Jedit

Chapter 8

"Unbelievable!"

"It's not a cliff?" asked Sister Wilemina.

"Nay," said Hazezon, "it's a wall. Built by hand and magic, but I can't imagine how."

Adira Strongheart and her Circle of Seven-Virgil, Whistledove, Murdoch, Simone the Siren, Heath and Wilemina the archers, and the woods witch Jasmine Boreal-sat on horseback and stared. Traveling with them were Hazezon Tamar, an entourage of servants, and four palace guards. Sixteen people and a talking tiger, gaping awestruck at the legendary cliffs that boxed off the Western Wastes. Except the looming monstrosity was not a natural-hewn cliff but a hand-laid wall hundreds of feet high.

"I'd never have believed it had my own eyes not beheld it," murmured Hazezon.

Kneeing his horse onto a small rise, Hazezon scanned from south to north. The Western Wastes were just that, a dreary expanse of pebbly hills and crooked draws with little vegetation and no water. A single charmed jug of ever-flowing water was all that allowed the adventurers to enter these barrens. Hazezon had paid dearly for that jug, and with every sip every member held his breath and hoped its magic didn't fizzle and die, or they surely would. Three weeks it had taken to cross the wastelands on horseback, though Jedit walked every step because no horse would have him and no lumbering monoxes had been available. Often, too, he must drop to all fours to snuffle the sands, for he tracked his enemy.

From Palmyra, Johan's barefoot trail had wended due west into the desert, then, abruptly, diverted north. Twelve days later he'd rendezvoused with twenty people descending from Tirras. Tyrant and entourage had marched west, straight toward the towering wall barring their way. Why Johan had entered the wastelands, why he changed course, how he'd summoned servants across empty miles, how he'd surmounted the wall-these were mysteries.

Always curious, Hazezon Tamar had accompanied Adira's crew simply because he'd never journeyed here before. Now, after three mind-dulling weeks, he wished to never see them again. Yet he was unexpectedly rewarded by this engineering phenomenon of titanic proportions. Shading his eyes, the mage saw the wall ran for miles, far out of sight to the south and north, though not compass-true. Perhaps it curved inward. So immense it was, Hazezon couldn't be sure. The construction reared more than two hundred feet, not quite sheer, with each layer of stone set back a small interval. Even godlike engineers, the wizard supposed, hesitated to push their luck and fudged the slope back a hair.

Turning, Hazezon called, "Heath, how far to the wall, do you reckon?"

Nickering to his horse, the pale archer clopped forward. Hazezon had known Heath for decades, yet he remained an enigma. The quiet man never aged. His hair was bone-white, his face thin, his eyes melancholy as if harboring a secret sorrow. He wore a linen tunic of no color with a deer-hide vest and carried a bow of glossy ebony. His eyes were sharp as a hawk's.

With a glance, Heath pronounced, "Five miles and nine rods, I make it."

"Amazing." Hazezon's eyes were weak from forty years of pirating on bright water and glaring deserts. Yet he could see the wall was made of rough stones carefully stacked and chinked with smaller rocks. No single stone looked hewn by a hammer. "So, a single boulder must be…"

Heath scratched his nose and pointed with a string-callused finger. "That granite stone with the black streak is nineteen armspans or more across."

The others stirred in their saddles. Jedit Ojanen stood with arms folded as he studied the cliff, high as an oncoming cloud bank. Someone whistled.

Simone the Siren asked, "Who can shift rocks fifty feet across?"

"Gods," said Jasmine, "and a few magic-makers. But not many."

"What's that tuft of greenery near the top?" Wilemina pointed.

"A birch grove," answered Heath.

Another whistle. The "tuft" spread like moss along a cottage roof. Heath pointed to a twig and pronounced it a wolf pine growing sideways. Its roots were seated amid rocks bigger than houses.

Jedit pointed a black claw. "What's that white stuff dusting the rocks?"

"Snow," said Heath. To the tiger-man's fuddled look, he added, "Soft ice that sifts from the sky."

A frown creased Jedit's striped face. Obviously he was unsure if the humans joked. "I don't understand." Simone pouted, lips red and luscious in her oiled-ebony face. "Glaciers covered all these lands in the Ice Ages, then melted overnight and flooded everything before them, or so legends say. How could this giant wall have been built since? By whom?"

Hazezon shook his white head. "The wall predates the glaciers. It could be tens of thousands of years old. As to who built it, who can say?"

