guards.
'The main party must have called a halt for the night,' Gord commented. 'Even though most of them can probably see as well in the dark as in daylight, the dangers of attack by predators are great enough to make those bastards take shelter until dawn.'
'I agree,' Gellor said to his friend. 'Do you still want to try grabbing one of them?'
Gord nodded resolutely. 'Let's see about their precautions elsewhere. We can circle around to the left and work our way back here if possible. In the process we can take advantage of any weakness we find.'
'Should we wait for full darkness?' the bard asked.
'That will come soon enough,' Gord said, 'and I am no more eager than those outlaws are to meet some night-prowling monster out after brigand or ore meat for a snack. You've more experience in woods such as these than I do, Gellor. What are we likely to meet?'
The bard looked at Gord with raised eyebrows. 'The way you've been going, I was beginning to think that you were ranger as well as thief, acrobat, and swordsman,' he said with mock surprise. 'And doing well enough at it, too, I must say. No mockery at all, my friend. You are doing well. I am a bit more accustomed to court intrigue or battlefield than to such stuff as this, but I did roam a few forests in my younger days. This Vesve is unfamiliar to me, though. For all I know there could be bears and lions, or barghests and dragons, with everything in between tossed in for good measure. Still, from what I've seen so far, this place is most likely for were-swine and wild losels, with who knows what else.'
'Big help,' Gord said with a thin smile.
'Consult a sage next time,' shot back Gellor immediately.
'Let's get moving,' Gord said, seeing no useful direction in continuing the exchange, for both of them were tense and ready to quarrel uselessly. 'It is dark enough here on the ground, and light enough above, to give us the advantage over those arboreal sentries.'
Gellor nodded agreement, and the two began moving silently through the forest, circling the enemy encampment at a half-bowshot distance. At first they could move with relative speed, for the light from above made it possible to spot the losels with ease. Every other tree seemed to have a pair of the creatures roosting within its branches. After they had completed a quarter of the circuit of the outlaw bivouac, the last light failed, and then they moved more slowly.
'We are nearingthe path again,' the bard said in a voice no louder than the rustle of some leaf disturbed by a mouse.
Gord could see the faint gleam of Gellor's enchanted ocular, and the young thief wondered how such vision compared with the power bestowed upon his seeing by the cat's-eye ring he wore. Gord pointed just ahead, crouching low as he did so. The bard did likewise, almost before Gord sank low, for a body of humanoids was moving quietly down the trail, heading south — toward their camp!
Gellor began to slink toward the pathway, moving very fast but making almost no noise at all. This was from his early training in the craft of thievery, thought Gord as he emulated the bard's progress, only covering more distance than he did without any discernible sound at all. 'I truly emulate him,' thought Gord; thereafter, all of his senses were alert only for signs of enemies. There were perhaps a score of mixed humanoids ahead of them. The tall forms were certainly gnolls, the bulky ones probably were ores, and those that shambled were losels. All save the last group were armed with bows or crossbows. The humanoids could see fairly well in the night, for their eyes were sensitive to heat as well as normal light. The party was moving at a walk and traveling faster than either man could. Soon the humanoids would be out of sight.
'Time to become members of that raiding party!' Gellor hissed as he made for the path at a quickened pace.
'Hunch yourself and strut like a baboon. Perhaps they'll believe us to be losels guarding the rear,' Gord murmured. Then they were onto the hard-packed ground of the track and swinging in a loping strut after the score of humanoids already out of sight.
There came no warning call from behind, and the two managed to close with the group ahead without difficulty. They had covered about half of the distance between the enemy camp and the place they had left Chert and his two charges. Something had to be done quickly.
'I'll use druidical spells,' Gellor whispered as he hunched along beside his comrade. 'This will cause confusion but little harm to these killers, so when I work the dweomers, be ready to do what you can to make them think that there is serious danger.'
'I'll be ready!' Gord said, and then he loped closer to the pair of orcish crossbow-armed humanoids who brought up the rear of the column.
As he came near, one of them turned and grunted something to Gord that he couldn't understand. Not knowing whether it was the orcish tongue or just sounds, Gord grunted and waved his arm in the direction from which the humanoid band had come, bouncing as he did this. Uncertain, the man-ore who had turned to see who came stopped his march and so hid his mate. Both peered backward to where a form could just be seen — that was Gellor. Gord knew, working at the casting of a spell to confound these creatures. At the sight of this, both humanoids brought up their already cocked weapons and prepared to shoot their bolts.
While the two were peering intently toward the direction of their own camp to find what their supposed losel comrade was warning them about, Gord was acting. He drew both of his recently acquired throwing knives and hurled them one after the other, with all his strength and skill, toward the retreating backs of the next humanoids in the column. This took but seconds. The two with crossbows thought he was simply gyrating in apish fashion, or thought nothing at all, intent as they were on aiming at their target. Even as his blades were hurtling toward the unsuspecting humanoids, the young thief grabbed one of the half-orcs and spun him. The stupid lout was facing southward before he knew what happened, and as his finger squeezed convulsively on the weapon's trigger he gave a shout of surprise. A gnoll turned quickly at that and took the buzzing bolt full in the eye.
Following this, with motion too rapid for the eye to discern, Gord threw himself down and struck the other man-ore's legs. The humanoid, already distracted, discharged his quarrel upward so that it whipped through leaves and twigs before burying itself harmlessly in a distant tree limb. The startled fellow never had the opportunity to know what had happened, for Cord's sword slew him in the next instant.
Suddenly there were screams from the head of the column, now about thirty or forty paces distant. In the interval between Gord and the main body several things were happening. The crossbow-wielding half-orc stood stupidly looking at the work he had done, for the wounded gnoll was writhing and screaming on the path. Gord's knives had done some damage as well, for another orcish humanoid was down, and the one who had walked beside him was bending over the injured one, removing a knife from where it protruded from the ore's shoulder.
One quick glance backward told him that Gellor was still at his spell-working. Gord unsheathed his dagger and set about his own labor, striking down the man-ore offhandedly in the process. The head of the column had evidently run into something very nasty and painful. Now they were turning in confusion at the cries and shouts from behind. Ducking low, the young thief darted ahead and stabbed at the pair of ores next in line. As he did so, a tall, hyena-faced gnoll leaped into the melee, eager to kill whoever dared to assault his fellows. Gord shoved the ore who had taken a wound from his knife violently backward, meanwhile withdrawing his sword from the corpse of the other humanoid. Ore and gnoll collided, momentarily becoming entangled, and they separated and came for him. Gord met the rush but was brought down under the weight of the two humanoids. A moment later a losel leaped into the fray from a nearby tree limb, adding to the confusion that already existed.
Although he took a vicious bite on the leg, Gord could not be pinned down by weight or grip, as the attacking humanoids discovered to their immense chagrin. The young thief seemed to squirt from the heap of struggling bodies, stabbing with dagger and slashing wide shortsword as he came free. He sprang up, thrust both blades randomly into the mass before him, and then leaped and rolled to a position off the trail. Huge arrows from the bows of the infuriated gnoll archers sank into the three humanoids attempting to rise and follow their slippery adversary. In an instant these three already wounded creatures were done for, pierced by the shafts of their own fellows.
Almost a third of the enemy were accounted for, dead or wounded, and some certain harm had come to those at the head of the company. What more to do? Get away, thought Gord as he heard a loud commotion to the north and realized that the main camp was sending more troops to help die party under attack.
The young thief made a dash for escape, angling slightly toward the humanoid encampment but away from the pathway through the forest's heart. He kept very low and used every bit of brush and tree trunk to cover his
