Even as his attention focused on the sights and sounds of the forest around him, much of Iydahoe's consciousness dwelled on the young Kagonesti waiting for him in the grotto. The pathetic little tribe now numbered less than two dozen souls-and of them, only Kaheena and Iydahoe were proper warriors.
Kaheena had survived because he had been making the journey to the village of the Black Feathers when Istar had struck the tribe. When he had arrived at the neighboring village, Kaheena had found the same devastation that had greeted Iydahoe at Silvertrout-and by the time he had returned to his own village, the battle there was over.
Iydahoe, after taking the youngsters to the hidden grotto, had returned to the village to see what he could salvage. This had been very little. After the fight, the legionnaires had soaked the bodies and the wreckage with oil, burning all trace of the village into blackened, wasted rubble. Amid this ruin Iydahoe had met Kaheena. Together they waited several days to see if Altarath, the warrior sent to warn the Bluelake tribe, would return. They never saw him and were forced to conclude that the fourth tribe of the wild elves had met the same brutal fate as the other three-and that their tribemate had been swept into the disaster.
During the long, dark season that followed, the young wild elves had all but despaired under the knowledge that they might be the last survivors of their people on the broad face of Ansalon. Only Hawkan kept their hopes alive, telling them of the old gods, repeating the tale of the Grandfather Ram-the wise, ancient animal who had dwelled in the highest mountains, who had guided Father Kagonesti during the first years of the tribe. Those tales had sustained the flicker of vitality in their young elven breasts.
Hawkan could wield a weapon as well, but his primary skills were as shaman. Indeed, the old elf's healing and sustenance skills were all that had seen the survivors of the massacre through the cold winter following the coming of Istar's legion. Hawkan had known how to find food, or to summon it out of inedible roots and tubers by the use of his priestly magic. He healed the children when they became ill, had even nursed little Faylai-the tot whose name Iydahoe hadn't known at the time of the attack-through a fever that had threatened to consume her life in burning embrace.
Finally, then, with the coming of spring, Iydahoe had forced himself to hunt. During the summer and autumn, driven by that consuming fear, he had perfected his skills as a stalker, until nearly every time he ventured out he returned with a plump carcass of fresh meat. Kaheena had devoted time to nets and snares, and Bakali and the older youths had proved to wield deadly fish-spears, so between the two warriors and the younger males they had been able to adequately feed the tribe. By now, many strips of venison jerky had been smoked and dried in preparation for the winter. They would need still more, however, to get through the cold months that lay ahead.
Abruptly Iydahoe heard a foreign noise, a sound that riveted his attention back to his surroundings. The forest was mostly silent around him, but there it was again-a sound harsh, intrusive in origin.
It was the cold laugh of a human.
The noise brought back all the hatred, all the impotent fury that Iydahoe had buried since the day, a year earlier, when he had watched his village die. Since then he had avoided humans, and none had ventured near the grotto where the tribe now made its home.
The noise of the man seemed to come from the direction of the water hole, and Iydahoe began to understand the absence of deer. Soundlessly the warrior slipped into the forest beside the trail. He passed among the trunks and bushes without rustling a leaf, steadily advancing toward the valley bottom.
He found men very near the water. There were four: butchers, standing around the carcass of a doe that had been felled by cruel crossbow darts. Iydahoe watched the men build a roaring fire, roasting the tongue and several steaks, licking their bloody fingers and laughing while the rest of the deer was left to rot.
Iydahoe understood the benefits of remaining undiscovered. As long as the Istarians thought that the Kagonesti were all dead, they would send no more men to kill them. At the same time, he had chafed under the need for vengeance and against the caution that had forced him to hold his hand.
It was the laughter that forced his decision. Hearing these crude killers chuckling and joking over the remains of the deer was too much for Iydahoe to bear. His bow was raised, arrow sighted on the nearest human's back, before he even thought about the results of his actions.
The steel-tipped shaft flew true, piercing the fellow's tunic, spearing his heart. Too startled even to cry out, the dead man toppled over the remains of the doe as Iydahoe released his second arrow. That shaft took another human in the throat, while his third plunged into the next victim's heart. The fourth man, mad with fear, made a futile lunge toward his horse before Iydahoe's arrow brought him quickly, permanently down.
The young warrior didn't even look at the corpses as he passed through the camp, noting instead the litter, the chaos of garbage and debris left by the men's effort to clean the little deer. He claimed the doe's carcass, as well as some hardtack and salt that he found in one of the saddlebags. Hoisting his treasures to his shoulder, Iydahoe turned back to the forest, starting toward the secret shelter of the grotto.
A slash of white drew his eye to a nearby trunk. He saw that the humans had gouged a hatchet into this tree, and to many others extending in a line to the north. Apparently they had been marking a straight path through the forest, slashing the trees to show someone who came later exactly where they had gone.
Further angered by this encroachment, Iydahoe left the place. Some hours later, he entered the narrow gorge, passing between the tall trees, hugging close to the steep, rocky walls. He heard a sharp whistle, and Bakali dropped to the ground before him. As the eldest of the boys in the tribe, the youth took his sentry duties seriously Now he helped Iydahoe with the food, stepping from rock to rock on the stony ground. Though the tribe had lived here for a year, they had taken care to make no trail that could show an enemy where the little village was hidden.
The floor of the little vale was a flat, mossy expanse of soft ground. A half-dozen lodges of bark and skin stood among the shadows of the larger trees. Gray-haired Hawkan looked up from his labors before the largest of these lodges, but only nodded at his son's approach before lowering his face back to his eternal labor.
In front of Hawkan, carefully arranged on the ground, were the fragments Iydahoe had brought from the Silvertrout village. The shaman spent most of his time trying to arrange those fragments in the pattern that might recreate the Ram's Horn. Iydahoe, privately, thought this was a fruitless venture. For one thing, he didn't know if he had found all, or even the majority, of the spiraled horn's pieces. Some of the larger pieces formed a portion of the great bell, and a few others were recognizable as parts of the arcing curve, but it seemed undeniable that many other parts were missing. Iydahoe had even made a return trip to the ruins of the Silvertrout village, but had found only a few tiny shards in addition to the pieces he had earlier salvaged.
Iydahoe himself had remade and now carried the great axe of the Pathfinder. He had whittled a haft of stout iron- wood, and had fire-hardened the shaft before he mounted the long, narrow axe blade onto the wood. The steel had lost none of its edge, and when the warrior had cleaned the grime off it, it gleamed with the silvery brilliance that had marked it in ages past.