'Another thing,' Finellen interjected. She had just heard the whispered report of dwarven warriors who had been scouring the battlefield. 'The Silverhaft Axe isn't here. No one saw it during the battle, and it wasn't found on any of the bodies.'
'Perhaps we'd better have a word with one of the prisoners,' mused Tristan. He picked a particularly dejected-looking firbolg, a brute who sat on the ground with his head in his hands. 'Bring that one over here!' he called to Sands.
The sergeant-major and a few of his men prodded the reluctant creature toward the king and princess. The giant-kin regarded the humans and their allies with suspicion and fear, though there seemed to be little threat in his manner. Low, beetling brows shaded his eyes from the bright moonlight, but the sagging expression of his jowls seemed far more tired than angry.
'Here,' said Alicia, handing the brutish fellow a small sausage from a nearby knapsack. The giant sniffed it cautiously, then popped it into his mouth with a quick gesture.
'There was a ship here,' Tristan began, speaking in slow, clear common tongue. 'Where did it go?'
'Thurgol took ship,' the giant said, squinting in concentration.
'Where did he go?' blurted Brandon.
The firbolg turned, looking to the north. Trees screened them from the coastline, and from this distance, the looming summit of the Icepeak was lost in the haze. Yet the giant-kin unerringly pointed across the strait, to the summit rising above Oman's Isle.
'Thurgol took ship there,' he said firmly. 'To the big mountain with the snow. They go to the place of Grond Peaksmasher.'
Baatlrap seethed with such fury and hatred that he felt as though he must certainly explode. His hand was torn away, his army broken. He led a group of no more than twoscore trolls, the only ones who had survived the battle with the human and dwarven armies. Now those of his comrades still alive regarded him with frank skepticism and loathing, as if it were Baatlrap's fault that the fight had eventually swung against them. He stared back at everyone who seemed likely to challenge him and was mildly gratified to see that, even one-handed, he could still cow the trolls of his band.
Yet his mantle of leadership rested insecurely. He knew that no troll could hold the reins of command for long if he proved incapable of leading his followers to victory and plunder, or at least some small measure of prosperity. Thus far Baatlrap had given them a great victory, at Codscove. Unfortunately that triumph had been followed by today's less-than-glorious setback.
But more than the memory of defeat tore at the hulking leader. Indeed, he felt nothing whatsoever for the many trolls, many of them lifelong companions, who had fallen in the fight. The firbolgs who had perished mattered even less.
To find the true cause of his bitter rage, he had to look no farther than the end of his left arm. The limb ended in a slashing, gory wound where once his wrist and hand had been. In one moment of chaotic battle, one violent act of combat, his hand had been sliced off by the human's sword.
And it wouldn't grow back!
Other trolls had suffered similar injuries. In fact, as they marched, one of the creatures, sliced across the gut by that same deadly weapon, fell to the earth, writhing. No longer able to hold back the weight of his insides, the creature finally gurgled out his last breath amid a circle of impassive, dead black eyes.
The trolls resumed their trudging march, leaving the last fatality where he had fallen. The hideous creatures moved in silence, each of them grimly aware of the deadly harbinger this sword might signify, for if humans could inflict trolls with wounds that wouldn't heal, the future of the humanoids suddenly seemed to hang by a very tenuous thread indeed.
In Baatlrap's mind, that hatred began to coalesce into an image of an enemy. He thought of the man who bore that mighty sword, the one his entire army had attacked. They had almost slain him then! A deep growl rumbled from the troll's chest as his fury grew. The lone warrior never would have escaped the encircling ring if not for the appearance of his accursed allies!
But to Baatlrap, it was the lone fighter who came to personify all the hatred, all the frustration that the seething predator now endured. If he could blot out that life, he thought, some of that rage must certainly be mellowed.
And another thought occurred to him. If, in the process of besting the human lord-he knew that such a warrior must be a leader of men-Baatlrap could gain control of that deadly sword, than there would be no troll who dared to stand in the path of his rulership over the clan.
With this thought on the great troll's mind, his pace of retreat slowed to a shuffle and finally stopped altogether. Then, with only a barked command for his tribesmen to follow, he turned and started back toward the gathering of their enemies.
'All the boats were sunk?' demanded Brandon, trying to discover a means to pursue his beloved longship. 'Not a curragh or rowboat left?'
'I didn't inspect closely,' Tristan said, 'but there was nothing afloat in the bay.'
'I looked,' offered a newcomer. Newt popped into view above them, hovering lower until he came to rest upon Tristan's shoulder. His cheeks bulged, and the little faerie dragon quickly swallowed a mouthful of raw fish.
'I got hungry,' he explained in response to Tristan's look of amazement. 'And besides, it looked like you guys had the battle pretty well taken care of. Nice work, too. Hi, Alicia!' he added.
'Hello, Newt,' she said wryly, amused by her father's reaction.
'Did you see any boats?' Brandon persisted.
'Yup. All sunk, though.'
Disgusted, the northman turned to stalk angrily across the trampled field. 'There must be some way to go after them!' he fumed. Spinning back to the dwarves, he confronted Finellen. 'They've got your axe, too. You can bet on it!'
'Thurgol took Axe of Silver Shaft,' the captive firbolg explained helpfully.
'There is a way, if we can be sure that Oman's Isle is where they've gone,' Finellen said cautiously.
'The paths of the Underdark?' Tristan guessed quietly, and the dwarf nodded. To the others, the High King explained. 'Many of the Moonshaes are connected below the surface of the sea by the rockbound trails of the dwarves. Once those same trails enabled Finellen to come to my rescue on Alaron when I thought all the while that she was still quartered on Gwynneth.'
'Aye-and there is reputedly a trail that connects to Oman's Isle as well,' the dwarf agreed reluctantly.
'Can you take us there?' Brandon pressed. 'Show me how to get across the strait?'
'These are the secret ways of the dwarves,' Finellen protested. 'They are the pride of our nation, and one of the keys to our survival!'
'And if we use them to recover the Silverhaft Axe?' countered the king. 'Doesn't that serve the nation of dwarves as well?'
'Don't play word games with me!' snapped Finellen, but the king could see that the argument had taken hold.
'How far is the nearest entrance?' he pressed.
'The entrances to the ways are known to only a few of the highest-ranking elders among us,' the dwarven captain replied. 'But we could get there in a day's long march. Still, it would take most of two days to make the march under the strait, and they've already got a day's head start on us.'
'Let's go after them!' roared Brandon. 'What else are we supposed to do? We know where they went, and you know how to get there! What are we waiting for?'
'An important concession from our allies,' King Kendrick said sternly. 'Finellen's right. The tunnels beneath the isles are the sacred province of her people, their last line of defense and their secure trade routes. She takes some risk by revealing their location to outsiders.'
'That's correct!' she barked, mollified that Tristan understood her viewpoint so well. She pondered the matter a little more before she spoke.
'We've done well together as allies so far-and more to the point, I don't see that I've got much choice. I'll
