The Ogre's Pact

10. The High Forest

A series of clumsy, flat-footed steps pulsed through the open ground of the montane forest. The footfalls were as enigmatic as they were fleeting, bouncing from the bole of one tree to another, until the palpitations seemed to come from many directions at once and no place in particular. They were also distant, so feeble that Tavis barely heard them drumming above the incessant lisp of the wind. Still, the ungainly rhythm was unmistakable. Basil was out there somewhere, running across an outcropping of bedrock.

Slipping his fletcher's tools and a handful of osprey feathers into his belt pouch, Tavis laid aside the arrow he had been crafting. Gathering his bow and the handful of arrows he had already made, he stood, trying to guess from the maddening echoes where he would find Basil.

Beside the scout, Brianna was tending to the festering wound on Morten's neck. She had already washed the yellow ichor away and purified the gash with blessed water, and was now placing her goddess's talisman on the gash.

"I don't know what good this will do." Morten kept his voice to a soft whisper, for the wind had been carrying faint whiffs of ogre to them all morning long. "Simon already healed it once."

"It's not uncommon for bite wounds to fester," Brianna replied, equally softly. "We may have to do this many times."

The princess uttered her incantation, drawing a sharp hiss from the bodyguard as Hiatea's fiery magic poured from the talisman into the ulcerous sore.

On the other side of Brianna, Avner and Earl Dobbin were dozing in the midmorning light, sitting with their backs against a sun-baked crag of black basalt. Between them lay the remains of that morning's meal, a pile of raw squawrat that Tavis had dug up as they crossed a meadow.

The outcropping was not a large one, rising less than a quarter as high as the towering pines around it, but it made an ideal resting place. Not only did it catch the warm rays of the morning sun, it stood just high enough so that Morten could peer over the top to inspect the group's back trail-as he had been doing all morning, until Brianna awakened and decided to heal his throat wound.

A broad expanse of lodgepole pines surrounded the crag, their thin bare trunks as straight as horse lances. Though the boles were not densely packed, their sheer number created the impression of a gray, foglike wall through which any manner of evil spirit might walk at any moment.

"Wait here," Tavis whispered. "I'll be back soon."

As the scout moved to enter the depths of the gray forest. Morten's large hand clasped his shoulder.

"Where are you going?" Morten asked. All that remained of the wound on his neck was an ugly red scar resembling a huge boil. This is no time to go wandering."

"Don't you recognize those steps?" Tavis whispered back. "It's Basil."

"How can you be certain?" Brianna demanded. Even as she asked the question, the verbeeg's distant footfalls faded away, and there was no other sound in the forest except the wind slipping through the pine boughs. "I can hardly hear them."

"He's moved onto softer ground," Tavis explained. "But I'm certain it was Basil. I recognized his gait."

Brianna and Morten exchanged doubtful looks.

"Basil's done as much to rescue you as anyone," Tavis reminded her.

The princess's expression became fretful. "That's not the issue," she said, still speaking softly. "It's whether you really heard him."

"You think I'm lying?" Tavis gasped.

"No, of course not!" Brianna's reply was quick and emphatic, but no sooner had she uttered it than she gave the scout a sideways glance and added, "Not this time, anyway."

"Not ever! I've always been truthful," Tavis insisted. "I had nothing to do with the theft of Earl Dobbin's books!"

"Then why did the princess find them in your barn?" whispered the lord mayor, opening his eyes to join the conversation. "And why are you now willing to risk you life-indeed, all of our lives-to go off searching for the verbeeg who took them?"

Brianna quickly interposed herself between the scout and Earl Dobbin. "We don't need to discuss your books now." She scowled at the lord mayor, then added, "At the moment, I don't care if Tavis and his verbeeg took your ancestral jewels. The important thing is to return to my father's castle, and Tavis Burdun is the only person who can get us there alive."

The words left Tavis with a hollow, anguished feeling in the pit of his stomach. It seemed clear the princess had placed her trust in him only because she had no other choice-and she had said nothing at all about believing his words. If he could not persuade her of his innocence in the theft of Earl Dobbin's books, how could he convince her that her own father had betrayed her to the ogres?

