider that for a time. 'We should stay here,' she said at length. 'The shin-shin will be waiting for us if we emerge before dawn.'
'I think she has the same idea,' Tane said, motioning with his eyes towards the great furred bulk that blocked them in.
The bear lay in front of their hollow throughout the night, and in spite of their discomfort the two of them slept. Jin's dreams were of fire and a horrible scorching heat; Tane's, as always, were of the sound of footsteps approaching his bedroom doorway, and the mounting terror that came with them.