Danr fed it another stick and scooted his toes a little closer to the heat. Shadows capered across the huge trees around him, twisting around the smell of smoke. Darkness normally held no terrors for Danr, but he was more than an hour away from the village in the foothills of the Iron Mountains—Stane territory. Even the earth was unfamiliar. House-sized boulders thrust upward like the bones of giants, and gullies traced paths through the hills like their veins. Nothing was level, either. Even now, Danr sat on a slant. A few paces away, a creek rushed down the hill with a sound like chattering teeth. He clasped his knees and tried to keep his nerves under control. Only a fool lit a fire at night in the foothills or the mountains. Flames attracted attention from the Stane. The strange thing was that Danr had been following the ghost of a trail through these foothills, and just at the time he decided to rest, he had come across a ring of stones that had clearly encircled a fire, though years ago.
