“Good.” Kronn looked across the camp, toward the direction the arrows had come from. “Swiftraven should be about done with the others.”
“Swift-Swiftraven?” Moonsong gasped confusedly.
“Right here,” said a voice as the young warrior strode into the clearing. He held his sabre in one hand, a knife in the other. Both dripped crimson. He smiled when he saw her. “Stagheart told us what happened,” he explained. “We came after you.”
“Stagheart…“ she murmured. “He’s still alive?”
“And safe in Kendermore,” Kronn averred, “which is where we’re taking you.”
New sounds rose around the camp. More ogres were crashing through the trees, shouting in their guttural tongue. Swiftraven glanced around sharply. “Damn,” he swore. “They were faster than I’d thought. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Back west!” Giffel shouted, waving his bladed club. “To the creek!”
He dashed off into the forest. Kronn grabbed Moonsong’s hand and dragged her after them. Her legs burned as she ran, but fear kept her on her feet. Swiftraven came last, watching their backs as they fled.
The sounds of pursuit dogged them as they dashed through the woods. Glancing back, they saw the dark shapes of their pursuers. A dozen more ogres had picked up their trail, howling with battle lust as they crashed through the forest.
They gasped and wheezed, leaping over rocks and fallen trees as they ran. Their pursuers paused when they found the guards Kronn had shot with his blowgun, but soon they were running again, weapons held high.
“How much farther?” Swiftraven panted. The ogres were less than two hundred yards behind them. He could see the fury in their eyes.
“Two miles,” Giffel answered breathlessly.
Kronn and Swiftraven exchanged looks, sharing the same dire thought. The ogres would catch them before they made it another two miles. They ran faster, Kronn pulling Moonsong along with him. She sobbed incoherently, tears streaming down her face, as she stumbled after the kender.
They ran another mile, then Moonsong stumbled over an exposed root and fell. Kronn jerked to a halt, and he and Swiftraven tried to drag her to her feet. The pounding of the ogres’ footsteps grew closer with every exhausted heartbeat.
Swiftraven didn’t hear the faint hum of the javelin flying through the air. It struck him in the back of his knee, impaling his leg. He fell to the ground with a cry.
“No!” Kronn cried.
Swiftraven reached back and pulled the spear from his leg. Bright blood coursed from the wound, and he ground his teeth together and struggled to his feet. When he tried to take a step, though, his knee buckled and he nearly fell again. He groaned with pain. The charging ogres heaved more javelins, which fell all around them.
Swiftraven looked at Kronn, then, his eyes like stones. “Go,” he said.
Kronn’s face was also hard. “Swiftraven…”
A spear hit the ground at Moonsong’s feet. She stared at it dully, uncomprehending.
“Go!” Swiftraven bellowed. “Get back to Kendermore! I’ll try and slow them. Now, Kronn!”
Obediently, Kronn grabbed Moonsong’s hand and ran to catch up with Giffel.
Swiftraven watched them go, then turned, dragging his injured leg, to face the onrushing ogres. He raised his arms, drawing their attention. “Here!” he shouted.
The monsters threw the last of their javelins, but their shots went wild. Then they stopped, all twelve of them, and stared at the wounded Plainsman. They circled around him warily, starting to laugh.
“Damn the lot of you,” Swiftraven snarled, brandishing his sabre. “Who’s first?”
A hulking brute strode forward, chuckling darkly. In his meaty paw he held a sword that a human would have needed both hands to wield. His face twisted into a sneer, revealing a mouthful of black teeth.
“Come on,” Swiftraven growled.
Crossing the distance from his fellows to the young Plainsman in two long strides, the ogre raised his sword and slashed downward in a vicious arc. Swiftraven lifted his sabre to block the blow, and the crash of blade against blade numbed his whole arm. He stumbled back, nearly falling as his bleeding leg faltered under him, then regained his footing and lunged. He thrust upward with his sabre, seeking to pierce his opponent’s scale armor. The ogre swatted the blow aside with his blade, then struck Swiftraven across the face with his free hand.
A bright sun exploded in the Plainsman’s head, but stubbornly he spat blood and teeth on the ground.
“You’ll have to do better than that, you bastard,” he growled.
The ogre raised its massive sword above its head a second time. Again, Swiftraven raised his sabre to parry Steel met steel.
Then the Plainsman’s blade was spinning through the air shorn off by the might of the ogre’s attack. Swiftraven felt the monster’s weapon bite into his right shoulder, cleaving through his collarbone. He heard something heavy-some distant part of his mind told him it was his sword arm-drop to the ground.
He fell, Brightdawn’s name on his lips.
In his sickbed, Stagheart was weeping. Catt and Paxina’s faces also shone with misery. Riverwind stood very still, his face ashen, hands clenched into fists at his sides. Kronn bowed his head, sucked in a deep breath, and blew it out again through tight lips.
“We waited at the entrance to the tunnels,” he said quietly. “I don’t know-I thought maybe, somehow, he might make it. But when we saw the ogres coming through the woods, Giff had to close up the rock, and we headed back to Kendermore.” He raised his gaze from the floor, turning his head to look at a chair by the window. “Brightdawn… I’m sorry.”
She sat rigidly, her blue eyes vacant. The only parts of her that moved were her hands, which twisted around the arrow Swiftraven had left for her.
She did not cry.
When Riverwind had come to her and told her where Swiftraven had gone, and why, she had been furious-at her father, at Swiftraven, at Moonsong, at herself. In her anger, she had nearly gone down into the tunnels after him, but Riverwind had held her until some semblance of calm returned to her.
“He sacrificed himself for us,” Kronn stated. “If he hadn’t distracted them, the ogres would have caught us before we made it to Chesli’s Creek.”
“It should have been me,” Riverwind said dully. “Oh, Mishakal-he took my place…”
“It’s my fault,” Kronn disputed. “I’m the one who left him there.”
“No.” Brightdawn’s voice was as brittle as old parchment. She stood, numb with anguish. “He chose to go. Don’t blame yourselves-either of you.”
The old Plainsman looked at his daughter and saw the void in her gaze. His eyes gleaming in the lamplight, he reached out to her. With an inarticulate sound, Brightdawn shook off his gentle touch. She turned and walked out the door, which slammed shut behind her.
It was almost sunrise when Riverwind found her, standing atop Kendermore’s western wall. She stared intently at the dark line of the forest as the sky behind her turned gold with the promise of dawn. She still held the arrow in her hands.
“Brightdawn,” the old Plainsman said softly, walking toward her along the battlements.
She didn’t answer. He opened his mouth to say her name again, but before he could speak, she bowed her head, and her knees gave way beneath her. Riverwind was at her side before she could fall, though. He caught her up in his arms and held her close. She sobbed in agony as the tears she’d been holding back all night came all at once.
“Brightdawn,” the old Plainsman murmured, stroking her golden hair. “My child. My sunrise.”
“He didn’t say goodbye,” she moaned. “That’s the worst part. That and knowing Moonsong would be dead now if he hadn’t done what he did. Now I’ll never see him again.”
“You will,” Riverwind said solemnly. “Someday.”
She raised her head, her eyes accusing. “How do you know?” she demanded. “The gods are gone, Father! How can you be sure we’ll be together, after we die? How can you be sure there’s anything waiting for us?”
A spasm of anguish crossed his face. “I know, child,” he told her, “because I have faith. The gods would not
