would be better used to restore some wounded fighter to health than to merely allay the suffering of those who were inevitably doomed.
The elf knelt beside Barq One-Tooth, who still lay flat on his back beside the crevasse. The Highlander thane was breathing, but his eyes were closed, and his face and beard were sticky with blood. Kerrick took a bit of water from his canteen and sprinkled it on the man’s face, eliciting a grunt of awareness. Carefully the elf tried to rinse away some of the blood.
“I think his nose might be broken,” he noted. “He took quite a punch to the face.”
He did his best to pull the thane a little farther away from the drop-off. A few minutes later Barq was sitting up, mopping his bloody beard with a rag, shaking his head groggily.
Kerrick grimaced at the sight of the burly Highlander’s face. The thane’s nose was smashed nearly flat, while bruises had extended to black circles around both of his eyes. His lips were puffy and swollen, like two ragged sausages plastered across the gateway to his mouth.
He snorted in reaction to Kerrick’s expression. “Haven’t you ever seen anyone who lost a fight before?” growled Barq.
“We won-and that was a brave charge you made,” the elf remarked.
“Never took a hit like that before,” Barq grunted. Only then did he look around curiously, finally standing up and hobbling to the edge of the precipice, staring down into the shadowy depths. “The big one-he’s down there?”
Kerrick nodded.
“How did you do that?” wondered the thane.
“I needed to use the Axe of Gonnas,” Bruni said. “The flames startled him as much as anything, and he lost his balance.”
“Did you notice the way he stared at it?” Kerrick asked. “It was entrancing to him-as if he loved that axe!”
“Not for long, he didn’t,” Moreen remarked wryly.
Barq nodded again, soaking in the information. “Nice work,” he acknowledged, finally, “all of you.”
“You, too,” Moreen said. “We make a good team.”
Barq didn’t seem to be listening. His eyes widened as he probed his gums with his tongue then reached up to feel inside his mouth with his broad, blunt fingers. He exclaimed something that sounded like “Ai oof!”
“Looking for this?” The chiefwoman leaned down and picked up a golden chip that was lying on the stone floor, holding it. Barq One-Tooth groaned as he saw it, holding it up close to his face and examining it glumly.
“We’ll have to call you Barq No-Tooth for the time being,” Kerrick observed, drawing an angry glower from the hulking Highlander.
Apparently he lacked the spirit to argue, however, for he simply placed the loose gold tooth in a small belt pouch and went about collecting his backpack, which he had cast aside early in the fight.
“Here-spread this across your nose and your cheeks.” Moreen gave him a small jar of the healing ointment Dinekki had brought. They had a small supply of the stuff remaining, which was useful mainly for minor wounds.
The fighters were exhausted from their long climb and the intensity of the brief battle, but they loaded up their gear, re-ignited their torches, and started to follow the cavern that curved and twisted away from Icewall Pass. Bruni led the way, followed by Kerrick and Moreen, with the limping and bruised Highlander joining the rest of the warriors in the shuffling column. Barq cast frequent glances behind them, sharing Kerrick’s irrational dread that perhaps the monstrous ogre guardian might not be dead.
It was a weary and dispirited group that made its way farther into the cavern. Dinekki was carried by Bruni, who supported the elder shaman like a baby, cradled against her chest in both of her brawny arms.
For an hour they made their way deeper into the Icewall cavern, following a fairly wide passageway with a smooth floor that was, thankfully, free of any further obstacles. Finally exhaustion compelled a halt, and at a wide spot in the corridor the weary warriors stretched their bedrolls on the floor and tried to find space to rest. However, many of the men and women sat staring, eyes fixed upon remembered images. Sleep proved to be a very elusive comfort.
The torches sputtered and failed until only a few of the brands still flickered. Kerrick found himself restless and uneasy, and as he had on the faraway hill before the Tusker Escarpment, he pushed himself to his feet and wandered along the periphery of the war party.
He heard an annoyed shout and turned to see a big Highlander holding the gully dwarf, Slyce, by his neck.
“Little bugger just stole the last of me warqat!” growled the man. “I oughta punch him clear back to the White Bear Sea-knock the lights out of him!”
“Looks like he’s already pulled the shades,” the elf remarked, seeing the little fellow’s eyelids close droopily.
“Hmmph,” snorted the warrior, his rage apparently dissipating in weariness, or despair. “Stone drunk-wish I could join him there.”
He cast the gully dwarf against the wall, where Slyce collapsed and started snoring noisily. The Highlander ended up stretching out next to the pudgy little fellow, and using his chest as a pillow, he was soon snoring his own accompaniment.
Here, in the underground passage, Kerrick probed ahead of the group, allowing his elven eyes to penetrate regions of pure shadow, places that would have been utterly dark to the humans. It was a relief to get away from the torches, which sizzled and flared in his vision annoyingly.
The elf wandered on, looking for something, anything, to distract him along this twisting passageway. He saw signs of serious excavation and knew that the ogres-or more likely their slaves-had labored hard to create this route through the mountain. Steps had been carved into the floor to ease the passageway in places where it descended or rose. Narrow corridors had been widened, the walls showing the marks of countless chisels and picks, so that even at its most constricted point the corridor would allow the passage of four or five ogres walking abreast.
Before he knew it the elf had wandered a good distance away from the rest of the group. Behind him the torchlight was invisible, the faint sounds of sleep swallowed by the twists and turns of the circuitous route.
“Nice fight,” said Coraltop Netfisher, who was leaning against one of the cavern walls, a dozen paces in front of the elf. “You really know how to use that sword.”
Kerrick snorted bitterly. “Now you show up? It would have been too much trouble to help out, I suppose.”
If the kender took offense, he didn’t show it. Instead, he ambled forward then reached up to rummage through Kerrick’s belt pouch. “No warqat left, huh?” he said, disappointed.
The elf blinked in surprise. “No … but that was a good tip, to carry strong drink up the Tusker Escarpment. How did you know to tell me that?”
Coraltop shrugged. “Know to tell you what? I thought you’d drink the stuff-never thought it would go to waste inside of a polar worm!”
“Well, it was good advice, anyway,” Kerrick noted, “but we’ve lost nearly half our men, and we haven’t even made it into Winterheim yet. Now what do we do?”
“How should I know?” asked the kender, with maddening indifference. He brightened, though, even smiled. “I guess it’s going to start getting interesting now!”
Kerrick awoke with a start, sitting up on the cavern floor, his hand instinctively going for the sword that slid soundlessly from its sheath to gleam coldly in the lightless space. He was alone in a wide stretch of the underground passage connecting from the Icewall Gate, and he had somehow dozed off while sitting against the wall.
“By Zivilyn!” he gasped in a breathless whisper. “I can’t believe I fell asleep like that!”
He had. Anything or anyone that had come along could have killed him, and he would have been utterly defenseless.
“Coraltop?” he asked, remembering that he had been talking to the kender in his last moments of wakefulness.
He was not surprised to receive no answer, but when he placed his hand on the stones where his seafaring
