Avner pulled his dagger from inside his tunic, calling. "Tavis, your back!"
The youth hurled his dagger. As the blade sliced through the air, Tavis spun around. He saw two ogres stepping around the bend, less than twenty paces away. Both were drawing their bowstrings back to fire.
Avner's dagger soared past Tavis's head and sailed straight at an ogre's throat. Normally, such a small blade would not fell an ogre, but the boy's aim was so true the knife took the creature right in the gullet, burying itself to the hilt. The brute released his arrow prematurely and collapsed, a surprised squawk gurgling from his mouth.
Tavis aimed at the second ogre, releasing his arrow as the brute released his. The scout did not wait to see his shaft strike. As soon he felt his bowstring scrape free of his fingers, he rolled to one side, crashing through the lifeless limbs beneath the fallen tree. The ogre's arrow clattered into the dry boughs and skipped away.
Pulling another arrow from his quiver. Tavis crawled out of the tangle of branches. He looked up and glimpsed his attacker's form standing in the same place he had been a moment earlier. The scout nocked his arrow and fired-not realizing until the shaft was in flight that he had already killed his target. The brute was pinned to a tree, the fletching of Tavis's first arrow protruding from the center of his chest. The second shaft split the first, driving through the ogre's body in the same hole.
The hum of ogre bows sounded from down the ravine, then Basil and Avner came diving over the toppled pine. Tavis spun around and saw a flurry of black shafts flying in their direction. Looking past the immediate danger, he spied a dozen loutish beaters scurrying up the ravine. Tavis allowed the ogre arrows to fall harmlessly to the ground, then nocked an arrow.
The ogres stopped running and dived for cover. Knowing it would take a moment before the beaters could fire, the scout spun around to face the ambushers. He glimpsed three more silhouettes slipping behind tree trunks.
"Up there!" Tavis gestured toward the side gully.
Basil and Avner sprinted into the gulch. Tavis followed more slowly, pointing his arrow first uphill, then downhill. The ogres made no move to prevent the escape and did not even show themselves. There could only be one reason for the lack of pursuit, Tavis realized. The brutes no longer saw any reason to risk their lives, which meant they believed they had herded their quarry into a trap.
Confident the ogres would not pursue him into the narrow confines of the side gulch, Tavis paused to look around. This gully was a small one, lined on both sides by sheer cliffs of black-streaked gneiss. Like the ravine from which he and his companions had just come, it was filled with towering pines, though the trees here looked less healthy. They were overcrowded, and the small area prevented them from extending their branches fully. Avner and Basil were still sprinting up the center of the gulch, heedless that it was an ideal place for an ambush.
Not wishing to call out and let the ogres know he had anticipated their trap, Tavis fired his arrow up the gulch. The shaft hissed past Basil's shoulder and lodged in a tree, bringing both the verbeeg and Avner to a halt. They turned around and peered at the scout, their mouths gaping open.
Tavis motioned for them to remain where they were, then put his bow over his shoulder. Next, he took his dagger and opened a lengthy but shallow cut along his forearm. Once the wound began to bleed profusely, he walked up the gulch, dripping blood on the ground as he went.
When the scout reached his companions, Avner looked at him as if he were crazy. "What are you doing?"
"Making it easy for the ogres to follow us," Tavis replied. "After they find this blood trail, they won't pay as much attention to other signs. That'll give us a chance to escape."
"We haven't done that yet?" Basil asked.
"No, we've been forced into a trap," Tavis replied. "Somewhere around a corner ahead, a couple dozen ogres are waiting to shower us with arrows."
The scout allowed his companions to consider this while he studied the surrounding terrain. He spied a series of three boulders close enough together that Avner could leap from one to the other, then said, "Now, here's what I want you to do."
After Tavis had explained his plan, Basil asked. "Do we have time for all that?"
The scout nodded. "The ogres won't be anxious to come after us. They've suffered losses enough to know they won't get past Bear Driller in these confines," he said. "By the time they come to see why we haven't wandered into their ambush, we'll be gone."
The scout started up the gully. Making certain to drip plenty of blood along the ground, he led his companions to within a pace of the first boulder. Instead of jumping onto the stone at this point, Avner and Basil walked past, following Tavis another twenty paces. The boy stopped there, but the verbeeg continued up the gully.
Thirty paces later, Basil also stopped. He slowly backed down the gully, placing his feet in exactly the same places as he had on the way up. When he reached Avner, he hoisted the boy onto his shoulder and continued his retreat to the three boulders Tavis had pointed out earlier. After Avner brushed his feet off, the verbeeg deposited the youth on the first boulder. The boy hopped across the three boulders, then climbed a tree and crawled across a branch onto the cliff top.
For Basil, escaping the gorge was more difficult. Like Avner, he brushed the loose soil off his feet, then crossed the boulders to the side of the gully. Unfortunately, he was too heavy for the pine's thin branches and too clumsy to climb straight up the cliff face, so he had to backtrack a short distance to where a dead tree had fallen against the cliff side. He ascended the gray trunk, then joined Avner.
As his companions made their escape, Tavis picked up a stick, then ripped a strip of cloth off his tunic. These two items he used to make a tourniquet around his arm.
Once that was done, he continued up the gulch, slowly turning the stick so that the blood trail gradually diminished. When he came to a jumble of boulders, he crossed the pile about halfway, then tightened the tourniquet until the blood ceased to drip altogether. After cleaning the bottom of his boots to make certain he did not leave any loose soil to divulge his change of path, he moved toward the side of the gorge, being careful not dislodge any of the stones he walked across.
The scout crept along the base of the cliff until he came to a sickly tree growing too close to the wall. He braced one foot against its trunk and one against the rocky face, then slowly climbed out of the gorge. By the time he reached the top, his tourniquet had loosened and blood was dripping into the canyon, but he did not worry. It would be quite some time before the ogres realized he had laid a false trail, and it would take them even longer to discover how he and his friends had escaped.
Tavis removed the tourniquet and applied a more proper bandage, then scurried down the ridge to join his friends. Together the trio started to traverse the ravine's north side, climbing toward Needle Peak, but the scout quickly realized they could not remain concealed by taking this route. The valley took a sharp turn southward. They could not travel any farther without exposing themselves.
Tavis motioned for his companions to wait. Hunching over until his chest almost touched his knees, he crept down the hillside. He stepped carefully, avoiding dry-looking twigs, loose rocks, even clumps of dry pine needles that might crackle under bis weight. It had been many months since he had moved so slowly in such an awkward position, and his muscles soon began to ache from the strain. The scout ignored his discomfort, knowing that if he relaxed and did something that made a substantial noise, the ogres would hear it.
A few minutes later, he came to a place where the hill fell away sharply, giving him a clear view of the ravine below. He was directly above the bend where the side gulch opened into the main gully. He knelt behind a pair of close-growing saplings, using the dense foliage as a screen, and began to search for ogres.