The reverend fathers emerged with the speed of dogs on the hunt. Their shape was roughly human in terms of the number of limbs and the presence of a head and torso. But the movement and arrangement of the joints was closer to the arachnid. They moved across the ground too quickly, with the hideous suddenness of lizards. The faces were as if the most awful, hateful old men in the world, poisoned close to death with spite, had had their visages taken and then smudged by a giant thumb.
