By that time, the man with the bloody face had his falchion in hand. She advanced on him, and he gave ground, evidently well aware that he only had to hold the Uskevren here for a few heartbeats until his comrades could dash up and take them from behind.
She cut at his leading leg, and he parried. She tried to dart around him, but he jumped in front of her and nearly landed a whistling slash at her face. All the wlule, she could hear his friends' footsteps thudding closer.
Then Thamalon sprang from the darkness. He'd evidently bested the ruffian who'd engaged him, and now he rushed at Shamur's opponent from the side. The bravo tried to turn and defend himself, but was a split second too slow. Thamalon's bloody long sword plunged into his neck.
The dead man started to fall, the Uskevren lord yanked his weapon free, and he and Shamur ran out of the clearing and toward the trees, into what had now become a black and freezing winter night.
Garris Quinn, a fleshy, sallow rogue with a pair of kid gloves tucked foppishly through the band of his copotain hat, watched flabbergasted as the nobles disappeared into the woods with several of the men under his command in hot pursuit. His slack-jawed expression turned sheepish and wary when he turned to look at Master. "I guess they took the lads by surprise," he said.
"I guess they did," said Bileworm, leering. Actually, he thought, Garris had no reason to be afraid. No matter how vexed Master was, he wouldn't waste time chastising this lout and his underlings for their incompetence. Not while Shamur and Thamalon were running loose.
And the familiar was right, for Master merely sighed and said, "Two of your fellows will stay near me to serve as my bodyguards. Someone must also return to the men we left with the horses and warn them to be on the lookout. Everyone else will help flush and kill our quarry. In an organized fashion, if you please."
Garris scurried off to see that the wizard's orders were carried out. "Organized or not," Bileworm said, "in the woods, in the night, our friends have at least a slim chance of escaping."
"That's why I intend to arrange for reinforcements," Master said, "reinforcements who see well in the dark, and will materialize ahead of Thamalon and Shamur and cut them off."
The wizard thrust the ferule of his staff into the frozen ground as easily as if it had been soft sand. Then, having freed both hands, he produced a tiny leather bag and a stub of candle from one of the hidden pockets in his cloak, held them high, and whispered an incantation.
Another voice, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere, hissed a response, and power crackled through the air. A blue flame flared upward from the candle wick, and violet light pulsed from the mouth of the sack. An instant later, bursts of soft purple radiance flickered off in the distance among the trees.
Her heart pounding and the breath burning in her lungs, Shamur ran. In the clearing, dueling, her skirts hadn't especially troubled her, but now they seemed to snag on every fallen branch or patch of brush.
Even so, with her longer legs, she was keeping pace with Thamalon, and moving far more quietly as well. To her thief s ears, his every stride seemed excruciatingly loud, and she feared they'd never shake their pursuers off their trail.
Somewhere behind them, a voice cried out in pain. Shamur suspected that one of the bravos had tripped or run into a low-hanging branch as he plunged headlong through the darkness. A mishap, she knew, that could just as easily have befallen her or Thamalon, with fatal consequences.
At her back, other voices babbled, the sound receding as she fled. Perhaps the rogue who'd hurt himself had been at the head of the pack, and his accident had delayed everyone else. At any rate, she didn't hear them thumping along at her heels anymore, and thanks to the tangle of branches overhead, patches of the ground beneath were free of snow, which ought to prevent the bullies from following her or Thamalon's tracks. The two nobles changed direction one more time, and then she gestured to a hollow in the ground behind the broad trunk of an ancient oak. They crouched down in the depression to catch their breath.
As soon as she stopped moving, the cold bit into her body, and she wistfully thought of her cloak left back in the glade. She felt as if she'd left most of her strength back there as well, squandered in the protracted duel.
Bloody from the wounds she'd given him, panting and shivering at the same time, Thamalon didn't seem to be in any better shape than she was, but he gave her a smile. "When I said I wished we could spend more time together," he whispered, "this wasn't precisely what I had in mind."
She grinned. "Shall we try for the horses?"
He shook his head. "Our friend in the mask will be expecting us to do that."
"You're right. Well, now that we've shaken them off our tails, they'll have to spread out to hunt us. We could hunt them as well."
"I certainly wouldn't mind seeing Master Moon's blood on my blade, or that of his agents, either, but still, that strategy seems a little chancy."
She grimaced. "I suppose so. They have magic on their side, and if just one of them got off a shout, he could bring the whole band down on our heads. Besides, you don't know how to creep up on someone silently."
"I'll have you know," he said indignantly, "that I'm a first-rate stalker. I mastered the art hunting small game around Storl Oak when I was a boy."
"If you say so," Shamur said. "I suppose our best course is simply to put more distance between our pursuers and ourselves. Perhaps eventually work our way out of the woods and back to Rauthauvyr's Road."
"Agreed." He looked up at the stars floating above the canopy of bare branches, taking his bearings. "Let's head northeast."
"All right." They took a last cautious look about, then rose to their feet. At that moment, points of purple light winked at various points in the forest.
"Oh, joy," Shamur said, "the wizard has decided to use his spells on us."
"Be careful," Thamalon replied. "Mystra only knows what sort of effect he's conjured."
Go teach your grandmother to turn a spindle, she thought sourly. She'd been contending with hostile spell-casters before he was born.
They skulked through the trees, and she had to concede that Thamalon could move fairly quietly when he wasn't running flat out. Her teeth began to chatter, and she clenched her jaw to stop the noise.
Soon she heard the wizard's henchmen moving around her, bawling to one another, cursing, and crashing through the brush. Shamur smiled, for she wanted the bravos to make a commotion. That way, she'd know where they were.
Unfortunately, something else was moving as stealthily as she was. So stealthily, in fact, that she had no warning of its presence until she and Thamalon crept right up to a lightning-blasted beech with a blackened crevice running down its trunk. Then she caught a foul stench, and heard a scratching sound. An ochre, six-legged rat the size of a dog exploded from the crack.
Shamur swung her sword at the ugly thing, but it dodged the blade and rushed at her ankle, its huge, stained incisors poised to take her foot off. She kicked it away, and it squealed and scuttled at her again.
She sidestepped, thrust, and this time caught it behind the shoulder, her point plunging all the way through its body to pin it to the ground. Convulsing, it screamed until Thamalon struck its head off.
"It's an osquip," he said, "and not native to these woods."
"I know," she said, "the magician summoned it, and thanks to its screeching, everyone knows where we are. Run!"
They dashed on, and a stitch started throbbing in her side. Another osquip scuttled out from under a bush right in front of her, and she had to leap over it to avoid a collision. She whirled, swinging her broadsword, her aim a matter of pure instinct, and split the beast's muzzle precisely between its beady eyes, dispatching it.