Stagheart’s blood lingered on the ground.
Slowly, Swiftraven crept toward the stain. He crouched down beside it, examining it, then looked back at the two kender and jerked his head for them to come forward.
Moonsong’s abductors had been ogres, and they had not been concerned about hiding their passage, so it only took him a minute to find their spoor. Branches had snapped off trees, and bushes were uprooted. There was blood, too. At least one of them had been wounded, most likely by Stagheart before he fell.
The track led back toward Kendermore. Toward the camps of the ogre horde.
Swiftraven looked at Kronn and Giffel. Both kender nodded silently. The young warrior pointed forward with his readied arrow; then the threesome started forward. They stayed off the ogres’ trail, keeping a dozen paces to the side. They walked a league, neither stopping nor talking. Then suddenly Swiftraven stopped, hunkering low. Behind him, the two kender also drew to a halt.
“What?” Giffel hissed.
“Ogres,” Swiftraven said. He pointed.
Peering ahead, the kender saw dark shapes among the trees, barely fifty yards in front of them.
“Guards,” Kronn said. “Two of them. We must be very close.” Moving quickly, he started taking apart his chapak.
“What are you doing?” the Plainsman asked.
Kronn didn’t answer. He unscrewed his weapon’s axe head, removed the plug from the butt of its handle, and dumped out the coiled rope inside. Then he gave the haft a twist, and a metal plate covered the insides of the flute’s fingerholes, locking in place. “Let me take care of them,” he said, setting aside the haft and fishing in one of his many pouches. “I can do it neatly and quietly.”
After a moment’s digging, he pulled out a long, thin wooden box and opened its hinged lid. Inside were a dozen slender darts. He removed two and clamped them between his teeth as he returned the box to his pouch. Then, carefully, he pulled out a small, dark vial. Smiling grimly, he unstopped it and dipped one of the darts into it. The dart’s needle-sharp point came away coated with glistening, black fluid. Then he did the same with the second dart.
Clutching the blowgun, he crept forward on his haunches, through the undergrowth. Giffel and Swiftraven watched him go. Kronn crossed half the distance to the ogres, moving from cover to cover in quick, silent bursts. At last he stopped behind a low, brown-needled shrub. He set down one of his darts, slid the other into the blowgun, and raised the weapon to his lips. Lining up his sights with the farther of the two ogres, he drew in a deep breath, puffed out his cheeks, and blew.
The dart hissed through the air, striking the ogre in the neck. The creature swatted at it irritably, as if it were a mosquito. Then it blinked twice, fell to its knees, and slumped limply to the ground.
Its fellow stared at it in shock. By the time it realized what had happened, Kronn had fired his second dart, hitting it in the leg. It took a moment longer for the venom to work its way through the second ogre’s veins, but it was still dead before it could do more than grunt in surprise.
Kronn crept back to the others and swiftly reassembled his chapak. “I doubt they posted more guards than that,” he murmured. “They won’t be expecting anything to come from this direction, really. Our way should be clear from here.”
Moonsong drifted along the shores of consciousness. Her head lolled from side to side, and she moaned in pain. Her right cheek was badly bruised, and blood was drying on her bottom lip. Her ribs ached fiercely, too. She had dim memories of an ogre’s booted foot slamming into her side. Worst of all, though, was the burning in her wrists.
The ogres had bound her hands tightly with coarse rope, then had hung that rope from a stake in the middle of their camp. She had tried to fight them, but one had punched her, and her world had fallen into blackness. Now, as she fought her way back toward lucidity, she could no longer feel her fingers, and her wrists blazed with agony where the ropes had chafed them raw.
At long last she opened her left eye; the right was swollen shut. For a moment, she could see nothing, and the afternoon sunlight filled her aching head with fire.
She counted eight ogres before her and heard what sounded like two more behind. Some of the brutish creatures stood at the edges of their simple camp, watching the dying forest around them. Another tended a fire, carving strips of flesh off what looked like a scrawny, dead boar, and setting them on hot stones beside the flames. The meat’s rancid stink made Moonsong’s gorge rise.
The two largest ogres were also the ones closest to her. They were arguing, barking viciously at each other in their harsh, guttural language. She didn’t understand the words, but she didn’t have to. Shuddering, she realized they were arguing over her.
The argument grew more fierce, becoming a shoving match. At last, one of the ogres backhanded the other across the face. The second ogre stumbled back, then wiped blood from its mouth and balled its hands into fists. The first one-a tan-skinned, fur-clad monster with a pockmarked face-snarled, and the second stayed where it was.
The pockmarked ogre turned to face Moonsong, leering cruelly, then walked toward her.
“No,” Moonsong pleaded. Loathing choked her.
She tried to struggle. Fresh blood ran down her arms as the rope rubbed against her wrists. The pockmarked ogre only chuckled, though, reaching for her with a filth-smeared hand. Its sour breath watered her eyes, and she gasped in disgust as its greasy fingers touched her face.
“Pretty,” it growled.
Moonsong tried to scream, but the only sound that escaped her fear-tightened throat was a thin, shrill wail. The pockmarked ogre threw back its head and laughed.
Then, abruptly, it fell silent. Eyes widening with shock, it fell forward against her, then toppled sideways onto the ground. A white-fletched arrow quivered in the back of its neck.
The other ogres gawked at his body, stunned. A second arrow struck one of them in the chest, punching through its leather breastplate and burying itself in its heart. The monster clutched feebly at the feathered shaft, then fell. A third shot grazed the arm of the one tending the fire, drawing a line of blood.
The ogres started shouting, grabbing up clubs and axes. They cast about madly, trying to find the archer among the trees. Another arrow hit one in the eye, killing it-but the shot gave away the archer’s position. Growling with rage, they started toward the arrows’ source.
As they charged, however, slingstones started to rain down on them from behind. Two more ogres fell beneath this new bombardment. The others looked around in amazement, unsure of what to do, then scattered as more stones fell among them. Two charged into the woods after the archer. Another pair went the other way, trying to find the slinger. The last one stayed in the camp, moving to stand by Moonsong’s side. Its face was livid with fear and rage.
The thrum of the bowstring and whistle of the slingstones stopped, then the sounds of fighting rang out on either side of the camp, steel clashing against steel as the ogres fell upon their attackers. Voices grunted in pain, and metal sliced through flesh. The ogre beside Moonsong stared around the camp in indecision, its spear quivering in its grasp.
It jerked suddenly, its body going rigid as something hit it from behind. It swayed unsteadily for a moment, then crashed headlong to the ground.
Behind it stood a tall, stout kender with short-cropped, yellow hair. In his hand he held a metal-studded club, tipped with a long knife blade. The blade gleamed with the dead ogre’s blood.
“Who-” Moonsong began to ask.
The kender shook his head and started toward her. “Later,” he said. He swung his club at the stake, and the knife-blade cut through the rope. Moonsong dropped to her knees with a groan, then struggled to rise.
“Giffel!” shouted another voice. A second kender dashed into the clearing, a bloody axe in his hand.
Seeing his chestnut cheek braids and green clothes, Moonsong gasped in recognition. “Kronn?” she breathed.
“Hi, Moonsong!” the kender said. He waved to her as he hurried over. “Can you walk? No, on second thought, can you run?”
The Plainswoman regarded him blearily, then nodded.
