It was only Osha, and he stopped behind the downed horses, spinning around as he drew and aimed his bow back toward the open road.
“Shade!” he shouted.
The dog appeared within a breath and raced in at Wynn’s side.
Wynn had no idea what had happened here, but any relief that they’d all survived was short. The duke was nowhere to be seen, and she hurried to Chane.
He didn’t even look down and merely grabbed her forearm to pull her away from the wounded Suman as he tilted his head once toward the trunk.
“Open it quickly,” he said. “See that it contains the orb.”
“Wait,” Wynn countered. “Where is the duke?”
Shade started clawing at the trunk, and Osha soon came to help her. Wynn looked back and up to Chane, for he still hadn’t answered.
“Where’s the duke?” she repeated.
“Run into trees,” Osha answered instead, but Wynn still waited on Chane.
He brushed back his hood, stripped off his mask, and stuffed it into his belt. As he took a step toward the forest, she shifted Jausiff’s device to her other hand, holding it and the staff as she grabbed his arm with her free hand.
“Osha is correct,” Chane said. “But ... perhaps so was Shade ... somehow.”
Wynn didn’t know what that meant, but she let go of him and looked warily in all directions.
“Sau’ilahk is here?” she asked quietly.
There was a long pause. “No.”
She looked up and found Chane, with his longer dwarven sword in hand, still watching the trees.
“I sensed—felt—something,” he said almost absently. “I could smell the duke, and he was alive ... but ...” His narrowed eyes shifted toward Shade.
“Did the duke have an orb key?” Wynn asked.
Finally Chane looked down at her. “Yes. You stay with Shade and Osha and—”
As Chane’s gaze shifted again, Wynn followed it.
Both Shade and Osha had backed off from the opened trunk. There inside of it was the dark form of a globe and a spike, as if carved from one piece of stone.
“Get it to our wagon and guard it!” Chane rasped.
He took off into the forest before Wynn could make him explain the strange things he had said. Osha rose, bow in one hand with another arrow fitted to its slack string, and he stared after Chane.
“We have the orb, so the duke is no longer needed,” he said in Elvish. “Why did Chane go after him?”
Wynn ignored this and looked down at Shade. If the duke knew how to manipulate an orb with a key, had he also learned—from the wraith or on his own—how to use a key to track an orb?
“Go!” she told Shade. “Help Chane get that orb key, no matter what.”
Shade hesitated, but perhaps she knew enough to value what was at stake. Leaving Wynn and Osha alone with the orb, she bolted off after Chane.
“Martelle and that other guard could awaken any moment,” she told Osha. “There are more keep guards out there ... and Aupsha. We need to move now.”
Osha crouched and grabbed one end handle of the trunk, then waited for her to do likewise as he eyed the one Suman left alive. Wynn didn’t turn to look at that man, who’d been watching and listening.
How much of what had been said had that one understood? What else, if anything, might he know to connect to what he’d heard? Her thoughts turned darker than she would have ever imagined.
That guard should not be left alive.
One living horse tangled in the wagon’s harness kicked and whinnied.
Wynn turned, looking at it lying half across its dead companion. It kicked again uselessly into the air with one forehoof. There was no time to worry about such a thing while trying to safeguard an artifact—a potential weapon—sought by the Ancient Enemy’s minions.
And yet ... too many innocents always ended up suffering in her wake.
“Osha, give me your dagger.”
As he held it out, she hesitated and looked down at Jausiff’s device, which she still gripped along with her staff. She had the orb, but she was reluctant to let go of the slightly curved central piece of another orb key. It would go dormant when she did so, and she did not know how to reactivate it. It could be of so much use in finding the final orb, but she certainly couldn’t hold on to it endlessly until then.
Tucking the device inside her robe, Wynn let go of it after another brief hesitation. She took the dagger from Osha, but then stalled in eyeing that one Suman now warily watching her.
“Bârtva’na!” Osha whispered in an’Cróan—Do not.
Wynn didn’t look at him and went off to cut the horse free.
Chane ran through the trees with his senses fully widened. He paused every thirty strides to listen, but he did not hear any movement ahead. Then he heard something coming behind him, and ducked behind a bramble.
When he heard earth tearing under claws, he rose and stepped into the open even before Shade raced out around a moss-laden oak. At least she had not howled in her hunt, though perhaps she did not sense what she had on the road. However, he was not pleased that only Osha remained to guard Wynn.
This provided all the more reason to find the duke as quickly as possible.
Shade did not slow and raced straight by Chane.
He stared after her before he realized she might track their quarry better than he could. He took off after her and exerted himself to keep up—to keep Shade’s tail in sight. Not that he needed to do so, for he would have heard her from a distance by the way she tore through the brush. Perhaps so would the duke.
Shade suddenly swerved.
When Chane caught up to where he had last seen her, she was gone. The whole forest was silent as he peered around the fringe of a clearing. His gaze finally locked on a dim form in the darkness who was watching him from the clearing’s far side.
The duke must have realized that running was pointless.
The arrow was gone from his right hand. Perhaps he had snapped and pulled it out midflight, but that gloved hand looked wrong more than wounded. Its black leather bulged, as if the hand had swollen too much, and the ends of the glove’s fingers were split open.
Chane did not see bloodied fingertips. Dark talons protruded in their place.
The duke suddenly raised his other hand outward as his mouth began to work.
Chane was too far away to hear clearly. He charged into the clearing to close the distance before the duke could unleash another line of racing fire. For an instant he almost remembered seeing that effect once before.
Violent wind slammed in all around Chane and almost twisted him off his feet.
Leaves and debris from the ground swirled up around him and blinded him as he stumbled. Almost instantly, painful droplets of water whirled in to pelt him harder and harder until he felt their sting too much. Everywhere he tried to look, he ended up shielding his eyes and face as those droplets began turning into wind-driven hail.
He no longer saw, smelled, or heard anything in the wind’s roar except the crackle of branches around the clearing’s edge. He whipped his longsword all around and tried to draw the older short one as he fought to regain a sense of direction. Even when he tried to run blindly, the pelting and hammering maelstrom still engulfed him.
Either the duke was trying to gain time to flee or to hobble him in order to ...
Chane kept slashing with his sword as he turned every way to keep from being assaulted from behind. Amid panic, something else came to him.
This spell or ... whatever ... was too much for a mere dabbler such as himself. He had even heard of a thaumaturge who could manipulate the atmosphere in this way. Without many years of training, the duke could not have the knowledge and skill for this arcane effect—and less so for a spell rather than a ritual or using an object made through artificing.