Tavis scampered across a network of stones and toppled tree trunks to the rocks on the river's shore. Here, the prints no longer sank deep into the ground, but on the stones he saw several rusty red streaks where an iron horseshoe had scraped over the surface.
Brianna and the others peered over his shoulders. "What are you looking at?" asked the princess.
"Your mare's trail." Tavis pointed to the signs he had discovered. "She seems to be moving upstream."
"Blizzard?" Brianna gasped. "Here?"
"She's the one who led us to Morten in the first place," Tavis said. "And she's been following us since. We saw her on the Needle Peak glacier shortly before we rescued you, and here she is again."
Brianna's face lit up. "Can we catch her?"
Tavis hesitated before answering. Recovering the horse might help him win Brianna's favor, but it would also increase the ogres' chances of tracking them downstream.
"Finding Blizzard right now wouldn't be wise," he said. "As intelligent as she is, I don't think we could convince her to float down the river with us. And if she starts following us along the shore, the ogres will spy her in an instant. That would ruin our whole plan."
"We can change plans," Brianna suggested.
"No," Morten said. The bodyguard cast a wary glance at the raging river. "This is the best plan. The ogres will never expect us to float down that."
"I'm sure there are other ways," Brianna insisted. "Blizzard's a very special mare."
"Not that special," Morten objected. "I won't put you in greater danger for the sake of a horse."
"You're not putting me anywhere," Brianna snapped. "This is my own choice."
"That may be, but what of the danger to Avner and Earl Dobbin?" Tavis asked. Although he was thinking more of the princess's welfare, he knew Brianna would find this objection difficult to overcome. "Are you also willing to risk their lives on behalf of your mare?"
Brianna fixed a cold glare on the scout and did not answer. Her icy expression suggested she understood Tavis's strategy, but the knowledge did nothing to lessen the validity of his point. She searched her mind for a suitable alternative, finally lowering her gaze when it became obvious there wasn't one. Without speaking, she turned away from Blizzard's trail.
Tavis wanted to offer her some reassurance about the horse's welfare, but to do so would have been to lie. Even if there had not been hundreds of murderous ogres in this valley and a clan of horse-eating giants in the next. Blizzard had to be close to starvation by now, and montane forests were not good grazing grounds.
The scout went over to a log tangle and snapped eight-foot sections off three treetops. He handed one of the makeshift staffs to Brianna and Morten, keeping the third for himself.
"We'll wade upstream until we find a safe place to cross," he said. "Use these to brace yourselves, or the water will sweep your feet from beneath you."
Morten examined the thick end of his staff, then looked toward the broken treetop from which it had come. "Won't the ogres find the fresh breaks and know we've gone into the river?"
"That's right," Tavis said. "When they see we've made staffs, they'll know we're wading upstream-they might even think we're following Blizzard."
The scout walked into the river until it was about knee-deep. Although the snow-fed waters were cool, they were not as bone-chilling as the streams of the Needle Peak glacier. He was not a good judge of how well humans tolerated cold, but he hoped that they would be able to endure the frigid currents for a short time.
Nevertheless, he took the precaution of turning to Brianna. "You and the other humans will grow cold after we get wet, and we won't be able to stop and start a fire."
The princess nodded. "I was just thinking that."
Brianna took off her amulet and uttered an incantation. The silver spear began to glow. Once it had turned fiery red, she touched the talisman first to her own forehead, then to Earl Dobbin and Avner's, raising a spear-shaped welt on each brow.
Ignoring the boy's yelp of pain, the scout started upstream. He moved quickly and carefully, using his staff to brace himself each time he moved a foot over the round, slick rocks of the riverbed. Occasionally, one of the stones shifted or turned over, but he did not bother to stop and return it to its original place. The ogres might notice a void or change in color that told them it had been moved, but such signs would be few and far between. The swift current would destroy most of the other marks of their passage, so the scout doubted that his foes would realize he was deliberately leaving a trail for them.
After about two hundred paces, they reached a pool of slow-moving water. Tavis told his companions to cross the river, then continue another hundred paces upstream. There, Avner and Earl Dobbin were to remain in the water while Brianna and Morten traveled into the forest, carefully trying to leave no signs of their passage. After about ten minutes, the princess was to return to the river walking backward. Morten would continue on for another five minutes, then do the same thing.
"Just be careful not to step on your own tracks when you back up," Tavis said, finishing his instructions. That's the only thing that will let the ogres know what you're doing. Otherwise, as long as you avoid soft ground, you won't leave enough prints to make them realize you've passed over the same place twice."
"What will you be doing?" asked Morten.
"Get something to hold as we go down the river," the scout said. "The current's too fast to swim on our own."
"Then perhaps I should wake Earl Dobbin while I'm waiting for Morten," Brianna suggested, eyeing the churning waters in the center of the channel. "It could be difficult to hang on to him."
Tavis nodded. "Do what you can to keep him quiet."
Morten did not move to cross the river. "All this will take time," he complained. "The ogres will catch us."
The scout shook his head. "Not likely. That's why we laid a crazy trail. It'll take the trackers a few minutes to find our path each time it changes direction-especially if they have a lot of their own warriors trampling the signs."
This seemed to satisfy the bodyguard, so Brianna passed Earl Dobbin's unconscious form to him and began to swim. Avner followed in her wake. Morten simply waded across the dark pool, holding the lord mayor above his head and tipping his chin back to keep his mouth above the surface of the cold water.
Once the princess and the others had reached the other shore safely, Tavis started to wade again. Because the river was not as violent here as below the pool, he moved into deeper water, where the dark currents would prevent the ogres from seeing anything he happened to disturb on the riverbed. Half swimming and half wading, he continued upstream long after Brianna and Morten had stopped to lay their false trails. Occasionally, he approached the shore close enough to look for verbeeg tracks, but saw none.
When he had finally gone far enough to be certain the ogres would no longer be coming up this side of the river, the scout went ashore. He found two of the largest logs he could move and pulled them to the river's edge. After tying the boles together with two short lengths of rope, he slipped his wading staff under the bindings and guided the makeshift raft into the dark waters.
The swift currents carried him downriver in a fraction of the time it had taken to wade up it. He soon saw his companions waiting just above the slow-moving pool where they had crossed the river. Brianna had already-revived Earl Dobbin, who looked pale and frightened. The earl stood on one foot, bracing himself on Brianna's arm, as though his leg hurt too badly to support any weight. His stance might have seemed reasonable, had Tavis not been able to see, even from the middle of the river, that the princess had already called upon her goddess's magic to close the arrow hole.