The scout sighed at his quandary, then asked, "Princess, if you don't think I'm lying, why the doubts about what I heard?"

"Because the shaman's a mimic," she said. "That's how he lured me into his trap the first time."

"Thanks for the advice." Tavis said. He did not bother to question whether the shaman had survived the battle on the ice fall. That the ogres had regrouped was evidence of that, for the brutes were a notoriously shiftless and disorderly race that would not have mounted such a sizable pursuit without a strong leader. "I'll be careful."

"You're still going?" Morten asked.

Tavis nodded. "Even a mimic can't duplicate what he hasn't heard-at least not precisely," the scout explained. "And if Goboka has heard Basil's feet slapping against bedrock, there's a good chance Basil's still alive. Whether those footfalls were real or not, I have to take a look."

"I'm afraid it's too late for looking," said Earl Dobbin. The lord mayor's gaze was fixed on the forest, and he was scrambling to his feet. "We have a-"

The drone of a flying arrow cut the lord mayor off. A black shaft suddenly appeared in his thigh, and he cried out in pain.

Already nocking an arrow, Tavis spun in the direction from which the shaft had come. He did not see any ogre warriors, of course, but noticed a few trembling stalks in a huckleberry thicket.

The scout drew his bowstring back. A pair of huckleberry leaves suddenly fluttered to the ground, and a black dot appeared outside the bush: an ogre's arrow coming dead on. Tavis released his own shaft then twisted away, at the same time swinging Bear Driller vertically through the air.

With a sharp clack, the bow struck the shank of the ogre arrow. A tiny, stinging jolt ran through the scout's hands, and he saw a curving black streak as his foe's missile sailed away to shatter against the basalt crag.

Tavis's own arrow penetrated the thicket with a sound like tearing cloth. There was a thud and a strangled gasp, then a hush fell over the forest. The scout nocked another arrow, already searching for his next target.

Among the lodgepoles, nothing else moved. Keeping his eyes on the forest, Tavis squatted beside Earl Dobbin, who had fallen to the ground. "How many were there?"

The question went unanswered, for the ogre's poison had already done its work and put the lord mayor fast asleep. Brianna pulled her borrowed dagger and set to work digging the arrow from the earl's leg.

"We'll leave when you finish there," the scout said.

Tavis stepped over to Avner, who had not stirred during the ogre's attack. If the youth felt any guilt for the disgrace he had brought upon his guardian-or the deaths he had caused by failing to warn Morten about the ogre ambush-it did not show. He was still sleeping, his expression as innocent as that of a newborn babe.

"Wake up." The scout kicked the sole of the boy's boot harder than necessary. "Time to go!"

Eyes half open, Avner leaped to his feet "Got you covered!" he mumbled. The youth was already pulling his sling from beneath his cloak. "Where they at?"

"Come and gone, boy," chuckled Morten. The bodyguard passed a waterskin to the youth. "Wash the sleep from your eyes. We're going to need you alert."

Tavis turned back to Brianna. She had bandaged Earl Dobbin's wound and was about to cast a healing spell.

"Let him sleep for a while," Tavis suggested. "I doubt the lord mayor suffers pain quietly, and groans will attract ogres."

Brianna considered his advice, then hefted the lord mayor over her shoulder. Tavis slipped past her and with an arrow still nocked, started off at a silent trot. He did not need to look to know the princess was following a dozen paces behind, for he could hear a muffled cadence of dry pine needles crackling beneath her soft steps. Morten's steps were louder, a basal reverberation that Tavis sensed more than heard. Avner was the most difficult to keep track of. Despite having to run to keep pace with his large companions, the boy moved so silently that, if Brianna's pace had not faltered now and then as she tried to avoid his heels, Tavis could not have been certain the young thief was behind him.

A short time later, the scout stopped so the others could catch up to him. He studied their back trail for a few moments, then pointed southward. "Keep going in that direction until I return," he whispered. I won't be long."

"You still mean to go after Basil?" asked Morten. The bodyguard cast a nervous glance into the forest. That's foolhardy. The woods are swarming with ogres. They could kill you, and where would that leave us? Only you know the way."

