As a group, they all moved back out onto the road.
Show yourself, the elf called, listening for the telltale sounds of the hawk. He caught sight of the bird perhaps forty yards ahead of them.
“Ormiel says the riders left the trail and entered the woods here,” Shanhaevel told the rest of the group as they approached the spot where the bird perched high in a tree.
When they reached this spot, they discovered a faint side trail that they had missed before leading off into the woods. Elmo hopped down and examined the ground for a moment.
“Yep, there are fresh tracks here. Hard to see in the dark, but with the snow, they’re discernable. This is where our visitors went.”
As the group turned off the main path and followed this side trail, the snow stopped, and the sky cleared as the clouds blew out. Shanhaevel pushed his hood back. Ormiel, are the riders nearby?
They went into a man-nest.
He relayed this information to the others.
After a short while, the path opened onto a clearing. In the middle sat a ramshackle farmhouse with an equally dilapidated barn behind it. No one seemed to be around. At that moment, Luna broke through a long fringe of cloud, bathing the clearing and the woods around in pale light. Celene, Luna’s blue little sister, was still hiding, though a deep blue fringe round a nearby cloud gave her away.
“Do you think they knew we were coming and are hiding?” Shirral asked, peering around.
Elmo shook his head. “Don’t know,” he replied. “But it looks like the tracks lead to the barn.”
Everyone looked where the man pointed to the ground. Fresh horse prints ran past the farmhouse and toward the doors of the barn.
“There’s no light inside,” Govin said. “They’re either hiding in there, or else they went somewhere else.”
“I’ll go check it out,” Ahleage said, dismounting. “Everybody stay here unless you hear me yell, then come running.”
Ahleage crept off in the darkness and was soon lost from sight.
“When he wants to disappear, he really disappears,” Shirral breathed.
“Let’s get back in the trees a little, out of sight,” Shanhaevel suggested. “Even if the thugs aren’t here, they may come back, and we don’t want to be sitting in the middle of the path when they do.”
The rest of the companions dismounted and led their horses a little way into the trees, tethering the mounts to low branches. They settled in to wait, listening to the dripping of the moisture from the melting snow on the tree branches.
Odd, thought Shanhaevel. The snow seems to come and go almost randomly. What could be causing that?
The last of the clouds disappeared, but the stars remained dull behind a thin haze. Even little Celene was little more than a blue blur trailing after Luna. The pale moonshadows had moved almost an arm’s length before Ahleage returned.
“There’s nobody in the farmhouse,” he reported, still keeping his voice low. “There are a bunch of horses in the barn, though.”
“Their horses are here, but they’re not?” Draga asked. “Where’d they go?”
“Don’t know,” the man answered. “But we can wait and find out. There are a few good hiding places around. We could even hide in the farmhouse.”
“Did Ormiel see where they went, by chance?” Elmo asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll ask.” Shanhaevel called to the hawk and posed Elmo’s question, but the bird merely repeated what it had said before, that the riders had entered the man-nest. “He seems to think they’re inside one of the buildings.”
“Well, they’re not,” Ahleage insisted. “I checked.”
“Maybe there is some sort of secret door,” Shirral offered, “a trapdoor that leads to a tunnel or something.”
“It’s possible,” Ahleage admitted. “I didn’t look around for anything like that.”
“So, what are we going to do?” Elmo asked.
“I like the idea of waiting,” Govin said, and Shanhaevel nodded in agreement.
“Yes,” the elf added, “we could set up a watch and see where they come from. I say some of us hide in the house, and we put some others out here, hidden in one of the good spots Ahleage mentioned.”
Everyone agreed to this plan, and it was decided that Govin, Elmo, and Draga would wait inside the house, while Shanhaevel, Shirral, and Ahleage would remain outside, hiding behind an old well that sat near the edge of the clearing but faced the barn.
“I’ve got spells that will be useful out here,” Shirral mentioned as the three of them made their way to the well. “Between the two of us, we should be able to surprise anyone coming into the clearing.”
“Right,” Shanhaevel said, squatting down behind the well and preparing to get comfortable. “Wherever they went, they won’t be glad to see us when they return.”
He stifled a long yawn with the back of his hand as his two friends found dry spots next to him. As the three of them sat there behind the well, Shanhaevel’s eyes grew heavy. No time for sleeping, he told himself, but the long day’s activities were wearing on him, and more than once he caught himself snapping his head back after nodding off. He rubbed his eyes and looked at both Shirral and Ahleage. They seemed to be fighting sleep as desperately as he. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, after all, he thought. What are we hoping to learn from these brutes, anyway?
At that moment, the wizard heard a distant sound, as though a bolt had been thrown back. Ahleage and Shirral both heard it, too. They each sat forward, peering carefully around the base of the well toward the barn and farmhouse. There was no one there. There came another sound, a scraping, and voices that seemed to echo oddly in the night. Shanhaevel looked this way and that, peering carefully in all directions, but he could not see anyone at all.
The elf turned to his two friends and mouthed “Where?” to them. Ahleage could not see well enough to read the wizard’s lips, but Shirral shrugged her shoulder and gave him a look of confusion.
Ahleage suddenly rose, holding on to the side of the well and listening, then, his eyes wide, he dropped back down beside the druid, motioning for them to be still and quiet. Swallowing the lump in his throat, Shanhaevel froze in place, holding his breath and listening intently.
At that moment, a shadowy figure rose out of the well.
Hedrack scowled as he stared across the polished surface of his table at Falrinth, sitting on the opposite side. The high priest of the temple, the Mouth of Iuz, did not like what he was hearing from the wizard.
“You are sure,” Hedrack asked again, wanting no more confusion, “that they have been there?”
“As I said,” Falrinth repeated, recounting his tale to the armored priest. “When Grozdan did not visit me this evening as he should have, I sent Kriitch up to see what the trouble was. Through his eyes, I saw Grozdan and his men, all dead. Kriitch checked, and all of the men’s valuables had been removed as well. I did not see who did it, but my guess is that it’s the ones you have been looking for, although how they got past our spies in Nulb, I do not know.”
“Hmm,” Hedrack said, considering. The wizard was right, of course, although Hedrack hated making any assumptions. These meddlers Iuz had warned him of were growing irritating. The priest had expected to deal with them quickly and decisively—or rather, he had expected his underlings to deal with them quickly and decisively—and instead, they had been met with setback after setback. He had too many things on his mind and too many things for his commanders to deal with, to spare more time and effort on these mewling cretins who thought they might poke their nose into his plans, but it appeared that he had no choice.
“All right,” Hedrack said at last, looking at Falrinth again. “It is obvious that they are a bigger thorn in my side than I presumed. I will not underestimate them again. I want no more problems. Find them. Use your scrying magic to figure out where they are, then I will send Lareth to deal with them.”