Grateful to have a task to perform, Kemian bowed, saying, “Yes, sire. I’ll go at once.” He hurried away.
Red rain trickled down Verhanna’s arms, dripping off her motionless fingertips. Beside her, Rufus Wrinklecap squirmed. She glared at him, a silent order to keep still. Ahead, some thirty feet away, two dark figures huddled by a feeble, smoky campfire. Rufus had smelled the smoke from quite a distance off, so Verhanna and her two remaining warriors had dismounted and crept up to the camp on foot. Verhanna grabbed the kender by his collar and hissed, “Are these the Kagonesti slavers?”
“They are, my captain,” he said solemnly.
“Then we’ll take them.”
Rufus shook his head, sending streams of red liquid flying. “Something’s not right, my captain. These fellows wouldn’t sit in the open by a campfire where anyone could find them. They’re too smart for that.”
The kender’s voice was nearly inaudible.
“How do you know? They just don’t realize we’re on their trail,” Verhanna said just as softly. She sent one of her warriors off to the left and the other to the right to surround the little clearing where the slavers had camped. Rufus fidgeted, his sodden, wilting plume bobbing in front of Verhanna’s face.
“Be still!” she said fiercely. “They’re almost in position.” She caught a dull glint of armor as the two elf warriors worked their way into position. Carefully the captain drew her sword. Muttering unhappily, Rufus pulled out his shortsword.
“Hail Qualinesti!” shouted Verhanna, and bolted into the clearing. Her two comrades charged also, swords high, shouting the battle cry. The slavers never stirred.
Verhanna reached them first and swatted at the nearest one with the flat of her blade. To her dismay, her blow completely demolished the seated figure. It was nothing but a cloak propped up by tree limbs.
“What’s this?” she cried. One of her warriors batted at the second figure. It, too, was a fake.
“A trick!” declared the warrior. “It’s a trick!” A heartbeat later, an arrow sprouted from his throat. He gave a cry and fell onto his face.
“Run for it!” squealed Rufus.
Another missile whistled past Verhanna as she sprinted for the trees. Rufus hit the leaf-covered ground and rolled, bounced, and dodged his way to cover. The last warrior made the mistake of following his captain rather than making for the edge of the clearing nearest him. He ran a half-dozen steps before an arrow hit him in the thigh. He staggered and fell, calling out to Verhanna.
The captain crashed into the line of trees, blundering noisily through the undergrowth. When she reached her original hiding place, she stopped. The wounded elf warrior called to her again.
Breathing hard, Verhanna sheathed her sword and put her back against a tree. The red rain coursed down her cheeks as she gasped for breath.
“Psst!,
She jumped at the sound and whirled. Rufus was on his hands and knees behind her.
“What are you doing?” she hissed.
“Trying to keep from getting an arrow in the head,” said the kender. “They was waitin’ for us.”
“So they were!” Furious with herself for walking into the trap, she said, “I’ve got to go back for Rikkinian.”
Rufus grabbed her ankle. “You can’t!”
Verhanna kicked free of his grasp. “I won’t abandon a comrade!” she said emphatically. Shrugging off her cloak, Verhanna soon stood in her bare armor. She drew a thick-bladed dagger from her belt and crouched down, almost on all fours.
“Wait, I’ll come with you,” said the kender in a loud whisper. He scampered through the brush behind her.
Verhanna reached the edge of the clearing. Rikkinian, the wounded elf, was now silent and unmoving, lying face down in the mud. The other warrior sprawled near the phony slavers. Curiously, the stick figures and cloaks had been re-erected.
“Come here, Wart,” the captain muttered. Rufus crawled to her. “What do you think?”
“They’re both dead, my captain.”
Verhanna’s gaze rested on Rikkinian. Her brisk demeanor was gone; two warriors had paid for her mistake. Plaintively she asked, “Are you certain?”
“No one lies with his nose in the mud if he’s still breathing,” Rufus said gently. He squinted at the propped-up cloaks. “The archers are gone,” he announced. Again Verhanna asked him if he was sure. He pointed. “There are two sets of footprints crossing the clearing over there. The dark elders have fled.”
To demonstrate the truth of his words, Rufus stood up. He walked slowly past the fallen elves toward the smoldering fire. Verhanna went to Rikkinian and gently turned him over. The arrow wound in his leg hadn’t killed him. Someone had dispatched him with a single thrust of a narrow-bladed knife through the heart. Burning with anger, she rose and headed for her other fallen comrade. Before she reached him, she was shocked to see Rufus raise his little sword and fall on the back of one of the propped-up cloaks. This time the cloak didn’t collapse into a pile of tree limbs. Arms and legs appeared beneath it, and a figure leapt up.
“Captain!” Rufus shouted. “It’s one of them!”
Verhanna fumbled for her sword as she ran toward the campfire. The kender stabbed over and over again at the cloaked figure’s back. Though not muscular, Rufus possessed a wiry strength, but his attack appeared to have no effect. The cloaked one spun around, trying to throw the pesky kender off. When the front of the hood swung past Verhanna, she froze in her tracks and gasped.
“Rufus! It has no face!” she shouted.
With one last prodigious shake, the cloaked thing hurled Rufus to the ground. The kender’s small sword flew into the woods as Rufus landed with a thud. He groaned and lay still, crimson rain beating down on his pallid face.
Verhanna gave a cry and slashed at the faceless figure, her slim elven blade slicing through the cloth with ease. She felt resistance as the blade passed through whatever lay beneath the cloak, but no blood flowed. Under the hood, where a face should have been, there was only a ball of grayish smoke, as if someone had stuffed the hood with dirty cotton.
Cutting and thrusting and hacking, Verhanna soon reduced the cloak to a tattered mass on the muddy ground. Shorn of its garment, the thing was revealed to be a vaguely elf-shaped column of dove-colored smoke. Two arms, two legs, a head, and torso were visible, but nothing else—only featureless vapor. Realizing she was exhausting herself to no avail, Verhanna stood back to catch her breath.
Rufus sat up slowly and clutched his head. He shook the pain aside and looked up at the smoky apparition standing between him and his captain. His hat had been trodden in the mud, and rain streamed from his long hair. Rufus glanced from the wispy figure to the dying campfire. Only a single coil of vapor, as thick as his wrist, snaked upward from the damp wood, and it twisted and writhed oddly in the still air.
Suddenly the kender had an inspiration. He dragged the other, unoccupied cloak to the fire and threw it over the smoldering wood. The sodden material soon extinguished the last of the sparks, and the fire died. As it did, the smoky figure thinned and finally vanished.
There was a long moment of silence, broken only by Rufus’s and Verhanna’s heavy breathing. At last Verhanna demanded, “What in Astra’s name was that infernal thing?”
“Magic,” Rufus replied simply. His attention was centered on retrieving his hat from the mud. Sorrowfully he tried to straighten the long, crimson-stained plume. It was hopeless; the feather was broken in two places and hung limply.
“I know it was magic,” Verhanna said, annoyed. “But why? And whose?”
“I told you those elves were clever. One of them knows magic. He made the ghost as a diversion, I’ll bet, to keep us busy while they escaped.”
Verhanna slapped the flat of her blade against her mailed thigh. “E’li blast them! My two soldiers killed and we’re diverted by magic smoke!” She stamped her foot, splashing blood-colored puddles over Rufus. “I’d give my right arm for another crack at those two! I never even saw them!”