"It might happen sooner than you think," she said. "Look."
A little stream ran down the slope next to them. Below, Nirmathi were following it up toward where she and The Masked stood, a few Molthuni soldiers trudging after them.
Sighing, she bent low for a drink. Tarram joined her at the bank, keeping watch over the trees behind them for Voyvik as she drank her fill.
"Next time we have to take down someone trying to murder us, choose the ones with waterskins at their belts, will you?" she asked. "Your turn."
By the time he was finished drinking, some of the foremost climbers had seen them. "Friends!" Tarram called, waving hands empty of weapons.
Some of the Nirmathi faces looked less than convinced, so he and Tantaerra backed well away from the lip of the valley, and stood back-to-back watching the forest around warily for anyone approaching.
"Nirmathas forever!" Tantaerra called, when the first men reached the top.
"A halfling," one of those Nirmathi told another, then peered again and added, "A female halfling!"
Luraumadar, the mask commented airily.
"We were just going to kindle a fire," Tarram called. "Care to join us?"
It was too much to hope these warriors would be carrying food enough to share, but if he and Tantaerra could pass themselves off as Nirmathi displaced from afar in all the fighting …
"And who, before the bleary eyes of Cayden Cailean, are you?" a heavyset, grizzled Nirmathi in rusty chainmail demanded, limping toward them with a notched sword ready in one hand. He had the air of command, and the best armor they'd seen on a Nirmathi since the riverbank.
Which turned out to be a good thing a moment later, when the poisoned dagger that came hurtling through the trees at The Masked missed and glanced off the officer's shoulder with a tling.
Everyone turned. Voyvik was a dark, distant figure hurrying away through the forest, but Tantaerra leaped into the air to draw attention as she shouted, "There he is again! The Molthuni spy who's been trying to kill us!"
A few Nirmathi jogged off into the forest after him, while the rest continued their exhausted limping up the hill. Foremost among the latter camp was the Nirmathi commander, who eyed The Masked and the halfling narrowly, and lurched over to pick up Voyvik's dagger.
"Don't touch it!" Tantaerra warned him quickly. "It's poisoned!"
He halted, giving them an even more suspicious look.
"Narandur!" a Nirmathi called, from the lip of the valley. "The Molthuni are all retreating south along the river. None coming after us, any longer."
"Good," the grizzled commander called back. "Muster to me, here!"
As armed men in motley armor and leathers began to converge, he stumped up to Tarram and the halfling. "You two are coming with us. I need to hear all you've seen of Molthuni these last few days-where, and how many, and what they were doing. Truth, and leave nothing out."
"Gladly," Tarram said quickly, before Tantaerra could say anything sharper. His empty stomach chose that moment to rumble so loudly that Narandur grinned.
"Well, you're no Molthuni, that's for sure." He headed for a stone that looked as if it could serve as a seat. "Never met a hungry one yet."
∗ ∗ ∗
By nightfall, The Masked, Tantaerra, and their Nirmathi hosts-or were they captors? — had moved a long way north along the heights above the narrowing valley, to make camp far from any surviving Molthuni who might think to steal after them.
Their campsite was a hilltop in the forest, and on that wooded height, within the shattered, tumbled, overgrown remains of a long-ruined fortress watchtower.
Luraumadar, the mask told Tarram approvingly, as he looked around at the head-high ring of massive, ivy-cloaked stones, dark tree trunks thrusting up through and around it like pillars.
Sentries had been posted and fires lit. Tarram had offered to take his turn standing sentry, but Narandur curtly refused.
"You stay here by me, the both of you. I've need of your honest tongues."
They sat.
Tantaerra hadn't let her behind touch the ground for an instant before she asked, "Aren't you worried about the fire? It'll be seen for miles, up on this height. Won't it bring Molthuni creeping here, with ready bows and drawn steel?"
Narandur looked across the flames at her, but his wasn't the only cold grin to be seen. All of the Nirmathi sitting or standing within the ring wore the same expression.
"We hope it does," the grizzled commander told her. "Any Molthuni who dares to draw near-and we don't expect many; we've taught them the hard way not to blunder around our forests by night-will walk right into the night blades."
He hesitated for an instant, to see if either of his two guests would betray themselves as liars about their professed Nirmathi heritage by asking what or who "night blades" were, but neither was foolish enough to step into his trap. It took no particular brilliance to figure out that "night blades" would be Nirmathi who'd been sleeping all day and patrolled the dark hours, awaiting Molthuni trying to blunder through the dark forests.
"This is our land," Narandur added quietly, "and we defend it night and day. Nirmathas is our cloak and our armor, and fights with us."
"While I've no desire at all to see us become part of Molthune," Tarram spoke up, following Tantaerra's lead-for the more time Narandur spent answering them, the less time they'd spend scrambling to answer his probing questions-"two things worry me increasingly, as the years pass and this war drags on." He held up one finger. "How long can we last? Or rather, how long before Molthune bleeds us dry, outslaying us until there are no fit warriors still standing to defend Nirmathas?"
He raised a second finger to join the first. "And less talked-of, but as grave: as we fight them, doing what we must to survive, how much are we slowly changed to become what we are fighting against? To become more like Molthuni and less and less like what we're fighting to preserve?"
The old Nirmathi commander leaned forward, eyes kindling with interest. "We don't talk about the first. Despair is easy, and talk of numbers aids the enemy. But the second is something we should speak of. Many of us fight because our homes or kin are attacked, it's true. But this war isn't about revenge. It's about freedom. The freedom to-"
Narandur broke off as sudden tumult arose under the trees. Swords clashed and clanged, someone shouted, someone else danced in agony and then fell with an arrow through him-and suddenly Nirmathi were charging from behind seemingly every tree, blades ready.
Men standing in the ring rushed to kindle torches in the fire, swords rang against swords in deafening earnest, and Tarram and Tantaerra stood up to watch-only to feel Narandur's iron-hard grip above the elbows of their sword-arms, seeking to drag them back down.
Yet already the bladework was slackening, as angry shouts abounded.
"Fools!"
"'Twas all a mistake! A mistake!"
Men were hurrying to Narandur now, to report. It seemed the attackers were Nirmathi, a warband insisting they'd been told Molthuni invaders posing as Nirmathi were to be found encamped here-a force led by two spies sent from Braganza in Molthune, a female halfling shorter than most, and a masked man who was her constant companion.
More than one of the Nirmathi hastening to the fire found themselves looking at Tantaerra and then at Tarram, frowning hard.
"Sit," Narandur commanded curtly, doing so himself and dragging Tarram down with him, "and answer me this: are you two from Molthune?"
Luraumadar, the mask said gleefully, in the back of Tarram's mind.
"No," he said simply, giving the Nirmathi commander a level look. Then he looked across the fire at the growing row of angry Nirmathi faces and asked, "Just who told you all these lies? This is no band of undercloak Molthuni, and we aren't from Molthune. Who told you otherwise?"