"Speaking of which," put in Mandrake, a mercenary who also doubled as the company surgeon, "how's yours?"
It was not an unreasonable question, considering that the surgeon had plucked two arrows from the back of Vhenlar's lap since sunrise. The unseen elves who harried them had slain the hounds, but they apparently had a more lingering, humiliating fate in mind for the mercenaries.
"It's in a Beshaba-blasted sling, that's how it is!" Vhenlar said vehemently. "Along with yours, and his, and his, and his, and every damned one of us in this thrice bedamned forest!"
"Big sling," agreed Mandrake, thinking it best to humor Bunlap's second-in-command.
The archer heard the condescending note in Mandrake's voice but did not respond to it. He grimaced as a new wave of pain assaulted him. Walking was exceedingly painful, what with his new and humiliating wounds. The elven arrows had dealt him shallow and glancing blows, but somehow Vhenlar couldn't find it in his heart to be grateful for small mercies. Nor could he continue walking much longer. The damp chill that heralded the coming night was making his legs stiffen and wasn't doing his aching butt one bit of good.
"Send Tacher and Justin to scout for a campsite again," Vhenlar said.
"And let those wild elves pick us off while we sleep?" the surgeon protested. "Better to keep moving!"
Vhenlar snorted. If the man was such a fool as to think those deadly archers would be challenged by a moving target, there was no sense in wasting breath telling him otherwise. "A campsite? Now?" he prodded.
The mercenary saluted and quickened his pace so he could catch up to the men Vhenlar had named.
He might have disobeyed, Vhenlar noted resignedly, but for the fact that Bunlap had made it plain they were all to follow Vhenlar's orders. People tended to do what Bunlap said, and not merely for fear of reprisal- although such was usually harsh and swift in coining- but because there was something about the man to which people responded. After years in Bunlap's company, Vhenlar thought he had this elusive quality figured out. The mercenary captain knew precisely what he wanted, and he went about getting it with grim, focused determination. Men who lacked a direction of their own-and Tethyr was full of these-were attracted to Bunlap like metal filings to a magnet. So when Bunlap told them to pursue the elves into the forest, they went. And they were still going, and they would likely die going, Vhenlar concluded bitterly.
Their task was important, Bunlap had insisted, though he himself had taken off for the fortress to gather and train men for the next assault. The captain had left right after the failed ambush, for he realized they were unlikely to catch up to the elven raiders, much less engage them in pitched battle. Vhenlar's task was to follow the elves, kill a few if he could, and collect as many bows and bolts of black lighting as he could get. His men were also supposed to retrieve the bodies of the elves slain in battle, as well as any who might die of their wounds and be discarded along the way, fot such
would be useful in turning still more people against the forest elves.
The elves, however, seemed determined that Vhenlar would get none of these things. They apparently carried their dead and wounded, and they used green arrows that, although finely crafted, were of little use in Bunlap's plans. If the mercenaries did not have hounds to sniff out the nearly invisible trail of blood, the elves would have eluded them altogether. It was a stroke of genius for the fleeing elves to send a party of archers to circle back and slay the hounds. Even Vhenlar had to admit that. But what else the elves had in mind, he could not begin to say.
A distant roar sent a spasm of cold terror shimmering down the Zhentish archer's spine. The two scouts hesitated, looking back at Vhenlar as if to protest their assignment. In response, he placed a hand on his elven bow and narrowed his eyes in his best menacing glare.
"I'm for lighting torches," Justin said defiantly. "Can't see where we're going, otherwise."
Vhenlar shrugged. Tales were told of the fearsome reprisals the forest folk took against any who dared to bring fire into the forest, but he doubted their elven shadows would kill the scouts-leastwise, not until they'd herded them to their unknown destination! And Justin had a point: it was dark, for in the deep forest not even the faint light of moon and stars could penetrate the thick canopy.
So he watched as the scout took a torch from his pack and struck flint to steel. A few sparks scattered into the night like startled fireflies, and then the flame rose high. Vhenlar blinked at the sudden bright flare of light. His eyes focused, and then widened. There were not two, but three figures standing in the circle of torchlight!
A wild elf, a young male with black braids and fierce black eyes, hauled back a waterskin and prepared to douse the flame. Or so Vhenlar assumed. He watched, as
transfixed as the two dumbfounded scouts, as the elf hurled the contents of the skin. Not at the torch-wielding Justin, but at Tocher.
And then he was gone, before any of the mercenaries could unsheathe a blade or nock an arrow.
Justin sniffed, and his face screwed up into an expression of extreme disgust as he regarded the other scout. "You smell like something my mother drinks outta painted teacups!" he scoffed.
The analogy was apt. Tacher had been doused with a strong infusion of mint. Vhenlar, who could see no reason for this action, turned to one of their rangers-a tall, skinny fellow from the Dalelands. Once a noble ranger-whatever the Nine Hells that meant-he'd fought the Tuigan horde and seen his illusions about humankind burn to ash in the inferno that was war. Since then, he'd taken to looking out for himself and had developed a real talent for it.
"You know more about the forest than most of us," Vhenlar said. "Why'd the elf do that? He coulda killed Tacher and Justin both, easy."
The ranger shook his head impatiently and held up a hand, indicating a need for silence. The others fell quiet and listened, but their ears were not as sharp as those of the Dalesman. To Vhenlar's ears, there was only the constant hum and chirp of insects, the occasional shriek of a hunting raptor, and the whispering of the night winds through the thick forest canopy. A whispering, Vhenlar noted, that seemed to be growing louder.
Suddenly the ranger's eyes went wide. "Wintermint!" he muttered and then took off at a frantic run.
The others watched, bemused, as the ranger crashed off heedlessly toward the south. Before they could follow suit, a roar rolled through the forest-a fearsome sound that was both shriek and rumble, a cry of rage such as few of them had ever heard before. Yet there was not a man among them who did not know instinctively what it meant:Dragon.
Vhenlar had heard men speak of dragonfear, the paralyzing terror that comes from looking into the eyes of a great wyrm. He now knew that the very sound of a dragon's cry could root a man's boots to the soil and turn his legs to stone.
The dragonfear lasted but a moment, but that was long enough. With the speed of a wizard's transformation, the dragon's passage through the forest changed from a rustling murmur into a deafening crash. Like a tidal wave, the dragon came on. Vhenlar would never had guessed that something so large could move with such speed!
Then he caught a glimpse of it through the trees, still a couple hundred feet away but closing fast. It was a white, and it glittered like some enormous, reptilian ghost against the darkness of the forest. The creature stopped, fell back on its haunches, and inhaled deeply.
The trees parted, the leaves cringing away and falling in brittle shards as an icy winter wind tore through the forest. Widening as it came, a cone of devastation blasted everything in its path and reached icy, grasping hands toward the mercenaries.
With the clarity of absolute terror, with a heart-stopping fear that made everything around him seem to slow down to a speed of a drifting snowflake, Vhenlar watched it come.