"And who cares?" Adira cut off discussion. "It doesn't matter if the wall is made of rocks or wood or green cheese. We can't scale it, that's certain. So-"

"I could scale it," interjected Jedit.

Adira Strongheart glared, for she disliked being contradicted, as Hazezon well knew. Yet Jedit Ojanen was at least talking again. He'd been quiet these three weeks, asking again and again for stories of his father's exploits, then silently absorbing them. Day by day, with every step Jedit Ojanen seemed to sink into the earth, as if weighed down by the burden of punishing his father's killer.

Sniffing away Jedit's boast, Adira stated, "We're beached. I didn't believe the cliffs existed, or if they did, they'd be puny and surmountable. Now that we've shoaled…"

"I can lift you up the cliff face," Hazezon jibed his ex-wife.

"How?" sparked Adira. "You're an old and surefooted goat, it's true, if not a randy one, but you couldn't hoist that lard-belly up a coaster's companionway, let alone a stone cliff."

Stung, Hazezon glared from under white eyebrows. "You'll see. Before nightfall. Unless we lose the day arguing."

Calling to their mounts, the troop clattered down a shingle slope, ever westward. Echo was absent, for she'd suffered dizzy spells from her head blow. Missing too was Badger, still recovering from burns. Lacking the old mariner's leadership and light humor, Simone the Siren had adopted the dual roles of lieutenant and court jester.

Now she quipped, "It happens every time. Adira and Hazezon get thrown together by politics, and first they're polite, then they spit, and finally they flay each other with words sharper than an enemy's sword. Makes me glad I wore my old shirt. We'll all be spattered by blood before their love-making is done."

"Shut up," said both Adira and Hazezon.

The party rode into the shadow of the cliffs, which stretched for miles across the desert floor as the sun sank, and no one spoke, struck silent by awe. Up close their necks tired from craning upward. Far, far toward the heavens, thin clouds spilled past the lip of rough rocks and misty greenery. The majestic heights and autumnal chill made the party shiver after weeks of austere, scorched desert.

As the riders slid stiffly from saddles and watered and tended their mounts, Jedit Ojanen squatted over tufts of green and brown that sprinkled the stony soil.

To the tiger's obvious confusion, Heath explained, "Pine needles. Like cactus thorns, only soft."

Frowning, Jedit Ojanen touched a black claw to an invisible spot on the soil. "Johan's last footstep. The trail ends here."

In silence, the party stared upward, thinking but not asking the same question.

"Then we'll stop here too." Hazezon Tamar made his voice flippant, for the atmosphere was chilled and gloomy in the wall's shadow. He opened a saddlebag and unwrapped a squat, square jug. With jug in hands, he asked, "Who goes, and who stays?"

"Goes where?" As always, Adira was suspicious of Hazezon's magic, which had a tendency to run riot once unleashed. "Atop the wall?"

"Where else? It's why we came!" Refusing to be sucked into another endless argument, Hazezon explained patiently. "We shan't all go, uh, aloft. I'm staying here in Sukurvia."

"You'll what?" barked Adira. "You whiskery walrus! Why did you waste three weeks trekking a wasteland just to sheer about and haul for home?"

"I came," Hazezon spat through gritted teeth, "to boost you, you ungrateful minx, up to the top of the. cliffs!"

Adira raked back her auburn curls, always a danger sign. "Oh, so? Us and eight horses, near five tons of deadweight, flung into the air like a flock of flamingos? How did you know there even were cliffs, O Master of the All-Seeing Eye? You're so bat-blind you've pitched down a privy hole just lifting your skirts!"

"I wear robes as befit a civilized gentlemen!" retorted Hazezon. "Unlike some hell-bound hussies who dress in men's garb because they can't decide which side of the bed to sleep in!"

"I slept in your bed too many nights," shrilled Adira, "and suffered one damned disappointment after another."

Some pirates chuckled as the squabble rattled on. Others grimaced in embarrassment. Simone the Siren clutched hands over her heart and simpered as if love-struck. Jedit Ojanen studied the wall as if measuring the best route to climb.

"… leave it to Hamhanded Trembler to concoct some addle-pated scheme built on untried magic!" Adira Strongheart didn't mention that she practiced small magics herself. She jabbed a callused finger at the bottle in her ex-husband's hand. "What stinkpot trick this time? Will you stuff me and my crew in that jug like imps and hurl us up high?"