"The ogres won't kill me, but even if they do, you don't need me to find your route," Tavis said. "There's only one way to go. Down the valley."

"But it's too obvious," Brianna objected, laying Earl Dobbin's unconscious form on the ground. "The ogres will block that direction. We have to go another way."

"We can't." Tavis replied. "We can't retrace our steps without running a gauntlet of ogres. And we can't go north without venturing onto the Great Glacier."

"That's not f-for me," Avner said, shivering at the mere remembrance of how cold the Needle Peak glacier had been. "I'd freeze to death the f-first night."

"Only if a frost giant didn't find you first," said Morten. He looked back to Tavis. "But why not go west?"

"Hill giants," the scout explained. "The Gray Wolf clan claims the next valley from crestline to crestline."

"The Gray Wolf clan?" Brianna repeated. Their chieftain has visited Castle Hartwick many times. Noote will protect us."

Tavis shook his head. "Hill giants aren't very noble, and the ogres will outnumber the Gray Wolves by five to one." he said. This Noote's more likely to turn us over to Goboka than to fight him on our behalf."

Brianna remained determined. "How many times have you met Noote?" she demanded.

"I haven't," Tavis admitted. "But I know hill giants."

"And I know Noote," Brianna countered. "I've spoken with him several times, and he's always been very kind."

"But he was visiting the king." Morten reminded her.

"It only makes sense to be nice to the princess."

"That's my point," Brianna said. "If he values my father's friendship, what better way to earn it than by saving me?"

Tavis groaned, thinking of what the chieftain would do if he knew of the king's bargain with Goboka. The prospect was not as unlikely as it seemed. As the leader of a hill giant tribe, there was a good chance Noote would know the Twilight Spirit wanted the princess. In that case, the chieftain would certainly turn her back over to the ogre shaman-or take her to the Twilight Vale himself-and earn Camden's gratitude for doing it.

"What's wrong, Tavis?" Morten demanded. "You look like you've seen a storm giant."

The scout could only shake his head. Looking at Brianna, he said, "We can't trust Noote to help. You must believe me."

"Why?" she demanded. "What do you know?"

"You wouldn't believe me." he said.

"Perhaps not, but after that incident in Stagwick, you've hardly earned the right to demand my blind faith," Brianna countered. "You've nothing to lose by speaking."

Tavis took a deep breath and stepped out of Morten's reach. "Your father gave you to the ogres," he said, "in payment for their help in winning the war against his brother."

"Liar!" Morten boomed.

The bodyguard reached for his sword, but Brianna restrained him. "Don't be so rash," she chided. Looking back to Tavis, she demanded, "What game are you playing now? If you're worried about splitting the reward, let me assure you Noote's help won't cost you a silver."

"There isn't going to be any silver-at least not from your father," Tavis replied. "As outrageous as it seems, what I say is true. Runolf told me."

Brianna glared at Tavis reproachfully. "I warn you, such ridiculous stories will accomplish nothing."

"It's not a story," said Avner. "Runolf's head told him. I heard it myself."

Brianna kneeled in front of the boy, taking his face between her hands. "You don't have to lie for Tavis anymore," she said. "He won't hurt you."

"I'm not lying!" the boy protested. "And neither is Tavis."

"Goboka was taking you to someplace called the Twilight Vale," the scout explained. "To mate, either with himself or some giant."

Brianna rose, her expression growing hard. "Are you saying that my own father would have me raped by an ogre?"

Tavis fixed his eyes on the ground. "Or something worse."

"You must think me a terrible fool." she snarled. "How can you think I'd take the word of a thief over that of a king?"

"Runolf was no thief," Tavis insisted. "He was a loyal scout."

"Runolf was a traitor, but he wasn't the one I called thief." The princess snatched Earl Dobbin off the ground and threw him over her shoulder. "We're heading west, toward Noote's lands. You have my permission to go find your friend, but don't bother to rejoin us if you intend to keep disparaging my father."

Frustrated, Tavis let his chin drop. "I'll make you a bargain," he said. "You continue west until I find Basil. Once the ogres pick up your trail and think you're heading toward the hill giants, they may grow careless and leave a path open to the south. Then, after Basil and I rejoin you, I'll say nothing more about your father and well turn down the valley."

