'Hey!' Steel flashed as the man charged after Foryth, only to fall with a thud, then utter a shriek of pain. Emilo Haversack rolled free, his blade bright crimson as he bounced to his feet.
'Why, you little-' The archer lunged forward, ready to shoot, but he never released his arrow or finished his threat. As he darted past the tree, Danyal charged from his shelter with a yell of rage. He was so close to the bowman that he could smell the stink of his filthy clothes, and without pausing to think, he aimed for the spot where the ragged vest was laced with a few torn strips of leather.
The heavy knife stuck hard in the bandit's chest as the man whirled away, shocked by the sudden attack. His elbow cracked Danyal in the chin, and the lad staggered, feeling his hand slip from the hilt of his only weapon. He tumbled onto his back and waited for the arrow that would pin him to the ground.
But instead, the bowmen dropped his weapon from nerveless fingers. Both hands flailed at his chest, trying unsuccessfully to gain a grip on the weapon that, Danyal now saw, had plunged in very deeply.
A thick paralysis held the lad in place as he watched the man slump, saw the beady eyes grow dim and unfocused. Only when the bandit flopped heavily to the ground did Danyal release his breath, realizing that he was trembling all over and far too weak to stand.
'We make a good team,' Emilo said, helping Foryth Teel to his feet from where the historian had fallen in his clumsy attempt at flight.
And then, seeing the handshake between the kender and the man, Danyal realized that it hadn't been clumsiness; it had been a plan! Foryth had acted as a diversion, giving the kender a chance to attack the much larger swordsman by surprise. The lad himself had then taken advantage of a similar chance when the archer had come to the aid of his companion.
'We do,' Dan agreed.
He approached the man he had killed, feeling curiously empty. It made him squeamish to pull the knife from the fatal wound, and he gagged, almost vomiting when he saw the amount of blood that came welling from the puncture after the weapon had been removed. But when he turned away, drew a ragged breath, and thought of Mirabeth, he felt calmness returning.
'There's one more, the one named Red, waiting at a bridge,' he reported, then added to Foryth, 'And they're taking Mirabeth to a place you'll be interested in: Lore-loch.'
CHAPTER 32
Second Palast, Reapember
374 AC
The trio found the bandit named Red snoring loudly on the soft bank beside the next bridge. The man didn't stir as Danyal, Emilo, and Foryth Teel approached to within a few feet. When the breeze shifted, the companions caught the scent of brandy and quickly guessed why the heavyset swordsman slumbered so soundly.
'We should just kill him, shouldn't we?' asked Danyal, cursing his own reluctance as he looked at the defenseless man. He told himself that if it had been Zack or Kelryn, he would have had no trouble making a lethal thrust. Whether that was true or not, he couldn't say, but he knew that he could never stick the cruel knife into this drunken man.
'Er…' Foryth was also clearly hesitant. 'Perhaps we should just ignore him and go on by. He may never even know that we've been past here.' The historian pointed along the road that extended beyond the far side of the bridge. 'Loreloch is that way, according to my map. Why don't we just move on?'
'Seems risky to leave him here,' Emilo suggested. 'Though I really don't know about stuff like that. Still, we don't want him coming along behind us.'
Danyal was about to argue further when they heard a clatter of stones behind them. Whirling, he saw the shape of a large black horse coming forward at a fast trot.
'Nightmare!' he cried, irrationally delighted by the appearance of the great horse. At the same time, Red stirred with a snort. Sitting up, the man blinked at the plunging animal as the mare swept toward the bridge. The three companions dropped behind the bank on the far side of the road as the bandit staggered to his knees, gaping in astonishment.
'By the gods, it's the demon horse!' Red shouted, lurching to his feet. The horse pounded closer, looming black and large as she thundered toward the bridge. The great hooves smashed on the roadway, and Dan felt each thud reverberate through the ground.
Red spun around, apparently without even noticing the three figures on the other side of the road. With a wide-eyed glance over his shoulder, the man took off running.
Nightmare thundered onto the small bridge, snorting contemptuously at the trio of companions. Danyal scrambled to his feet in a rush and made a lunge for the horse's halter, but before he had taken two steps, the animal sprang into a gallop and bolted away, the sound of the hoofbeats soon fading in the distance.
'Where did she come from?' Dan asked, staring after the horse in frustration. He felt a bleak sense of abandonment, made even more painful by the thought of Mirabeth's captivity. He had no doubt that the lass would have been able to bring the mare to an easy halt.
'Her timing was good.' Emilo made the more practical observation.
Foryth Teel was looking at the map in his book again. 'And it seems that Red is running away from Loreloch. I don't suppose he'll be in a hurry to go home after abandoning his post.'
'And Nightmare's going toward Loreloch. Maybe we'll catch up to her,' Dan said, without a lot of hope.
They settled upon the direction, following the vague map in the book that only the historian seemed able to comprehend. With grim determination, the trio of would-be rescuers set out across the mountainside, staying uphill from the rutted mountain road. Alert to danger, they tried to move swiftly without exposing themselves unnecessarily to observation.
Now the three of them actually presented a rough approximation of a fierce and dangerous band. Danyal still had the big knife, and he had taken the short bow and a quiver of arrows from the man he had stabbed. He had been no slouch at shooting rabbits in the woods around Waterton, and he felt quite certain that he could deliver an arrow with accuracy at a far more dangerous target.
Foryth Teel had claimed the short sword from the bandit who no longer had need of such practical tools. Slinging the weapon at his waist, he had at first tripped over the scabbard frequently. By the second day, however, he had at least learned to walk with the blade handy, and he could draw it in a maneuver that was terribly impressive to look at, even if it might have been of questionable use in an actual fight.
They kept to the rocky ridges above the roadway instead of taking the smooth but easily observed track. Twice they camped on windswept slopes, not daring to build a fire that would have left them vulnerable to discovery.
At the first of these camps, Emilo shared the rest of Mirabeth's story-at least, as much of it as she had told the kender and that he could remember.
She had been the daughter of the bold Knight of Solamnia, Sir Harold the White. This was a man who had made peace in this portion of Kharolis his personal business. Eventually he had become too great a thorn in the side of Kelryn Darewind, and the bandit lord had exacted revenge in a brutal and murderous attack against the knight's house.
'I should have guessed it!' Danyal said. 'Kelryn Darewind's men were coming back from those murders when we first ran into them!'
After slaughtering her family, Kelryn had made it clear that he was determined to find and kill the lone surviving daughter of the family. She had been found, by Emilo, as she had said: miserable and alone in the wilderness. Knowing the bandits were about, they had seized on the idea of the disguise, and together they had made the wax ear tips. Emilo had helped her to fashion her long hair into the topknots favored by kender, and Mirabeth herself had known enough about makeup to trace the thin age lines around her eyes and mouth.
The knowledge that her life was forfeit if Kelryn should discover the girl's identity was further incentive to