"No, I'll shift you!"

"Like hell!"

A stunned silence fell as the words sank in. Hazezon was aware that both Adira's mercenaries and his own servants and palace guards stared.

Rubbing her nose in agitation, Adira demanded, "Shift? As in, step across the spheres?"

"Nothing so grand," mumbled the elder mage, "but I've practiced and experimented many a long night. Shifting is the first step toward planeswalking, it's true, but likely I won't live long enough to achieve that. Still, I can shift. Some things."

"What things?" snapped Adira. "How far?"

"Statues, if you must know!" snarled Hazezon. "And within eyeshot!"

Heads tilted heavenward. Simone said, "Eyeshot?"

Sergeant Murdoch echoed, "Experimented?"

And Heath, "Statues? Not the ones at your villa in Bryce?"

"If we don't land atop the wall," asked Wilemina, "where will we end up?"

Hazezon Tamar held up both hands as if to say, Trust me.

Jedit Ojanen asked, "How did Johan surmount the wall?"

Glad for an interruption, Hazezon lectured. "Oh, likely he just levitated his entourage. That would be no hard feat-"

"Why don't we?" asked Virgil.

"— no hard feat for some," Hazezon plowed on. "Or they may've flown. Remember the Tirrans possessed cloth-wing gliders and animated bird carcasses. Or Johan may have shifted them. I can't know his grimoire, but any of a dozen spells might suffice, and what one magician can conjure, another can replicate. Sometimes."

"Drag your anchor, Haz," sighed Adira Strongheart. "We're beached, so any harbor looks homey. What needs doing?"

Smug at a small victory, Hazezon beamed. "Link hands. Quickly, before we lose the light. And stop grumbling. Hold tight. Don't drop hands, or you'll break the ring-Eh?"

"Milord Tamar."

For the first time, the captain of Hazezon's bodyguard spoke up. Lieutenant Peregrine was tall with fair hair cropped square to her turban-wrapped pointed helmet. She wore the ocean-blue tunic with gold wave that represented Bryce's wealth, come from the sea, and over it a blue cloak. A pirate's scimitar was jammed in a sash, and like all the guards, she carried a lance with a fluttering blue pennant, but now she put that aside. Speaking out of turn on a personal matter, her cheeks flushed rose under a southern tan.

"If you'll permit, sir, I wish to accompany Her Ladyship's party, if Her Ladyship will allow it."

— "What?" Mentally rehearsing a spell, Hazezon was taken aback. "Peregrine, why this sudden decision to quit my service?"

"Milord." The woman stood soldier-straight while squirming inside. "My ancestors are said to come from Buzzard's Bay. I request a leave of absence to visit the region. I promised it to my-my mother. And I suspect Her Ladyship Strongheart would welcome an extra right arm."

"Not if you hail me as 'Her Ladyship' the livelong day," said Adira. "You bespeak me like some whaleboned brine hag. Aye, you're welcome to ship aboard. I'd give my right arm for one soul who can follow orders! And we mustn't disappoint your mother."

Teasing made the proud lieutenant blush deeper.

"Yes, go, Peregrine." Worried about his spell, Hazezon didn't care. "No need to dock your pay. Consider it detached duty. Guard Adira as you would me. The stars and moons know she attracts trouble like a lightning rod. Now, all join hands and hush, children! Remember, don't let go your grasp!"

Formally passing command to her second, Lieutenant Peregrine joined the circle with Adira Strongheart, Sergeant Murdoch, Sister Wilemina, Whistledove Kithkin, Jasmine Boreal, Simone the Siren, Heath, Virgil, and Jedit Ojanen. They joined hands, facing outward in a ring that corralled nine nervous horses. Jedit's big furry paws enfolded Wilemina's and Simone's hands halfway to the elbow.

Hazezon Tamar pried the wax stopper from his jug and dipped his finger in a bluish gel like berry juice with an eye-watering reek like vinegar. Touching a gooey blue finger to Adira's left hand, he traced up Adira's arm to her neck, crossed her throat gently, and striped down to her right hand. Adira protested "slime," but Hazezon carried on, dipping and smearing the liniment across Lieutenant Peregrine's chest, careful to keep the azure thread intact. Around the circle he plodded, smearing goo across leather and cloth and skin and tiger hide, all the while incanting under his breath, until he returned to his ex-wife. The desert mage's brow dripped sweat, which made the travelers cringe, but they kept silent.

