Toede asked.
The horse refused to be drawn into Toede's line of argument. The branch to the western path appeared up ahead.
'So if the gods are paying attention,' said Toede, 'then it wouldn't be out of line to ask them for guidance. Correct? I mean, the words were 'live nobly' not 'prove your faith in us, whoever we are.'
The fork was upon them. To the west lay freedom, to the south more problems than Toede wanted to think about.
He pulled back on the reins, and the horse halted. 'So we have a decision to make, and need guidance, and are willing to leave it up to the will of greater powers. Should the mount turn west, we shall go west. Should it turn south, we will follow the trail to wherever it leads us.' Toede eased his grip on the reins.
The horse did not move. Toede dug his heels in its sides to spur it forward, but still the horse did not move. Toede slapped its flanks with the ends of the reins, and even then horse did not move.
Toede pulled lightly on the right rein, the one that would lead the horse west, but the horse remained immobile. He pulled again, harder, then gave a firm tug. Nothing. Toede gave the slightest tug on the left rein, the one that would lead south to the scholars. The horse swung, as if it had been fixed on a pivot, immediately in that direction.
'Stupid horse,' said Toede, realizing at once that the animal would rather travel a well-worn route than one never trod before. Not a fair test, all in all, he reasoned. Toede pulled the defaced symbol of the Water Prophet out of his saddlebags again and held it up in the moonlight. 'Right then. Toede-side up, we go south. Hopsloth-side up, we go west.'
He flipped the disk as best as he was able from horseback, the symbol spinning and dragging along its chain in a loose elliptical orbit. The flip carried it out of Toede's reach, where it landed among the debris of fallen leaves and dead ferns by the side of the path.
Toede squinted into the dark to see on which side the amulet had landed. Then, seeing the result, he snarled, and thought for a moment of just riding on anyway, of defying the coin-tossed decision influenced by the gods.
'Dark Lady in ribbons and bows,' he muttered. 'Probably a rock slide would fall on top of me if I went west anyway,' and with that, he turned the horse south.
In the forest debris, the abandoned holy symbol shone in the crimson moonlight, the etching of the faceup T deep and visible from a surprising distance away.
Chapter 14
They can make me come back, but they can't make me stay, thought Toede, guiding the horse back toward the forest of stone. By 'they' he meant the gods, or the shadowing, shadowy beings, or whatever perverse creations were responsible for acts of fate and luck. A short mental list of true gods failed to reveal any whose personal province might be making his life miserable, but Toede felt there had to be one or two who were gripping their sides, trying to keep their intestines from bursting loose from the elation they felt at his ordeal.
It was nearly midnight. More than enough time to alert the camp and convince them to start running and running hard in the face of an imminent gnollish invasion. Unless the gnolls were willing to engage the scholars in a penmanship contest, there was little chance the humans would last more than fifteen minutes.
He had ridden this far, Toede thought, it would be a shame not to inspire just a little panic and fear among them. Toede dismounted and sighed, trying to decide who he would most like to shock into apoplexy first. The magical light source that Bunniswot kept for his all-night sessions shone brightly and steadily, and Toede spotted a solitary shadow moving against the tent wall. 'Might as well discomfort the awake first,' said Toede. Of course, awake or asleep, Bunniswot likely would have been one of the first people Toede would have brought the bad news to, anyway, just to enjoy the human's reaction.
Toede rapped on the tent wall, and the figure started. Toede was disappointed only in that he had hoped the young scholar would plaster himself against the opposite tent wall in shock.
The shadow moved quickly around the tent. 'What?' shouted Bunniswot.
'No time for that/' snarled Toede, pushing aside the tent flap and entering. 'We have to evacuate the area at… once.' Toede, smirking, strode into the scholar's small tent. Every flat surface and several tilted ones were piled high with paper, rubbings, scrolls, books, and thin metal plates. A strong, steady light was provided by a glowing metal ball set into an iron holder, the entire assemblage mounted on a small cherrywood box.
The cause for the smirk was the scholar's appearance. Bunniswot had a random collage of paper clutched to his bare, hairless chest. He was dressed in pajama trousers with a drawstring top and a long, open-fronted robe. The robe was hand-made, with patches in the shapes of holy symbols and magical formula crudely stitched to it. But the real source of amusement was the scholar's footwear. Each close-fitting slipper had a pair of protruding eyes jutting from the front, as if the scholar had slipped a pair of rabid beavers over his feet.
'What is the meaning of this intrusion?' shouted Bunniswot softly, in the tone and volume of a man in the mood for arguing but unwilling to wake the neighbors. He stomped his foot for emphasis. Toede noticed the eyes on his slippers were clear little half-shells, with black marbles set inside, and they wiggled as he stomped.
Toede tried unsuccessfully to stifle the image of Bunniswot running from the gnolls, his little foot-eyeballs spinning. Instead he said, 'Scholar, you and your party are on grounds that are sacred to a tribe of gnolls. They are massing for a major attack shortly after sunrise.' Unless they get bored and kill Groag early, he added silently. 'Your cook and I were ambushed, and I barely escaped with my life. It is imperative that you and the others leave this place as soon as is humanly possible.'
Bunniswot grimaced and collapsed onto his folding chair, much like a man who had just had his shin tendons severed. The papers fell from his hands, cascading onto the ground. He raised a delicate hand and pinched the bridge of his nose, squinting his eyes tightly.
'But our scouts said that there were no gnolls around here,' the scholar said weakly. 'Kender, yes, a necromancer, yes, but no gnolls.'
'Next time make sure to check the swamp,' said Toede, walking up to a pile of papers lying on top of a leather trunk. 'I'll go wake the others, then I'll ride to Flotsam for help. You probably won't be able to load up this mess, and it would slow you down, anyway. If you want to save your work, you should put the most important material in a trunk and bury it, then come back later.' And if you're like most scholars, thought Toede with a malicious grin, you'll still be organizing your piles of notes when the gnolls come crashing down on the last few moments of your life.
Instead, Bunniswot responded, 'Perhaps it's better this way. Everything here will be trampled if we're attacked. If we're lucky, they'll burn the entire lot of it.' Then he gave out a brittle cry, put his head in his hands, and began to sob.
Toede did not fancy himself an expert on human behavior beyond the standard buttons he could push to get his way: fear, terror, greed, threats, greed, fear, and greed. But it struck him that this was odd behavior for a man whose life's work was in the direct path of a gnoll invasion.
Perhaps the ogres had dark secrets that no living mortal should know. That was worth investigating. Toede glanced at the papers he had been clearing. The scholar's handwriting was crabbed but readable in the pale light of the tent.
'I didst come unto her skyclad and unshorn, seeking the teachings of the flesh, wearing nought but my finger cymbals and the night air,' Toede intoned. Eyebrow raised, he looked at Bunniswot. The scholar just shook his head and returned to sobbing.
Toede picked up another piece of foolscap. 'We danced among the water lilies that evening, Angelhair and I, and dined upon each other's fleshly pleasures.'
A third. '… and we were joined in our revels in the pavilions by two others, fair of face and unmarred of beauty, their eyes as bright and comely as the pale full moon…'
Bunniswot sighed deeply. 'Stop,' he pleaded. 'I'm so ashamed.'