"And if the way is not clear?" Brianna asked. Her face remained angry and tense, but the princess's voice betrayed her relief that Tavis showed no real inclination to abandon them.

"Well have no choice except to risk the hill giants," the scout allowed. "And you'll stand a much better chance of reaching Noote's lodge with me as your guide."

To Tavis's surprise, it was Morten who spoke up to accept the agreement. "That sounds fair enough, except for leaving us alone," he said. "If the ogres pick up our trail, your place is with the princess."

Tavis raised his brow. "Can't you look after her?"

"Of course, but that doesn't relieve you of your duties," Morten insisted.

Tavis studied the bodyguard's bearded face and was surprised by what he saw there. Instead of peering down his nose with his customary sneer, Morten met the scout's gaze evenly, his expression one of hope and need rather than disdain.

"You're afraid!" Tavis burst out.

"Don't be ridiculous," Morten replied. "Death means nothing to me."

"But failure does," the scout surmised. "You've lost the princess once, and you're afraid it'll happen again."

Morten's cheeks reddened, and he inclined his head in acknowledgement. "I can only kill our foes," he said. "You can avoid them."

Tavis silently cursed the bodyguard's deficiency, but said. "I'll stay."

The princess furrowed her brow. "What about your friend?"

"Basil can look out for himself." Morten said. He spoke too quickly, frightened Tavis would change his mind. "The life of a verbeeg thief is of no importance."

"It is to me," Tavis said, his voice bitter at Morten's callous attitude. "But don't worry, I know where my duty lies."

In accordance with the plan. Tavis led the way west. Though he probably could have persuaded Brianna to turn south right away, traveling toward the giant lands would misdirect the ogres. It would also put some distance between the scout's company and their pursuers. Just as important, this was the direction in which Basil was most likely to flee. As Morten had pointed out, Tavis's primary duty lay in protecting Brianna, but he also had a secondary obligation to the runecaster. If he happened to run across the verbeeg's trail while guiding the princess, he might be able to meet both responsibilities at once.

The forest floor remained flat and open, save for the scattered heaths and waxy carpets of kinnikinnick. Every now and then, when a thicket looked too dense or they came across a crag of rock jutting up from the ground, the scout would stop and listen, slowly creeping up on the suspicious terrain until he was certain none of Goboka's warriors had circled in front of them.

Tavis did not even try to hide their trail. Had he been alone, he could easily have passed through the forest without leaving any spoor the ogres could follow, but his companions were hardly capable of traveling over even open ground without leaving traces of their passage. As inexperienced trackers, they probably couldn't name even half the many marks a creature left as it moved across the ground, much less avoid leaving those signs themselves.

Eventually, the ground developed a slight upward slope, and the looming white wall of a snowy ridge began to peek over the treetops. The breeze grew damp and fresh, the heavy scent of pine displaced by the chill touch of faraway ice fields. Soon, the distant roar of rushing waters rose among the lodgepoles, and the scout knew they were nearing one of the cold rivers spilling down from the Gray Wolf Mountains.

Tavis brought his small procession to a halt. "We'll use the river ahead to make our break south," he said. "It's time to convince the ogres that we're heading for hill giant country."

"How?" Morten asked.

"You'll carry Avner," Tavis said. "He's light enough that he won't make a difference in the depth of your tracks; the ogres will think he's suddenly taking care to leave no spoor."

"What about the rest of us?" Brianna asked. "Morten can't carry us all."

"You and Morten try to avoid leaving tracks. Stick to solid ground and walk on rocks when you can. Stay away from thickets and dust," Tavis said. "There will still be plenty of signs, but it'll look like you're trying not to leave any, and that's what's important. My own trail will all but disappear, and well take a crooked path, laying a false trail heading northwest. The ogre trackers will think we're trying to lose them."

"And how do we really lose them when the time comes?" Avner asked, climbing onto Morten's back.

"We'll lay another false trail on the other side of the river, then float away," Tavis explained. "There won't be any signs for the ogres to follow."

"Good plan," grunted Morten.

"Of course," said Avner. "Tavis will get us back to Hartsvale. He knows everything."

