When he hoisted his pack to his back, he thought of the locket, the picture of the woman. He was aware of an acute sense of loss, astonished to realize that he missed her! In the weeks since leaving Khuri-Khan, he had passed through the most rugged, inhospitable country on Krynn, and always she had been his companion. She helped him overcome his pronounced vertigo as he negotiated cliff-bracketed passes, or steep, treacherous glaciers. She had shared his frigid camp in rocky swales, where the nearest firewood was a thousand feet away- straight down. Always she had helped him ford streams, avoid avalanches.
Ariakas even wondered to himself if it had been the lady who had warned him about the ogre patrol two days earlier. He had always before taken for granted his innate ability to sense danger. It had been key to success shy;ful campaigns, enabling him and his men to escape deadly ambushes. Yet when he had encountered the ogres, the lady's presence articulated the alarm with peculiar urgency, precision… and care.
It had been the day before yesterday. Drizzling rain obscured vision, and Ariakas was chilled and uncom shy;fortable as he trudged across lowland terrain. A strong premonition, which seemed to him like the lady's voice, warned him of danger. Taking shelter in a thicket of wil shy;lows beside his trail, he silently watched a half dozen ogres march into view, passing within a few paces. Each of the beasts was a Basher, dressed in the crude loin shy;cloths of sentinels of Bloten. Bashers passionately hated humans, dwarves, and elves. Eight feet in height, with weight nearly double Ariakas's, each of the long-armed monsters wielded an assortment of clubs, axes, and swords. One of them alone was a threat to the most capable warrior-a band such as this, if alerted to his presence, would inevitably track him down and kill him.
As he watched the monsters disappear, it was hard for Ariakas to suppress his desire to attack. Remembering years of campaigns, of friends slain and villages razed, all his old hatreds threatened to surge into life. Curi shy;ously, then, he found cold solace in the fact that now he had no such obligations, no responsibilities beyond him shy;self. The ogres vanished into the rain, and without fur shy;ther interruption or worry, Ariakas had resumed his trek to Sanction.
His attention returned to the matter before him. His eyes scanned the dry, brittle grass around his camp, and he pondered evidence that the thief was a very capable individual. At first glance he could see no sign of the intruder. His own bootprints from the day before stood out clearly, showing his course through the narrow val shy;ley below, following the pattern of switchbacks up to this high ledge.
Perhaps that's how he followed me, Ariakas mused. The trail was little-used, and the previous week's rain had ensured that his tracks were the only marks in the mud.
But why would the thief have scrambled up to such a height, and then only stolen the locket? Sure, it was the most valuable item he possessed, but his purse of coins held several valuable steel pieces, and no self-respecting cutpurse would have left them behind. Perhaps the fel shy;low was shrewd, and only went for the easily trans shy;portable item of high value.
Too, the intruder must be a person of remarkable stealth. He had passed within a few feet of Ariakas, and the mercenary captain was a very light sleeper. The thief had opened the pack, taken a drink from the flask of lavarum, and removed the locket-all without attracting the man's attention.
Then the final question-why had the pilferer left him alive and armed? Above all things, Ariakas was a practi shy;cal man. He disdained thievery-it was the desperate act of a weakling, he believed with conviction. And, too, it was impractical. A thief could not help but make ene shy;mies, and odds indicated that sooner or later one of those enemies would catch up with him and exact vengeance. Therefore, in his life Ariakas had only taken those things he earned, or whose owners stood no chance of ambushing him at some unknown moment in the future.
Yet in stealing this locket and leaving Ariakas alive, this thief seemed to be asking for trouble! Perhaps the fel shy;low had supposed the theft would not be noticed for a day or two, but that seemed a farfetched explanation. Certainly Ariakas never would have taken such a risk.
As he continued to search for signs of a spoor, he began to seriously question his prospects for success. For long minutes he scrutinized the ground, circling his camp in an ever-widening spiral, without success. Surely the culprit hadn't flown from the scene of his crime!
Again the curl of fury twisted his lip, unnoticed by the warrior as he grunted and muttered his frustration. He was no woodsman, but neither was he a novice in the ways of the wild. Certainly the wet ground would yield some clue as to his thief's route of departure!
He considered the possibility of a blind pursuit-sim shy;ply making a guess as to which way the fellow had gone. His chances of success were slim, but without a spoor it seemed the best he could do.
A tiny rock, flipped so that its muddy side faced the sky, caught his eye. Freezing in place, Ariakas studied the slope rising away from the stone. The snarl disap shy;peared from his lips, replaced by a thin, taut-lipped smile. The footprint was so faint as to be almost invis shy;ible-merely a place where toes had pressed into the mountainside in an effort to gain secure purchase. Only the dislodged stone, streaked with mud where all the other stones had been washed clean by constant drizzle, told him that this was the place. Squinting, he looked upward, and found another obscure print a dozen paces away.
The trail! Without hesitation he secured the pack to his shoulders and made sure that his sword rested lightly in its scabbard. His own boots gouged deep, muddy wounds in the soil as he followed the faint track, long strides carrying him quickly up the hillside.
Throughout the day he followed the spoor across the tumbled landscape of the Khalkists. The rocky soil yielded precious few clues, but each time the path threat shy;ened to peter out before him, another subtle indication appeared.
Gradually he became aware that his quarry made no particular efforts to disguise his route. Ariakas followed a winding series of valleys away from the shoreline, but not once did the thief attempt to double back, or select a surprising turn in his path. Instead, he followed the course of the valleys, generally working his way toward a high pass that Ariakas could see above and before him.
By late afternoon the warrior had entered the flat val shy;ley before that pass, growing increasingly certain that the mountainous gap must have been his quarry's desti shy;nation. For one thing, the vale he now traversed was a steep-sided gorge, with sheer rock walls climbing to the right and left. The only points of access seemed to be the slope he had climbed, which led from the coast of the Newsea to the narrow gash in the stony ridge before him.
Here, in this narrow valley, Ariakas found solid confir shy;mation that he was on the right trail-and that the thief took no precautions to avoid pursuit. The left wall of the gorge, which the trail had followed below, suddenly veered inward, jutting to the very shore of the narrow stream that trickled along the valley floor. Low, muddy banks bracketed the tiny flowage, and the rock wall before him forced Ariakas to cross.
There in the mud he found his proof: a pair of foot shy;prints, where the thief had tiptoed through the muck and then either forded the stream or skipped across on the tops of several slick rocks rising from the placid water. Ariakas waded quickly through-the water didn't even reach the top of his boots-and on the other side, as he looked for confirmation, he received a surprise.
Two sets of prints led away from the stream, turning, as he had guessed, toward the looming pass in the high ridge. The information momentarily puzzled him, throwing a number of his assumptions into doubt. Could it be that a pair of intruders had slipped through his camp without awakening him? The odds of that stretched credulity to the snapping point. And, too, why had they let him live, and not even tried to take his sword!