"But I want them dead," gritted Tip.
Loric squatted and looked at Tip level in the eye. "The Fey will see that just retribution is extracted."
As Beau took up the coin and broken strand, Tip stared back at Loric but said nought.
Loric took Tip by the shoulders. "This will I say: seldom do the Hidden Ones rise up as one, yet when they do, nothing can stay their hand within the margins of their domain."
"Then why don't they march on Modru?"
Loric shook his head and released the buccan. "Given their history, given the wrongs done to them in the past, they would avoid all contact with outsiders, avoid acting upon aught that does not directly overstep the boundaries they have set."
Beau retied the broken leather and bore thong and coin back across the room and held it out to Tipperton.
Tip struck at the offering but missed, for Beau twitched it aside.
Again Beau held it forth.
Tip pushed it away, saying, "Oh, Beau, can't you see that this has changed everything?"
Beau shook his head. "No it hasn't, Tip, not one whit."
Tip looked at him, anguish filling his gaze, and he turned up his hands in silent query.
Beau peered down at the coin and then back at Tipperton. "Let me ask you this, Tip: if it were you who had fallen instead of Rynna, would you expect her to abandon her command, to abandon her post, to set aside her sworn mission, and come to avenge your death?"
"But I didn't die," cried Tipperton.
"No you didn't, Tip, but she did, and that's a cruel fact. But this is a fact, too: she would expect no less of you than you would expect of her. She had a mission she kept to the end; you have a mission yet to fulfill. What would she ask of you?"
Again Beau held out the coin.
Tip looked down at the floor and then directly into Beau's eyes, sapphire meeting amber.
Again Beau said, "What would she ask of you?"
With a sob Tip reached out and took the coin. He looked at it long moments; then drawing a deep breath, he turned to Ruar. "I will fulfill my promise to a dead Kings-man, Coron Ruar, yet hear me: on this mission to Mineholt North, I would be a scout, and when it comes to battle, I would ride among the warriors and take as much revenge upon the Foul Folk as battle will allow."
Ruar raised an eyebrow. "I have heard it said that Waerlinga make the best of scouts."
Tipperton knelt upon one knee and held out the coin and thong to Ruar. "Then accept my service, Coron of the Dylvana."
The Coron took the offering and slipped it over the Waerling's bowed head. "Rise, Sir Tipperton, for so do I accept thy terms and count thee as scout and warrior among mine host."
With single-minded intensity, Tip began fletching arrows to fit his draw, and he urged Beau to go to the Elven forge and cast lead bullets for his sling. But Beau had pledged to Ruar his healing skills for the mission to Mine-holt North, and the buccan spent his days foraging for herbs and roots and leaves of mint and whatever else he could find that he could strip and peel and dry and grind to stock his medical supplies.
And whenever Beau went afield he was accompanied by Alor Melor, a slender Dylvana, some five foot two in height, with russet-colored hair and amber eyes. As Beau had said to Ruar, "I don't fancy being out there in the woods all alone with the Hidden Ones about. I mean, even though you say they are to be trusted, still, if one of them didn't get the word that Beau Darby was a friend, well then, Beau Darby just might come up among the missing."
Ruar had laughed but nevertheless had called to Melor and asked him to accompany Beau on the buccan's jaunts into the woods.
Melor himself was a healer, though he did carry a spear and seemed quite adept in its use, for when Beau had asked Melor to show him the way of such a weapon, Melor had demonstrated:
" 'Tis known as one of the great weapons," said Melor, flourishing the spear. "Thou canst stab with it-hai!-or use its blade as a cutting weapon-uwah!-nigh as well as a sword, though I must admit it has a long helve for such. Too, thou canst wield it in place of a quarterstaff-an e da!-or as a lance ahorse-cha! Lastly, thou canst cast it at a foe"-Melor hurled the weapon and spitted a shock of hay-"yet I would not advise flinging any weapon away except if no other choice presents itself."
"Huah," exclaimed Beau, "here all along I thought a spear was for throwing and little else."
"Nay, my friend"-Melor drew the spear from the hay and brushed stray stems from the blade-"that is the last of its uses."
Together Melor and Beau ranged far and wide across the glades and among the trees, and down in the fens as well. And Beau soon had his medicks well stocked, for Melor was an excellent herbalist and guide.
Tipperton, on the other hand, when he wasn't fletching, spent candlemarks at the target field, honing his already superb skill into one even the Elves admired.
And in the evenings he attended meetings held just for the scouts-poring over maps and listening to detailed descriptions of nearly every inch of the terrain 'tween here and there.
As days eked past, Tip's woe turned inward, and his eyes held an anguish deep… yet there, too, burned a simmering fire of rage. During the days he managed to set aside his heartache and devote his attention to preparing for war. Yet at night, at night, and alone in his bed, did grief in the darkness come sit at his side and fill the world entire.
At last, a fortnight and a day after the four had come to Bircehyll, Tip and Beau, Phais and Loric, along with the Elven host, they all set forth in a long cavalcade, astride horses-but for two ponies-with pack animals and spare mounts drawn behind.
They were heading for a rendezvous point some hundred miles away as the raven flies-longer by the route they would take-and ten days from now the Baeron were scheduled to come. As to the place they would meet, it was a clearing along the Landover Road, a principal east-west tradeway, anchored at one end at the high point of Crestan Pass in the Grimwalls and threading eastward through Darda Erynian and Riamon and Garia and Aralan and onward to lands far beyond.
And so, north they rode up through the heart of Darda Erynian, the cavalcade moving slowly among the thickset trees.
"I say," murmured Beau as they fared 'round the perimeter of an open glade, "did you notice, Tip, no shadows flickering out along our flanks?"
"Shadows?"
"Yar. When we first rode through these woods to Caer Lindor and then on to Bircehyll, it seemed that just beyond the corners of my vision there were flickers of movement, but each time I tried to see what was what, all I saw were shadows."
"Hmm. Perhaps that's all it was: shadows… shifting shadows."
Beau shook his head. "Me, I think it was Hidden Ones dogging our passage."
"And they're not doing it now?"
"Nar. They're all gone down south to deal with the Horde."
At this reminder Tip's eyes brimmed, and he and Beau rode onward another league or so in silence. But then out of the clear blue Beau added, "That, or they don't think we need watching, what with a whole Elven army at our beck."
"What are you saying, Beau: that the Hidden Ones were protecting us before?"
"Wull, from what Phais and Loric and Ruar have said, perhaps they are a bit more friendly than I thought." Beau threw up a quick hand of denial. "Oh, not that I think they're to be taken lightly-oh, no, I still believe they're as dangerous as can be-but with Phais and Loric along and showing no concern over the fact that we were in Black-wood, mayhap th- Oh, my goodness, I just remembered."
"What?"
"My dream. The one where Phais was talking to a shadow as a red fox stood by. Perhaps it wasn't a dream after all."
Tip rode onward, considering, yet ere he came to any conclusions, word was passed back chain that Ruar would have the remaining scouts up front to receive their assignments, and all thoughts of Hidden Ones flew from the buccan's mind as he spurred his pony forward.