"Not everything," Tavis corrected. He didn't know how to make Brianna trust him, and until he could do that, nothing else mattered. "I know the mountains, but that's not everything."

With that, Tavis turned and resumed the journey. Moving more slowly now, the scout led the group on an erratic course that took them more or less northwest. Whenever the mood struck him, he would make a sharp turn, sometimes heading east, sometimes west, and occasionally even back the way they had come. Always, he kept a sharp eye out for any disturbance caused by the large, flat foot of a verbeeg, and he listened carefully for the sounds of someone clumsy moving through the forest.

Tavis did not confine his steps to hard ground or rocks as he had advised Brianna and Morten to do. Nor did he take a pine bough and brush away his tracks as foolish humans sometimes did, for such nonsense only made it easier to follow quarry. The sweeping action wiped the actual footprints away well enough, but it also left the ground so disturbed that the trail became as easy to follow as a deer path.

Rather, Tavis moved with careful, light steps, keeping to the pine needles covering the forest floor, placing his feet down as slowly and gently as he could. With each step, he listened intently to the sound of his supple boot soles settling on the ground. Every now and then the soft crack of a snapping twig or the muffled crackle of crumbling pine needles came to his ears. Whenever he heard such a sound, he stopped to retrieve the object that had made the noise, slipping it into his cloak pocket. Then he would look over his back trail to see if he had left any other obvious signs of passage. Occasionally, he would spy a small dip where his foot had rested too long in one place, but these depressions did not worry him. The pine needle carpet was spongy enough to return to its normal state long before their pursuers came.

Soon the scout's wandering path came to a steep bank that descended to the river's refuse-littered flood plain. Solitary boulders, carried ashore by winter ice, lay interspersed among jumbles of old weathered logs strewn over the small flat. Here the forest's regal lodgepoles gave way to trees more suited to the boggy ground, shabby black spruces carrying as many tangles of dead gray branches as they did live green boughs.

The river itself was close to a hundred paces wide, racing down a broad, cataract-strewn channel lined with driftwood and round, moss-blackened stones. Where the waters were not a churning mass of froth and foam, they appeared dark and cold, moving with a strong, steady current that would carry the group swiftly down the valley and, if their ruse was successful, away from the ogres.

The scout sent Morten and Brianna directly down the bank to a log pile that, via a tangled network of crisscrossing boles, led to the river's edge. After wiping his soles clean, Tavis descended the slope by climbing down the barren trunk of a fallen lodgepole and, upon reaching a place where the dead bark still clung to the bole, he jumped to a nearby boulder. That was where, in the wet ground at the rock's base, the scout saw the track.

It was a hoofprint. The horse's leg had sunk close to a foot in the black mud, leaving a round, postlike hole half filled with water. A long line of similar craters led to the river's edge. By the slow rate at which they were filling with seep water, Tavis estimated the tracks were between thirty minutes and an hour old. Given the harsh terrain of the surrounding mountains and the proximity of a elan of hill giants-who prized horse meat as a delicacy only a little less desirable than halfling flesh-the scout did not think it likely a wild horse had left the print.

Tavis scampered across a network of stones and toppled tree trunks to the rocks on the river's shore. Here, the prints no longer sank deep into the ground, but on the stones he saw several rusty red streaks where an iron horseshoe had scraped over the surface.

Brianna and the others peered over his shoulders. "What are you looking at?" asked the princess.

"Your mare's trail." Tavis pointed to the signs he had discovered. "She seems to be moving upstream."

"Blizzard?" Brianna gasped. "Here?"

"She's the one who led us to Morten in the first place," Tavis said. "And she's been following us since. We saw her on the Needle Peak glacier shortly before we rescued you, and here she is again."

Brianna's face lit up. "Can we catch her?"

Tavis hesitated before answering. Recovering the horse might help him win Brianna's favor, but it would also increase the ogres' chances of tracking them downstream.

"Finding Blizzard right now wouldn't be wise," he said. "As intelligent as she is, I don't think we could convince her to float down the river with us. And if she starts following us along the shore, the ogres will spy her in an instant. That would ruin our whole plan."

"We can change plans," Brianna suggested.