Looking at the bulky horses and towering cliff wall, Hazezon gritted his teeth as he wound up the incantation.

"… on the wings of Wullab Fountain-Spitter, on the hooves of Gybo the Galloper, with the speed of the Firestorm Phoenix, upon the breath of Phanal-Unorg, I bid you, all joined as one, be gone!"

A great wind swept from nowhere to sizzle about the adventurers. Hair and skirts and mustaches billowed. Capes flipped over quivers and shoulders. Dust spattered faces, making people squeeze their eyes shut and snort. Horses whinnied with fright and skipped to break out of the human corral.

Adira gasped above the howl, "Don't let go or the magic-"

Gone.

Hazezon's servants and guards chirped. One second, Adira's crew swayed in a gale, the next they vanished, and the air fell still. Ears rang in the silence. The heroes hadn't faded away like sunlight nor been whisked upward like birds. They just ceased to exist.

A guard walked to the circle and gingerly toed a boot print.

A cook squeaked, "Did the charm work, Milord?"

In the shadow of the cliff, Hazezon Tamar leaned back and squinted at the distant blurred cliff top. The others peered upward.

Then a guard shouted a laugh. "Look!"

Arcing from the cliff, bright against a darkening sky, fizzled a fire arrow. It soared far out, high overhead, and gradually dropped to disappear in the desert.

Hazezon Tamar laughed with relief. "I knew it would work! I just dislike to boast and tempt fate. Our desert gods are fickle. Silly of me not to have arranged a signal beforehand. Live and learn, live and learn."

He wiped his face and shivered.

"Don't stand gawking, children. Tighten your cinches and mount up! Let's quit the shade of this fell cliff!"

Atop the cliff wall, Heath watched his fire arrow wink out far below. He had no fear of the bluff's sheer drop, but everyone else staggered back from the awful precipice. Wilemina sank onto shaking knees and gasped for breath, frightened both by magic and heights. Whistledove Kithkin crept on all fours to peek over the edge, then changed her mind and crabbed backward. Murdoch and Simone grabbed reins and cooed to nervous horses. Others straightened tackle or tended weapons to soothe shaking hands. Only Adira Strongheart turned to the business at hand, to explore a newfound world.

What she saw were pine trees, hundreds of them.

Marching almost to the cliff's edge, the trees reared straight and tall a hundred feet or more. Their uppermost branches swayed together, murmuring quietly like surf surging. The ground was soft black loam thickly carpeted with brown needles that hushed footfalls. Jots of unseasonable snow were dotted in hollows like flowers. A heady spice of turpentine and moss and water enveloped the party, the breath of the forest. Up here the sun was still high but was already eclipsed by towering trees. The adventurers could see past scaly gray-brown trunks for a hundred, in some places two hundred, feet, but past that light was defeated, and the forest lay still and dark, quiet and cool.

Adira blinked. An orange-black form glided between trunks then vanished. Spinning in place, Adira realized Jedit had slunk into the forest without a sound. At the roots of one tree, the tiger crouched to sift a handful of snow, totally amazed.

Marveling, Adira Strongheart kicked her boot heel and only disturbed more dirt. She wondered how far down it sank, since somewhere below must begin the massive stones of the giant hand-laid wall. Then she shrugged and retted her headband, dropping concerns of tigers and titans.

People startled as she asked, "Who's been here before? Heath? Jasmine?"

The part-elf shook his pale head. "Other pinelands, yes, but not these."

Jasmine Boreal was most local, hailing from a clan that lived beyond Buzzard's Bay, but she, too, shook her head. "This is Arboria, they call it, or the Pinelands. Near a hundred fifty leagues to the Goat's Walk and Buzzard's Bay, methinks. None cross this forest. Rather they trek the heath to reach the Northern Realm."

"Had we sailed the Storm Coast, we'd ride in luxury instead of tramping in mud and rain," groused Adira, "but we must follow Johan and see whither he wanders."

"Why," asked Whistledove, "does no one enter this forest?"

Jasmine shook her head, irritated by a lack of knowledge. "This forest was once home to pine dwellers who hunted and trapped and traded at Buzzard's Bay. Pixies too, t'was said, though none were ever seen or caught. They left. Driven out, perhaps."

The heroes gazed at the mysterious and green-misted beauty of the land. The forest seemed to wait, but for what? A red squirrel scrabbled down from a branch and crossly chattered a challenge. Simone the Siren chucked a pinecone, and the defender scampered up and away. People laughed, and the spell was broken.

