At her back, other voices babbled, the sound receding as she fled. Perhaps the rogue who'd hurt himself had been at the head of the pack, and his accident had delayed everyone else. At any rate, she didn't hear them thumping along at her heels anymore, and thanks to the tangle of branches overhead, patches of the ground beneath were free of snow, which ought to prevent the bullies from following her or Thamalon's tracks. The two nobles changed direction one more time, and then she gestured to a hollow in the ground behind the broad trunk of an ancient oak. They crouched down in the depression to catch their breath.
As soon as she stopped moving, the cold bit into her body, and she wistfully thought of her cloak left back in the glade. She felt as if she'd left most of her strength back there as well, squandered in the protracted duel.
Bloody from the wounds she'd given him, panting and shivering at the same time, Thamalon didn't seem to be in any better shape than she was, but he gave her a smile. 'When I said I wished we could spend more time together,' he whispered, 'this wasn't precisely what I had in mind.'
She grinned. 'Shall we try for the horses?'
He shook his head. 'Our friend in the mask will be expecting us to do that.'
'You're right. Well, now that we've shaken them off our tails, they'll have to spread out to hunt us. We could hunt them as well.'
'I certainly wouldn't mind seeing Master Moon's blood on my blade, or that of his agents, either, but still, that strategy seems a little chancy.'
She grimaced. 'I suppose so. They have magic on their side, and if just one of them got off a shout, he could bring the whole band down on our heads. Besides, you don't know how to creep up on someone silently.'
'I'll have you know,' he said indignantly, 'that I'm a first-rate stalker. I mastered the art hunting small game around Storl Oak when I was a boy.'
'If you say so,' Shamur said. 'I suppose our best course is simply to put more distance between our pursuers and ourselves. Perhaps eventually work our way out of the woods and back to Rauthauvyr's Road.'
'Agreed.' He looked up at the stars floating above the canopy of bare branches, taking his bearings. 'Let's head northeast.'
'All right.' They took a last cautious look about, then rose to their feet. At that moment, points of purple light winked at various points in the forest.
'Oh, joy,' Shamur said, 'the wizard has decided to use his spells on us.'
'Be careful,' Thamalon replied. 'Mystra only knows what sort of effect he's conjured.'
Go teach your grandmother to turn a spindle, she thought sourly. She'd been contending with hostile spell- casters before he was born.
They skulked through the trees, and she had to concede that Thamalon could move fairly quietly when he wasn't running flat out. Her teeth began to chatter, and she clenched her jaw to stop the noise.
Soon she heard the wizard's henchmen moving around her, bawling to one another, cursing, and crashing through the brush. Shamur smiled, for she wanted the bravos to make a commotion. That way, she'd know where they were.
Unfortunately, something else was moving as stealthily as she was. So stealthily, in fact, that she had no warning of its presence until she and Thamalon crept right up to a lightning-blasted beech with a blackened crevice running down its trunk. Then she caught a foul stench, and heard a scratching sound. An ochre, six-legged rat the size of a dog exploded from the crack.
Shamur swung her sword at the ugly thing, but it dodged the blade and rushed at her ankle, its huge, stained incisors poised to take her foot off. She kicked it away, and it squealed and scuttled at her again.
She sidestepped, thrust, and this time caught it behind the shoulder, her point plunging all the way through its body to pin it to the ground. Convulsing, it screamed until Thamalon struck its head off.
'It's an osquip,' he said, 'and not native to these woods.'
'I know,' she said, 'the magician summoned it, and thanks to its screeching, everyone knows where we are. Run!'
They dashed on, and a stitch started throbbing in her side. Another osquip scuttled out from under a bush right in front of her, and she had to leap over it to avoid a collision. She whirled, swinging her broadsword, her aim a matter of pure instinct, and split the beast's muzzle precisely between its beady eyes, dispatching it.