"No," Morten said. The bodyguard cast a wary glance at the raging river. "This is the best plan. The ogres will never expect us to float down that."

"I'm sure there are other ways," Brianna insisted. "Blizzard's a very special mare."

"Not that special," Morten objected. "I won't put you in greater danger for the sake of a horse."

"You're not putting me anywhere," Brianna snapped. "This is my own choice."

"That may be, but what of the danger to Avner and Earl Dobbin?" Tavis asked. Although he was thinking more of the princess's welfare, he knew Brianna would find this objection difficult to overcome. "Are you also willing to risk their lives on behalf of your mare?"

Brianna fixed a cold glare on the scout and did not answer. Her icy expression suggested she understood Tavis's strategy, but the knowledge did nothing to lessen the validity of his point. She searched her mind for a suitable alternative, finally lowering her gaze when it became obvious there wasn't one. Without speaking, she turned away from Blizzard's trail.

Tavis wanted to offer her some reassurance about the horse's welfare, but to do so would have been to lie. Even if there had not been hundreds of murderous ogres in this valley and a clan of horse-eating giants in the next. Blizzard had to be close to starvation by now, and montane forests were not good grazing grounds.

The scout went over to a log tangle and snapped eight-foot sections off three treetops. He handed one of the makeshift staffs to Brianna and Morten, keeping the third for himself.

"We'll wade upstream until we find a safe place to cross," he said. "Use these to brace yourselves, or the water will sweep your feet from beneath you."

Morten examined the thick end of his staff, then looked toward the broken treetop from which it had come. "Won't the ogres find the fresh breaks and know we've gone into the river?"

"That's right," Tavis said. "When they see we've made staffs, they'll know we're wading upstream-they might even think we're following Blizzard."

The scout walked into the river until it was about knee-deep. Although the snow-fed waters were cool, they were not as bone-chilling as the streams of the Needle Peak glacier. He was not a good judge of how well humans tolerated cold, but he hoped that they would be able to endure the frigid currents for a short time.

Nevertheless, he took the precaution of turning to Brianna. "You and the other humans will grow cold after we get wet, and we won't be able to stop and start a fire."

The princess nodded. "I was just thinking that."

Brianna took off her amulet and uttered an incantation. The silver spear began to glow. Once it had turned fiery red, she touched the talisman first to her own forehead, then to Earl Dobbin and Avner's, raising a spear-shaped welt on each brow.

Ignoring the boy's yelp of pain, the scout started upstream. He moved quickly and carefully, using his staff to brace himself each time he moved a foot over the round, slick rocks of the riverbed. Occasionally, one of the stones shifted or turned over, but he did not bother to stop and return it to its original place. The ogres might notice a void or change in color that told them it had been moved, but such signs would be few and far between. The swift current would destroy most of the other marks of their passage, so the scout doubted that his foes would realize he was deliberately leaving a trail for them.

After about two hundred paces, they reached a pool of slow-moving water. Tavis told his companions to cross the river, then continue another hundred paces upstream. There, Avner and Earl Dobbin were to remain in the water while Brianna and Morten traveled into the forest, carefully trying to leave no signs of their passage. After about ten minutes, the princess was to return to the river walking backward. Morten would continue on for another five minutes, then do the same thing.

"Just be careful not to step on your own tracks when you back up," Tavis said, finishing his instructions. That's the only thing that will let the ogres know what you're doing. Otherwise, as long as you avoid soft ground, you won't leave enough prints to make them realize you've passed over the same place twice."

"What will you be doing?" asked Morten.

"Get something to hold as we go down the river," the scout said. "The current's too fast to swim on our own."

"Then perhaps I should wake Earl Dobbin while I'm waiting for Morten," Brianna suggested, eyeing the churning waters in the center of the channel. "It could be difficult to hang on to him."

Tavis nodded. "Do what you can to keep him quiet."

Morten did not move to cross the river. "All this will take time," he complained. "The ogres will catch us."

The scout shook his head. "Not likely. That's why we laid a crazy trail. It'll take the trackers a few minutes to find our path each time it changes direction-especially if they have a lot of their own warriors trampling the signs."