Adira nudged Sister Wilemina, still shaking from the magical shift, gazing back the way they'd come.

"Close your trap, Wil, before a swallow builds a nest in your jaw."

— "Look," whispered the archer. "Down there lies sere desert and up here lush forest! A division sharp as beach and sea! Because of this giants' wall! Surely we must wade knee-deep in ancient magics, and what can protect us?"

"I'll protect you, sweetheart," laughed Murdoch and swatted Wilemina's rump, so she jumped a foot. His laughter died as the blonde archer cracked a homy fist on his jaw that toppled him to the turf.

"There's magic for you," chuckled Simone. "Woman magic!"

Fretful and wary and heartened and excited, the party tightened cinches and swung into saddles.

They goggled as Jedit Ojanen stepped from behind a tree, silent as a ghost, to report, "No scent of our enemy."

"None?" asked Adira. "How can that be?"

"If Johan levitated his party," put in Jasmine, "they may've alighted miles within the forest."

"Or anywhere," said Virgil, always glum.

"Or nowhere," admitted Adira, "but we'll flush him out. Jedit, Heath, take point. Murdoch, Peregrine, the vanguard. And don't 'Yes, milady' me, Peregrine, or I'll kick you off this cliff top. 'Adira' suffices. We're brigands, thank the stars, not soldiers."

Perched in a basket atop a packhorse, Whistledove Kidikin held her rapier in one hand, so looked like a child playing pirate.

Peering big-eyed under flat red hair, she asked, "Why would native peoples abandon such a beautiful forest?"

"Only one way to find out," said the pirate chief. "Hi-ho and go."

Strung single file on skittish horses, led by a talking tiger, Adira Strongheart's Robaran Mercenaries penetrated the deep woods.

The leader added in a hush, "Besides, if someone does live here, we shouldn't fret. We've done naught to aggravate them. So far."

Miles ahead, in the depths of the forest… "Halt and speak! Where are you bound?"

Johan, Emperor of Tirras and the Northern Realms, again disguised as a drab monk, sat bald and unblinking as his sedan chair settled. His entourage gaped at strangers who'd materialized like shadows from pine scrub, a prime spot for ambush.

Four dull-witted barbarians lugged their master's chair. A Tirran captain and four pikemen in gray linen tunics painted with Johan's four-pointed star carried spears. Tagging along were a scribe, a lesser mage, a seer, five porters lugging chests and sacks, and a huntsman, cook, and helper. The tyrant kept the party small to move quickly and attract less attention.

Yet they were surrounded by forest denizens. Thin to the point of emaciation, the men and women had fair skin and auburn hair, sharp cheekbones, and slanted eyes, as if part fox. They wore leather kilts or skirts and leggings and jerkins, though a few had shirts of rough cloth obviously traded from the outside world. Everyone was trimmed with a king's ransom in furs: brown, black, ermine, sable, spotted. Most wore the faces of their prey framing their faces, so Johan's entourage seemed doubly surrounded by people and animals: beavers, bears, red and silver foxes, wolverines, wolves, and wildcats. In their hands hung iron spikes, mauls, and axes, and at their backs bows and arrows. Nine warriors, Johan counted.

"We ask, where are you bound?" The spokesman's wispy beard and flat coyote headpiece accentuated his thinness. But rippling knots in his arms suggested a greyhound. "Our people war with an invader. We must know your allegiance or else turn you back."

"Oh, pray, never let us be strangers." Deceptively mild, Johan tugged his brown robe at the knee and stepped onto "brown needles in bare feet. The pine folk exchanged glances, wondering how a poverty-clad hermit rated such an entourage. They frowned, bewildered, as Johan picked up a fallen twig still fresh with green needles.

"Who are you," asked the wizard, "besides my future subjects?"

"Subjects?" blurted the thin leader.

A woman in a wildcat cap snarled, "The people of the pines are no one's subjects!"

Toying with the twig, the stranger replied, "I am Johan, Tyrant of Tirras and Emperor of the Northern Realms, soon emperor of all Jamuraa. Thus, you peasants of the pines, will become my subjects and pay homage to me-if you survive."

Nine warriors recoiled from malice or madness, weapons poised, then shouted as Johan let slip his disguise.

