Kronn, Giffel and Riverwind started toward the door. Before they could leave the room, however, Swiftraven rose from his brother’s side. “No, my chief!” he called.
The old Plainsman stopped, his hand on the latch of the door. He turned to glower at Swiftraven.
The young warrior did not quail. He stood firm, his head upraised. “Do not go, my chief,” he said. “The kender need you here to help prepare for the siege. You cannot risk your life this way.”
“Boy, you presume too much,” Riverwind growled. His eyes blazed. “Moonsong is my daughter. Would you have me do nothing, knowing those beasts out there have her?”
“No, my chief,” Swiftraven replied gravely. “But you do not need to go. I can follow the ogres’ trail as well as you. Better, perhaps. Let me go in your place.”
Riverwind and Swiftraven looked at each other. With a great effort of will, the old Plainsman nodded. “Very well, Swiftraven. Go. Find my daughter.”
“Brightdawn should know about this,” Kronn said as Swiftraven strode toward the door. “She’s at your house, Riverwind. Pax and Catt can go get her, bring her here before we leave.”
Swiftraven, however, shook his head. “No, Kronn. We’ve lost enough time-we can’t afford to lose any more.” He paused, though, then reached over his shoulder and slid an arrow out of his quiver. He offered the shaft to Riverwind. “It is the way of the Que-Teh to leave a token for those we love when we go to war,” he said. “My chief, will you give this to Brightdawn after I have gone?”
Nodding, Riverwind accepted the arrow. “I will.”
Beaming with pride, Swiftraven turned back to the sickbed. “Farewell, my brother,” he said. “I will bring Moonsong back to you.”
Moving with swift purpose, he marched out of the room, Kronn and Giffel on his heels.
Chesli’s Creek had been a clear, babbling nil five miles west of Kendermore. It had been a popular picnicking place among the kender, and its bed had been covered with smooth, round stones, perfect for hurling from hoopaks.
The blight Malystryx had brought upon the land had changed the clear waters to a narrow, brown drizzle that trickled from one stagnant pool to another. The greenberry bushes that grew along its grassy banks were leafless skeletons that rattled in the hot wind. A fawn, scrawny and shivering with sickness, dipped its head to lap at the fetid water. Warped by the dragon’s curse upon the Kenderwood, it was blind in one eye and barely had the strength to stand.
On a low rise that once had been an islet in the middle of the stream, a large, lichen-crusted rock split down the middle. With a soft click it swung open, revealing a shaft and earthen staircase that led down into the ground.
Swiftraven emerged stealthily from the rock, an arrow nocked on his bow, and quickly looked around. As Kronn and Giffel climbed out of the shaft behind him, the young warrior’s gaze focused on the fawn. It looked at him, quaking, but did not flee. Instead, it kept its head low, bleating softly.
Without hesitating, he pulled back his bowstring and shot the fawn through the heart. It groaned thankfully for the end to its pain, slumped to the ground, and died.
Kronn looked at Swiftraven and nodded silently. Behind them, Giffel bent down by the false rock and pushed it shut. It clicked closed, once more nothing more than another boulder in the increasingly barren, rock-strewn landscape. He hurried over to the others, pulling his battak-a studded dub with a short blade at its tip-from his belt. “All right,” he whispered. “In case… well, just in case, there’s a small stone next to the boulder there. Twist it to open the shaft.”
Swiftraven had another arrow ready. His eyes flicked from tree to tree, constantly searching for movement. “Where did you find my brother?”
“This way,” Giffel answered. “It’s not far.” He crossed the ruins of the creek, and the others followed, tense and alert. They moved through the dead forest like ghosts, making no more sound than the wind. Giffel threaded through the barren undergrowth for five hundred paces, then stopped and pointed.
A small clearing lay before them, with a worn, exposed rock in its midst. Beside the stone, the dark stain of Stagheart’s blood lingered on the ground.
Slowly, Swiftraven crept toward the stain. He crouched down beside it, examining it, then looked back at the two kender and jerked his head for them to come forward.
Moonsong’s abductors had been ogres, and they had not been concerned about hiding their passage, so it only took him a minute to find their spoor. Branches had snapped off trees, and bushes were uprooted. There was blood, too. At least one of them had been wounded, most likely by Stagheart before he fell.
The track led back toward Kendermore. Toward the camps of the ogre horde.
Swiftraven looked at Kronn and Giffel. Both kender nodded silently. The young warrior pointed forward with his readied arrow; then the threesome started forward. They stayed off the ogres’ trail, keeping a dozen paces to the side. They walked a league, neither stopping nor talking. Then suddenly Swiftraven stopped, hunkering low. Behind him, the two kender also drew to a halt.
“What?” Giffel hissed.
“Ogres,” Swiftraven said. He pointed.
Peering ahead, the kender saw dark shapes among the trees, barely fifty yards in front of them.
“Guards,” Kronn said. “Two of them. We must be very close.” Moving quickly, he started taking apart his chapak.
“What are you doing?” the Plainsman asked.
Kronn didn’t answer. He unscrewed his weapon’s axe head, removed the plug from the butt of its handle, and dumped out the coiled rope inside. Then he gave the haft a twist, and a metal plate covered the insides of the flute’s fingerholes, locking in place. “Let me take care of them,” he said, setting aside the haft and fishing in one of his many pouches. “I can do it neatly and quietly.”
After a moment’s digging, he pulled out a long, thin wooden box and opened its hinged lid. Inside were a dozen slender darts. He removed two and clamped them between his teeth as he returned the box to his pouch. Then, carefully, he pulled out a small, dark vial. Smiling grimly, he unstopped it and dipped one of the darts into it. The dart’s needle-sharp point came away coated with glistening, black fluid. Then he did the same with the second dart.
Clutching the blowgun, he crept forward on his haunches, through the undergrowth. Giffel and Swiftraven watched him go. Kronn crossed half the distance to the ogres, moving from cover to cover in quick, silent bursts. At last he stopped behind a low, brown-needled shrub. He set down one of his darts, slid the other into the blowgun, and raised the weapon to his lips. Lining up his sights with the farther of the two ogres, he drew in a deep breath, puffed out his cheeks, and blew.
The dart hissed through the air, striking the ogre in the neck. The creature swatted at it irritably, as if it were a mosquito. Then it blinked twice, fell to its knees, and slumped limply to the ground.
Its fellow stared at it in shock. By the time it realized what had happened, Kronn had fired his second dart, hitting it in the leg. It took a moment longer for the venom to work its way through the second ogre’s veins, but it was still dead before it could do more than grunt in surprise.
Kronn crept back to the others and swiftly reassembled his chapak. “I doubt they posted more guards than that,” he murmured. “They won’t be expecting anything to come from this direction, really. Our way should be clear from here.”
Moonsong drifted along the shores of consciousness. Her head lolled from side to side, and she moaned in pain. Her right cheek was badly bruised, and blood was drying on her bottom lip. Her ribs ached fiercely, too. She had dim memories of an ogre’s booted foot slamming into her side. Worst of all, though, was the burning in her wrists.
The ogres had bound her hands tightly with coarse rope, then had hung that rope from a stake in the middle of their camp. She had tried to fight them, but one had punched her, and her world had fallen into blackness. Now, as she fought her way back toward lucidity, she could no longer feel her fingers, and her wrists blazed with agony where the ropes had chafed them raw.