This seemed to satisfy the bodyguard, so Brianna passed Earl Dobbin's unconscious form to him and began to swim. Avner followed in her wake. Morten simply waded across the dark pool, holding the lord mayor above his head and tipping his chin back to keep his mouth above the surface of the cold water.

Once the princess and the others had reached the other shore safely, Tavis started to wade again. Because the river was not as violent here as below the pool, he moved into deeper water, where the dark currents would prevent the ogres from seeing anything he happened to disturb on the riverbed. Half swimming and half wading, he continued upstream long after Brianna and Morten had stopped to lay their false trails. Occasionally, he approached the shore close enough to look for verbeeg tracks, but saw none.

When he had finally gone far enough to be certain the ogres would no longer be coming up this side of the river, the scout went ashore. He found two of the largest logs he could move and pulled them to the river's edge. After tying the boles together with two short lengths of rope, he slipped his wading staff under the bindings and guided the makeshift raft into the dark waters.

The swift currents carried him downriver in a fraction of the time it had taken to wade up it. He soon saw his companions waiting just above the slow-moving pool where they had crossed the river. Brianna had already-revived Earl Dobbin, who looked pale and frightened. The earl stood on one foot, bracing himself on Brianna's arm, as though his leg hurt too badly to support any weight. His stance might have seemed reasonable, had Tavis not been able to see, even from the middle of the river, that the princess had already called upon her goddess's magic to close the arrow hole.

The scout waved, and they came out to meet him, Avner and the princess swimming. Morten waded, carrying the lord mayor on his back and using both his staff and Brianna's to steady himself in the deep waters. As the four reached the logs, Tavis directed the humans to the back end of the raft. Taking one of the wading poles from Morten, he positioned himself and the bodyguard near the front, and then they were floating out of the pool. The current swept the raft down a swift-flowing tongue of black water, launching it toward a churning wall of foam.

"Hold fast!"

The two firbolgs each locked an arm under the front binding and barely got their legs pointed downstream before crashing through the froth. The raft bucked so hard Tavis thought it would jerk his arm from the socket.

Pitching side to side and threatening to fling its passengers into the churning waters, the raft shot into a boiling, roaring cataract filled with boulders as large as stone giants, bottomless craters of bubbling water, and eddies spinning like tornadoes. The descent became a crazed, lung-burning struggle to keep the logs pointed downriver. Tavis and Morten used the staffs to fend off jagged rocks that popped up to snap like bear teeth at the flimsy raft. They kicked madly in a vain, useless effort at control before the current spun them around, reducing the scout and his companions to so much flotsam tumbling down the channel with all the other debris.

The journey only grew worse as more water poured in from side streams. The canyon grew deeper, the channel steeper, and the raft began to roll, dousing them for long minutes in the angry river only to whip them back into the air so they could draw breath and endure the icy beating a little longer.

How long the torture continued, Tavis could not say. But he started to hear a certain sonorous undertone in the roaring waters, and the logs rolled with less frequency. Soon, the cataracts grew gentle enough that the raft stopped spinning and began to drift backward down the river. The current slowed, and the river broadened. The scout kicked against a passing rock-he had long since lost his staff-and slowly spun them around.

Ahead of them lay a basin of swift, dark water. On the other side of the pool, the river disappeared, as did its banks and the forest rising above its flood plain. The world just seemed to end, dropping away into nothingness, with only blue sky and distant mountains beyond.

Tavis pulled his arm out of the rope that held the raft together. "Swim!"

The command was useless, for even the scout could not hear the word he had just screamed over the roar of the waterfall. Nevertheless, he found himself trailing behind his four companions as they splashed and kicked, in seeming silence, away from the raft.

Though the river's bank was not distant, Tavis thought they would never reach it. The closer they came to the rocky shore, the faster it seemed to slip past. The scout swam with all his might, trying to angle upstream away from the deafening plunge, yet he felt himself drawn inexorably backward. He caught up to the others, but that small accomplishment brought him no relief. In the corner of his eye he could see nothing but blue sky.

