He saw where Black Roger had come out of the water and
where his feet had plowed deep in the ash and char and smoldering
debris ahead. This trail he followed. The air he breathed was hot
and filled with stifling clouds of ash and char-dust and smoke.
His feet struck red-hot embers under the ash, and he smelled
burning leather. A forest of spruce and cedar skeletons still
crackled and snapped and burst out into sudden tongues of flame
about him, and the air he breathed grew hotter, and his face
burned, and into his eyes came a smarting pain--when ahead of him
he saw Black Roger. He was no longer calling out the Broken Man's
name, but was crashing through the smoking chaos like a great
beast that had gone both blind and mad. Twice David turned aside
where Black Roger had rushed through burning debris, and a third
time, following where Audemard had gone, his feet felt the sudden
stab of living coals. In another moment he would have shouted
Black Roger's name, but even as the words were on his lips,
mingled with a gasp of pain, the giant river-man stopped where the
forest seemed suddenly to end in a ghostly, smoke-filled space,
and when David came up behind him, he was standing at the black
edge of a cliff which leaped off into a smoldering valley below.
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