The homely bald monk polymorphed into a demon from legend. Fire-red skin glowed with black stripes. Downtumed horns sprouted from his chin and forehead. The drab robe curdled into a loathsome purple hide that squirmed with life. As the natives stood stunned by the horrific vision, Johan snapped the twig between long black nails.

Immediately came a thrashing as a dozen pine limbs overhead broke and fell. Plummeting, thick branches like giants' spears thundered around Johan's party. A woodsman was lanced in the neck and fell, spurting blood. A dodging woman was impaled through the skull. A lad was crushed by a branch big as his waist, so he squirmed and twitched under a hundredweight of deadfall. Bark chips, splintered heartwood, and pine needles rained. One of Johan's porters flinched backward into the deadly hail and was clipped across the brow by a branch.

Only two woods warriors remained standing. Shrieking, vaulting deadwood, one swung an iron hatchet but was speared in the belly by Johan's pikeman. The other shouted and dived in a crouch but was slashed across the throat. Both fell dead. One guard snatched a wildcat cap as booty, and the other looted a wolf pelt.

Just like that, except for groaning wounded, the attack was done. Without a word, Johan stepped to his sedan.

Color drained from his skin and robe like fading twilight. Again a drab monk, the mage brushed pine needles off his chair.

"Dispatch the wounded, milord?" asked the Tirran captain.

"If you like. Leave a few to tell the tale."

Frightened survivors would spread more terror than plague. Johan ordered his shaggy bearers to rise.

"This porter is hurt." The captain nudged the fallen man with his toe. Another northern barbarian, one of many tribes conquered by Johan, he'd joined the army to see the world. "Sling him across the poles, your worship?"

"No. Divide his goods among the others." An invader left behind could spread terror too, singing songs of Johan's conquests, under torture if need be. "Come. The day wanes. Which way, seer?"

The seer, a gray-haired woman with no teeth and bad eyes, knelt on the pine sward, set down an open-weave pentacle of poured brass, mumbled an incantation, and threw a handful of bones, wood chips, river stones, and other bracken. Leaning close like a hound, the seer studied into which arms of the pentacle the oddments had fallen, then rocked back and pointed west of north.

"Blood. Human. And Johan's stink, like snake musk."

Rising from all fours, the great talking tiger Jedit Ojanen peered about the forest. Granite broke the surface, so hemlock and laurel scrub abounded. Off a ways, wild turkeys strutted and pecked and watched the intruders with beady eyes.

Jedit pointed a black claw. "This fight took place just yesterday."

Adira Strongheart surveyed the scene. Brown pine needles were churned, so black loam showed like open wounds.

Smashed branches and greenery bore jots of blood and scraps of leather and fur. The pirate craned her neck and saw, high up, that a circle of pine trees showed stark white breaks.

"What happened? Did Johan call down a meteor on someone's head?"

"There'd be scorch marks," said Heath. "A good spot for an ambush."

Jasmine the druid dabbed a finger in blood and tasted it. "Meat eaters. Pine dwellers must have run afoul of Johan."

"You said the pine people quit this forest," objected Adira.

Jasmine only shrugged, and the party pressed on.

"Is it good luck or bad we cut Johan's trail?" asked Virgil.

"Good," said Adira. "He steers for Buzzard's Bay, our goal."

Over the dull thud of hooves, Lieutenant Peregrine called, "I've a question. Why is yon port called Buzzard's Bay?"

"Ask rather why it's called the Storm Coast." Simone the Siren rode with her cutlass handy in a saddle scabbard, and now she tugged the blade free to test it.

"All right," Peregrine played along, "why?"

"Because storms wrack it six months out of nine." Simone's voice lost its mirth. "Anyone who ventures past the headlands consigns his soul to the sea and to squalls. So many ships wreck on the rocks, the buzzards can't fly from gorging on smashed corpses that wash ashore."

On that note, the party wended after Johan, bearing west of north.

As the last switching horsetail passed out of sight, a jittering was heard like locust wings. From the scrub flitted a tiny feather-thin figure dressed in rabbit fur. Buzzing on wings a yard wide, the pixie droned through the forest like a bumblebee, wary of hawks and owls that might prowl by day. Miles on, the pixie alighted beside a slender man in leather and wolf skin. Panting, she piped a message in a jerky voice like a chickadee's.

"West of north, eh. On horseback?" The scout pondered. "We can't spare hands for an ambush. Still, stay awake. We'll await their return, and make them pay in blood."