Then Morten stopped swimming. Though he was submerged up to his chest in dark waters, he stood like a granite pillar against the current. He reached out and clasped Brianna's hand. She stopped drifting and clasped Avner, and then Earl Dobbin was clutching' madly at the boy's legs, his mouth gaping open in a scream that no one could hear above the din of falling water.

Tavis reached for l he lord mayor's ankles. He felt cold water slipping between his fingers. The scout glanced over his shoulder and saw the dark edge of nothingness creeping toward his feet. He cupped his hands and pulled with all his might, at the same time kicking with both legs. He surged forward, felt the water drag him back, and plunged his feet toward the river bottom.

The scout felt soft mud sucking at his boots, then found himself struggling to keep his balance in neck-deep water. Pulling against the current with his arms, he walked toward shore, carefully anchoring each foot before he moved the next. The water grew shallow, and soon he found himself standing on shore, a half dozen paces from where his companions lay gasping on the boggy ground.

Tavis started to collapse, but stopped when he saw Avner yelling at him and pointing at his back. The scout slowly turned and saw, less than a pace away, the sharp edge of a cliff. Far below, the silvery ribbon of the waterfall emptied into a pool strewn with craggy boulders that had tumbled off the top of the precipice in times past.

And down there, leaping from one jagged stone to another in a frantic attempt to cross the river, was Basil.

Tavis raised his arm to wave, then saw a black shaft come streaking out of the trees on shore. The arrow skipped past the verbeeg's shoulder and disappeared into the river, then a lone ogre stepped out of the forest. The scout pulled Bear Driller off his back and reached for an arrow-only to discover that his quiver had been ripped from his back in the raging river.

With his useless bow in hand, Tavis watched the ogre below nock another arrow. Basil dived into the water and saved himself as the shaft shot past, but the refuge was only temporary. His attacker was already pulling another arrow from his quiver and leaping onto the rocks.

Realizing the runecaster could not stay underwater forever, Tavis stepped over to Avner. He tried to ask for the boy's sling, but when he could not make himself heard over the waterfall, simply pulled it from inside the youth's cloak. Grabbing a stone off the ground, he returned to the edge of the cliff.

The ogre was standing on a boulder in the middle of the river, peering down into the water. Tavis placed his stone in the sling and whirled the strap over his head, then hurled the missile at the brute below.

The rock splashed into the water a dozen paces behind its target. The ogre loosed his shaft, then Basil came up for air. By the time his foe could nock another arrow, the verbeeg had disappeared once again beneath the water.

Tavis grabbed another rock off the ground, then felt Avner's hand tugging at his wet sleeve. The boy took the sling and placed a fist-sized rock into the pocket. He stepped over to the cliff edge, began whirling the strap above his head, and waited. When the ogre drew his bowstring back to fire, the young thief whipped his missile forward. The stone streaked down and struck the brute squarely in the back of the head. The warrior pitched face first into the water.

Basil came up for air again, cocking his head in puzzlement as the dead ogre drifted past. The verbeeg touched his hand to the back of the corpse's head, then seemed to realize where his help had come from and looked toward the top of the waterfall. Tavis waved, motioning for the verbeeg to come up and join them.

Basil shook his head, then turned downstream and began to swim. He looked over his shoulder and waved one last time, then dived back under the water.

As Tavis stood puzzling over the verbeeg's sudden desertion, a volley of ogre arrows sailed out of the trees below, arcing up toward him. He did not even bother to step back, for the distance was too great, and he knew they would all fall short.

Goboka's burly figure stepped from beneath a giant hemlock's heavy boughs, a crackling red javelin in his hands. The shaman glared at Tavis for a moment, then hurled the spear into the air. The scout leaped back, barely ducking out of the way as the missile streaked past in a blur of red and orange.

The javelin struck a black spruce, splitting the bole in two as it passed through. The shaft buried itself deep in the trunk of another tree, then hung there with crimson sparks sputtering from its end.

Along with Brianna and the rest of his companions, Tavis threw himself to the ground. He landed at the princess's side. They lay on the ground for a moment. Then, with an explosion audible even over the din of the waterfall, the tree erupted into a giant pillar of flame.

Tavis felt Brianna's hand on his shoulder. "I guess you don't know everything," she yelled, holding her mouth close to his ear. "Now we try my plan!"