Beau glanced around, then nodded, and Tip snatched up his bow and two of the loose arrows that had slithered to his feet, and together the two buccen fled northward through the wood.
'Down!' hissed Tip, and he and Beau wormed their way under an ice-laden gnarl of clutching vine. With racing hearts and pent breath they lay on their stomachs on the glaze and watched in the starlight as a spread-out line of searching Rucks swept toward them. Spikes of crampons crunched into the ice as the Spawn came on, Foul Folk calling to one another in their guttural tongue. And Beau jerked as a horn blared, directly above, it seemed, and he gripped Tipperton's wrist, but otherwise moved not.
And then the widely spaced file moved on past and away, and as the crunch of boot spikes and callings of voices and blares of bugles faded in the dark distance, both Tip and Beau slumped in relief. Hearts slowed and breathing became regular again, and finally Tipperton said, 'Come on, Beau, let's go.' But as they crawled out from under, from the east and south they heard more distant horn calls and faint cries, so up through the woods they fled.
By early morning they could no longer hear the bugle blats and shouts from afar, yet they had been driven north and west, losing some of the ground they had gained the previous day. And still they struggled on.
Again they found a stream and broke through the ice and replenished their waterskins. And while Tip scanned the nearby 'scape, Beau lay down and drank from the stream. As he stood, he said, 'Lor', but I'm hungry, Tip. I mean, I've been keeping an eye out for something, anything we could eat-acorns, pine cones with pine nuts, dried berries among the thorns, whatever-but everything is hidden under layers of ice. Y'know, right now even crue and jerky would be a feast.'
But they had nothing to eat, and had had no food since the evening of the attack on the ponies, two days and a night past.
Now Tipperton flopped belly down for a drink, and as Beau stood watch he said, 'Tell you what, Tip, if your bow will hold together long enough, you shoot one of those monsters in the night, and we'll eat the whole thing raw.'
Tip choked on water and came up sputtering, hacking and laughing at one and the same time.
Too exhausted to go on, they struggled up a glassy slope to the top of a low hill, where they could see the lay of the land all 'round, and Tip stood first ward as Beau slept. And it was during his watch that Tipperton discovered a long split in the upper limb of his bow. Must have been cracked when I fell last night and may shatter if I draw it.
'Barn rats,' growled Beau upon hearing the news as his turn came to stand guard. 'Me with a weapon I cannot cast and you with one that might break. A formidable pair we are, eh? The Rucks must be shaking in their boots.'
Rubbing red-rimmed eyes, Tip said, 'Well, bucco, let's hope we have no cause to find out.'
As Beau's first watch came to an end, Tip groaned awake and wearily stood and said, 'Beau, we've got to get out of these woods ere nightfall. I think we should take one more warding each, and then go.'
Beau haggardly nodded, and slumped down as Tip leaned against the tree and with bleary eyes scanned the dark glassy glitter of Drearwood.
East they went and east, steps skidding on the glaze and feet slipping out from under them now and again, more weary from trying to walk upon uneven icy slopes than they were from the travel itself. Tempers were short and they snapped at one another out of fatigue, and they were ravenously hungry and bone tired. Yet still they pushed on, and aided one another upslope and down, or helped each other to regain their feet after a fall. Stumbling, skidding, sliding, eastward they floundered on insecure feet, seeking an end to Drearwood, yet entangled within. And the diamond-bright sun shed little warmth and relentlessly marched toward the west. As evening drew nigh there sounded faint bugle blats echoing among the hard-clad trees, their direction completely uncertain.
The sun set and the short winter twilight fell over the icy gloom, and a quarter moon waxed overhead, shedding its light down through the glassy branches to glimmer upon the sheathed land. And as Tip and Beau struggled over a small rise, ahead through the ice-laden galleries Tipperton saw-'Beau, look! I think we've come to the end.'
'It could be another clearing,' cautioned Beau, yet his heart cried out for it to not be so.
Slipping and sliding, across the glaze they went, down a tiny vale, close-set trees at hand.
And the twilight vanished into night, leaving but moon and stars to dimly light the way through the dark and drear woods. Still the Warrows pushed on, striving to reach the clear way ahead, and the trees seemed to draw in closer, as if to block their escape.
Now they came to the pinch of the vale, where they could almost reach out to touch the thickly wooded sides, and of a sudden dark shapes hurled out from the trees and Beau was smashed down from behind as Tip was wrenched upward from the ground, seized in an iron grip, and the glimmer of sharp steel flashed in the moonlight.
Tipperton futilely clawed for the dagger at his belt, and he shrilled, 'Blut vor blut!' an ancient battlecry in the old Warrow tongue of Twyll. Yet he could not get his dagger, as a gleaming long-knife flashed in the starlight, ready for the killing stroke.
'Kest!' came a sharp cry from one of the man-sized assailants, crouching over Beau and staring into the buccan's face. 'Slean nid! Eio ra nid Rucha tha Waerlinga nista! '
'Aw?'
The knife moved away from Tipperton's throat, but still he struggled as a dark figure moved toward him and threw the buccan's hood back, then in Common said, 'This one is a Waerling, too.'
Now Tip was set to the icy ground and released, and the one who had seized him said, 'Fear not, wee one, for we are Lian.'
'Lian!' exclaimed Beau, looking up from the ground.
'What ye call Elves,' replied one of the tall slender warriors, then adding, 'from Arden Vale.' And he cast back his hood to reveal golden hair to his shoulders tied back by a leather headband, and tipped ears and tilted eyes, seemingly green, though in the light of but stars and moon it was difficult to say. 'I am Vanidor.'
Tip buried his face in his hands, and he slumped to the ground.
Vanidor knelt at his side. 'Art thou ill, wee one?'
Tip looked up, tears streaming down his face. 'N-no. I-I mean, I'm fine. It's just that we have been trying to reach you and it's been so very hard.'
The Elf reached out and put a hand on Tip's shoulder. 'Weep not, wee one, for thou and thy comrade, ye have found us, whatever be thy need.'
'I say,' piped up a plaintive voice from behind; it was Beau, now sitting up. 'Speaking of need, have you anything to eat? Even crue will do.'
Chapter 11
'This is delicious,' said Beau. 'What is it?'
'Mian,' replied fair-haired Loric, the warrior Elf who had given the wafers of Elven waybread to the buccen. ' 'Tis made of honey and oats and various nuts, and it will last long, several seasons, in fact, without turning.'
Tip and Beau and two of the Elves made their way across an open wold, the slope gently rising and falling, the land yet covered by a sheath of ice, yet the buccen were steadied by their sure-footed escort. Free of the woods at last, they were headed for a campsite said by the Elves to be safe, and Loric and Arandar had been assigned to conduct them there.
'Well it certainly puts crue to shame,' said Beau, taking another bite, 'and I'm glad we ran into you, even though you did try to kill us.'
'We thought ye to be a pair of Rucha, small as ye are.'
'Well, that makes us even, I suppose,' said Tip, speaking around a mouthful, 'for when you grabbed me I thought you and your comrades were Hloks.'
'Lucky for us you were not,' added Beau, taking another bite.
'Indeed, Fortune turned Her smiling face toward ye, for Spaunen set ambush in that vale earlier,' said Arandar, his dark eyes grim, his steady hand on Beau's shoulder.
