"I did not!" Trap objected, and then changed his mind, though he decided not to mention it to the dwarves.
The nearest dwarf turned his mount and galloped toward the kender. Trap was still willing to turn out his pouches and prove he had nothing of theirs, but thinking the dwarf might run him down in his haste, Trap took a step to the side. He found himself another fifty feet away, this time to the north.
"A person should wear a hat when he uses this ring," he said, more to himself than the dwarves. The wind, whistling in his ears, was enough to give him an earache.
The first dwarf was still galloping toward where the kender had been before he took his last step. A second charged Trap's new position.
"What a wonderful game," he said and took another two steps, completely bypassing the four still on the slope. He stopped twenty feet away. Tolem, the leader, started toward him.
"Can't catch me," Trap caroled as he leaped into the air, spinning around. Definitely a mistake, he decided. He continued to spin four feet above the ground as he whipped through the brush. He seemed to be flung in several directions at once.
The dwarves charged in all directions, trying to catch him. He saw their faces, red with rage, and their glaring eyes as he sailed by them.
For a moment Trap seemed to hang in the air right above Tolem who reached up to grab him. Then by some perversity of the ring, he whipped around and dropped to sit on the croup of Tolem's pony, facing backward.
The startled animal reared. Tolem lost the reins as he grabbed at the saddle to keep from falling. Trap slid off the croup, stumbled twice, and found himself more than a hundred feet away, standing at the bottom of the hill.
He lost his balance and sat on the ground, his head still spinning. The dwarves had not spotted him, so he stayed where he was, letting his equilibrium settle while they raced around looking for him. Four of the six had pulled out their axes and were shouting threats and imprecations.
"Find that thief!" Tolem shouted to the other dwarves.
"There they go again, calling me a thief," Trap muttered. He was growing irritated with all the distrust.
"I know! I'll show them!" he announced, speaking at large to the nearest bushes. Ten magic steps took him around the hill and to his tethered pony. He retrieved his hoopak. Then, careful to measure his steps, he came to a stop in the exact middle of the group of angry dwarves.
He appeared so suddenly that the dwarves' surprise slowed their reactions, but Trap was ready. Using the pointed steel end of his hoopak he poked one rider in the rear. The dwarf gave a yell, jumped up in the saddle, and fell off his mount.
The rest waved their axes and charged him.
Confident he could elude his pursuers, he took two long steps and moved six feet.
"Oops," he muttered and ducked behind a bush as the dwarves charged, so intent on him they nearly struck each other with their weapons.
"Excuse me!" he said, ducking down into the under-brush. Keeping his head down, he scampered from bush to bush, narrowly escaping the dwarves. He dashed into a thick, high clump of bushes. Momentarily out of sight, he picked up a stone. Using the sling of his hoopak, he sent it skittering along the ground to the north.
The dwarves charged the sound of clattering rock. Trap crept south and then back toward the small copse of woods, the direction the dwarves would not expect him to go.
Still, they might think of it, and it would be best for them to think he was seeking the safety of the trees. He found a spring with a muddy bank and was careful to leave footprints heading west until he was on firm ground again. Then he turned south and hid under a large, thick bush.
Safe for the moment, he gazed down at the ring, took it off and inspected it closely. He shook it and held it up to his ear. Then he decided magic wouldn't slosh like water in a jug. He put the ring back on his finger and took another cautious step. No magic widened his kender pace. Disappointed, he took the ring off and slipped it back into his pouch.
He hated to think he had used up all the magic. Taking giant steps had been fun. Even spinning around in the air had been interesting. And he had accomplished some-thing important. He had kept the dwarves, now milling about trying to find him, from following Ripple and Halmarain.
But the sun was down, it would soon be dark, and how was he to find his sister and the little wizard?
Trap sat on the ground inside a clump of bushes and thought about the dwarves as well as his friends. The dwarves were still beating the bushes when one found the footprints by the spring.
After a short conference they dashed off toward the woods. The little wizard, Ripple, and the animals they led had been out of sight when the dwarves appeared. Trap had hidden his mount, the dwarves seemed to think that their quarry had returned to the copse and the road.
The kender worked his way through the underbrush until he reached his mount and set out in search of the rest of his party.
"The way they brandished those axes, they certainly weren't friendly anymore," Trap told his pony. "And I'm tired of being called a thief. I didn't take anything from them. Not one even came close enough to me to drop anything in my pouches."
To make certain, he opened them one at a time, fingering and identifying various items. Except for a pretty little stone he had found in the creek, he could not find a single item he had not possessed before he met the dwarves.
He pulled it out and held it close to his face since the sun had set and he could barely see it. He considered it as the pony picked its way through the brush. It was only a rock, smoothed by the stream. He had picked it up before the dwarves arrived. In putting it back into his pouch he found another one. He pulled it out too. By that time the twilight had deepened until he could not see the second stone, but by touch he remembered it. It was not stone at all, but the little gray-green disk of glass he had found on the floor of the wizard Orander's workroom after the attack of the merchesti.
"And I had this one long before I met the dwarves," he said as he put it back in his pouch. Since he could not see the trail in front of the pony, he dismounted and led the animal as he went in search of his sister and his friends.
He wandered for hours trying to find the others. Unable to see their trail, he had decided to stop for the night and continue his search at dawn. He was looking for a likely place to stop for the night when he stumbled on their camp. He startled them as he walked out of the darkness.
"Trap!" Ripple cried out and jumped up from the fire.
"Him dead, make a good tale…" Grod said. At the approach of the pony he had jumped up and waved his dead squirrel in an attempt to ward off anything unfriendly. Umpth stood holding the wagon wheel.
"I'm not so dead!" Trap replied with heat as he led his pony into the shallow cave which was hardly more than a depression in the stony hillside.
Ripple filled her cup with hot tea and cut him a generous slice of ham. She tucked it into a bun of day old bread and he was munching away when Halmarain looked up from the study of her spellbooks.
"You were able to keep the dwarves from following us," she said. She made a statement as if she expected no less from the kender.
"Of course I did!" He accepted the credit as if he had planned the outcome of his adventure "They were certainly mad and I don't understand it at all," Trap said. "They kept calling me a thief, but you know we don't have anything of theirs."
"Of course I do," Halmarain mocked Traps tone.
"Then you might reward him by doing some nice magic," Ripple said, a martial light in her eye.
"Then Trap tell story," Grod said with a grin.
Chapter 17
So no part of history would be lost, Astinus recorded…