Thamalon cursed. Shamur turned to see one of the ruffians emerge from the trees to their left. The rogue's eyes widened as he beheld the fugitives. He was going to shout and pinpoint their location yet again, and there was no way she could get to him in time.
Thamalon dropped the long sword, reached into his sleeve, whipped out a throwing knife, and hurled it, all in one smooth blur of motion. The rogue made a choking sound and collapsed with the weapon buried in his breast.
'I… didn't know you could throw knives,' Shamur wheezed, her side still aching fiercely.
'I suppose you don't approve of spouses keeping secrets from one another,' he replied, his labored breathing all but masking the sarcasm in his tone. He picked up his sword and lurched into motion. Biting back a groan, she stumbled after him.
Violet light pulsed among the trees, and then again a minute later. Shamur had hoped their principal adversary was a wizard of modest talents, who could cast such a summoning only once, but plainly, that wasn't the case. Evidently he could augment his forces repeatedly, until he had sufficient minions to comb every inch of the benighted woods and overwhelm anyone they found there. The odds against her and Thamalon were even longer than she'd first imagined.
She hoped they'd traveled far enough from the spot where the osquip had squealed that they could stop running and resume skulking. The relentless, driving pace had become agonizing. She started to slow down, and then a bubble of purple phosphorescence appeared, swelled, and vanished directly in front of her. It left in its place a hulking lizard man, its scaly tail lashing and its forked tongue flickering from its jaws. The reptilian creature had a club studded with sharp bits of stone in one clawed hand and a crude wicker shield in the other.
As one, Shamur and Thamalon rushed it, hoping to dispatch it before it could take any sort of action. But the lizard man hopped sideways, interposing the noblewoman's body between her husband and itself, and caught her first attack on its shield. Hissing, it struck back, and she ducked the blow.
Thamalon darted around the lizard man and cut at its back. Pivoting, its tail sweeping past Shamur's feet, the creature roared and blocked the blow with its shield.
As it struck at Thamalon, who avoided the blow by jumping back, Shamur cut at its midsection, plunging the broadsword deep into its flesh.
The lizard man collapsed into a drift of dry, brown oak leaves, but Shamur could take no pleasure in the victory, for she knew that its bellowing and the crash of blades on the wicker shield had revealed their whereabouts yet again. She could hear the hunters calling to one another as they moved in from every side.
She suspected that she and Thamalon would never escape. They might as well make a stand here, while they still had a bit of strength left, and see how many of their attackers they could slay before they were cut down in their turn. But that would be tantamount to giving up, and so she started to run instead.
Thamalon grabbed her by the arm. 'This way,' he said, pointing with the gory tip of his long sword to indicate a slightly different direction. She didn't see why he thought his choice was any better, but it didn't seem to be any worse, either, and there was scarcely time for discussion. So she nodded and let him lead the way.
Another osquip, this one eight-legged, scuttled from the shadows. Thamalon cut at it, missed, his blade jarring on the frozen earth, and the huge rat darted at his leg. He snatched his foot back, and then Shamur hacked her broadsword down into the creature's spine. The osquip fell and lay screeching like a damned soul.
As Shamur lifted her broadsword to administer the coup de grace, a crossbow bolt streaked out of the night, narrowly missed Thamalon, and crunched into the bole of an oak. There was no point in silencing the osquip if other foes were already close enough to snipe at them, so she and Thamalon simply fled, leaving the beast to writhe and shriek on the ground.
'Just… a little… farther,' Thamalon gasped Shamur couldn't imagine how he could find the breath to run and try to encourage her at the same time. She also had no idea what he was talking about, but after twenty more stumbling, excruciating strides, she found out.
Suddenly, she and Thamalon plunged from the trees into a large clearing. Perhaps ancient enchantments prevented the surrounding woods from encroaching on the space, for at its center rose the dark shape of a small ruined fortress. Shamur realized that her husband had been heading in the castle's direction all along, so they could
