But Elaith had no leisure for such games. The elves were gravely outnumbered, and though they fought bravely, the slaughter was swift and terrible. Within moments of the attack, the moon elf knew that the battle was lost. He'd commanded the elves in the old tongue, demanding that they take to the trees, scatter and flee.
All had obeyed him, save one. A half-elf female stayed, standing back-to-back with one of the hired swords, a northwoman of immense girth and fierce skill. Together the women had guarded the base of a giant cedar, holding off a circle of Malar's hunters and buying time for several wounded elves to climb to safety.
In retrospect, Elaith realized that he should have expected nothing different. In matters of honor and courage, Arilyn had few peers. There was no one he'd rather have at his back, and no one to whom he owed a deeper loyalty.
And so he had come to her aid. He'd pulled a knife from his boot and hurled it. The gleaming weapon spun end over end, destined to bury itself between the shoulder blades of the orc warrior bearing down on Arilyn. Elaith had not waited to see the orc fall.
He'd drawn swords and charged the circle, cutting his way toward the half-elf. When he'd gotten nearly through, he'd dropped into a crouch and deftly cut the hamstrings of the fighters on either side of her. The falling bodies had provided a momentary cover, and he'd used it to slam his swords into their sheaths and sprint toward Arilyn. Not slowing, he'd dodged an orc's battle axe, ducked under the half-elf's defensive parry, and slammed a fist into her jaw. He'd come up still running, with a stunned Arilyn slung over his shoulder and the spell components for a Dust Cloud in his hand.
The last thing he'd seen upon abandoning his company was the spear lunging toward the mercenary who'd stood with Arilyn. The northwoman was too much the warrior to scream, but she'd grunted like a slaughtered sow when the spear punched through her ribs.
Arilyn had jolted at the sound, and Elaith braced himself against her outrage, which was typically expressed in a blistering diatribe delivered in Elvish and leavened with dock-side profanity. But she had held her tongue and had enough sense not to fight him, and so they had both escaped with their lives.
But now, while the night was yet dark and the moon elf deemed the moment safe for a brief rest, Elaith saw the true reason for Arilyn's uncharacteristic docility. He had been a heartbeat too slow, a single pace too late. The half-elf had been wounded. She was bleeding profusely from a gash that opened her arm from shoulder nearly to elbow. There was more blood on her forehead, trickling down from a glancing head wound some orc's weapon had dealt her when she'd been helpless in Elaith's arms. A livid bruise was already forming on one side of her face. The moon elf eased her down, cursing himself, the gods in general, and Malar in particular.
Arilyn set aside the sword she held-it would take a far greater wound that that she'd taken this day to induce her to drop it-and allowed Elaith to lower her to a fallen log. She glared up at him, her blue and gold eyes fierce in her too-pale face.
"Forgive me for striking you, Princess. Your safety was my first concern, and I could think of no other way to dissuade you from continuing the fight."
She impatiently waved this away. "You left your hirelings to die."
The elf lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. "They are human."
"I am half human," Arilyn retorted.
"You are also half dead," Elaith pointed out. Though the remark was said in dark humor, there was more truth in it than he liked to speak. He put a hand on the stubborn warrior's shoulder to keep her from rising, and then knelt to tend her. He took a knife from a wrist strap and carefully cut away the blood-soaked fabric other shirt.
As Elaith examined the wound, the invisible fist that gripped his heart began to relax. "It is not as bad as I feared. None of the main blood routes are severed, and there appears to be no serious damage to the muscles. I will have to clean and stitch it, though."
Arilyn nodded, then waved away the bit of thick leather he handed her to bite upon. She set her jaw and looked away as he worked, her eyes scanning the forest.
"The stream there. We can follow it for a while, then run, then take to the trees and double back to the stream. Do that repeatedly, and vary the pattern twice or thrice, and veer off to another stream when the flow converges, and even the Malarites will be hard pressed to follow our trail."
The plan was solid, and under better circumstances it may well have worked. "But how long could you hold such a pace?"
Arilyn turned and met his eyes. "As long as I have to."
Elaith did not doubt that she would try. "And if we are overtaken, you would stand and fight?"
She shrugged, as if asking him to get to the point.
The moon elf sighed. Arilyn might be only half elven by blood, she was as stubborn and heartstrong as the elven princess who'd birthed her. Because of Arilyn's heritage, Elaith owed her an elf lord's allegiance, as well as the loyalty of near kin. But there were times, and this was one of them, when he wanted to throttle her. Hers was the sort of traditionally elven thinking that, in Elaith's opinion, had led to the decline of the race, and would undoubtedly lead to her death and his.
It was time for new tactics.
Elaith's sharp eyes scanned the forest. Downstream, a doe dipped her muzzle into the dark water.
A slow, cunning smile curved the elf's lips. "To the stream, then, and quickly," he agreed. "The hunt will begin in earnest with the coming of moonrise."
The howling intensified, filling the forest around them with eerie music. Grimlish rose and gathered up his horned helm and his gear. The others followed suit. The moon would soon rise: the wolf song heralded its coming as surely as a rooster's call foretold the dawn.
Suddenly Badger froze. He swore softly and with great delight as he reached for his longest knife. Drom followed his gaze. There, in the shadows of a young pine, was a large silver wolf. Its amber eyes regarded them with keen interest.
Forgetting his order in this particular pack, Drom reached out and stayed the old hunter's hand. "It will not attack."
Even as he spoke, Drom's conviction wavered. Wolves were unpredictable, and their ways were too complex and mysterious for most people to fathom. To farmfolk, timid sheep that they were, the wolf was a ravening monster. Rangers, druids, and other like-minded fools took an extreme view: they romanticized the wolf as a noble soul, uncorrupted by the greed and whim that plagued humankind, unselfishly strengthening the bloodline of its prey by culling the weak, the old, the infirm. Drom scorned both of these views, not because they were false-there was some truth to both of them-but because neither captured the true spirit of the wolf, or the Wolf People who took inspiration from the Singing Death. In the year just four winters past, the caribou calves had simply disappeared, though the cows had been heavy in the spring and there was no late, killing snow. The spore of the wolves told the tale: for weeks they ate caribou and little else. Yet even so, surely they had killed more calves than they could possibly eat. Though Drom and his village had suffered that following winter for lack of food, this told the young half-orc that even the grimly practical tundra wolves were not immune to the pure glory of the hunt, the joy of the kill.
In short, who could know what mysterious purpose lurked behind this wolf's amber eyes?
Badger threw off the half-orc's restraining hand. "Attack? Of course it won't attack. Wolves are too smart. It is one, and we are three. It will run. But if we could catch it, it would be a fine kill."