It's all part of a plan, she convinced herself. First I lure the gnolls out of their village, then I slip behind them, get the stone, and escape. They'll never find me, because I'll be behind them. It's a brilliant plan or is it? Martine didn't know, couldn't know, until it either succeeded or failed.
Using the sun and a few landmarks she had noted, Martine backtracked slowly. The voices of the gnolls grew louder until she was certain they were just off her left flank. The huntress took shelter in a thicket until they passed and the voices had faded farther up the trail.
When their barked commands were no more than dim echoes, Martine angled back onto the trail. It was a risk. There might be a straggler or even a second search party, but she needed to make better speed. Breaking trail through the deep snow was exhausting her, and that was a condition she couldn't risk, especially without food. With exhaustion would come uncontrollable shivering, then frostbite, collapse, and a dreamlike death as the cold overcame her. As a precaution, she found a stout branch. Swung with two hands it would make a fair club the crudest of weapons, but a weapon and therefore useful.
As she trudged along the trail and read the signs of her pursuers, Martine caught a flash of movement off to her left. As quickly as she could focus her vision on the spot, the shape vanished, leaving only the glimpse of a burly, stoop-shouldered shadow. A gnoll? She couldn't be sure. It could be a bear, or even a change in shadow as clouds drifted across the sun. Hefting her cudgel, the ranger slowly approached the spot where she had sighted it, silently picking her way from shadow to shadow.
Ten feet and several moments later, a gnoll suddenly stepped from behind a tree trunk, sword drawn but oblivious to her presence. With a great roundhouse swing, Martine smashed her stick against the side of the creature's head and was rewarded with the metallic twang of wood cracking against a helm. Her cudgel split with the force of her blow, and the jolt rang down through her arms. The gnoll dropped like a felled ox.
Martine sprang astraddle the body, doubting that she'd killed her foe. With numb hands, she fumbled in the snow to recover the dropped sword. Stepping clear, she pressed the blade to the gnoll's throat just as the creature began to
"What… what happened?" the gnoll groaned, and the Harper instantly recognized the voice. By some capricious whim of Lady Tymora, it was the Word-Maker who lay
sprawled before her. A trickle of blood soaked the fur that stuck out from beneath his helm, but the wound didn't appear to be serious.
"Lie on your back, arms up, hands together," Martine ordered, all the while smiling in grim amusement at this sudden reversal of their situations. The shaman groggily complied, and she quickly bound his wrists with some of the sinew she had salvaged from the hut. "Not one sound," she ordered next, sword still held at his throat.
Krote obeyed, clearheaded enough to recognize the peril of his situation. She began searching him for other weapons. "Why are you here?" the shaman asked in a whisper. With the blade held close to his jugular, he took care not to alarm his captor.
`The rock… the one in my gear. I need it. Is it still in the lodge?"
His answer was a choked laugh. Before she could demand what was so funny, her hands patted a hard lump in one of the shaman's pouches. Quickly she opened it and pulled out the familiar reddish cinder that was Jazrac's stone. In the same pouch, she discovered the wizard's bone-handled knife.
"I knew you wanted it, so I took it," Krote explained, grinning. "Am I right? Is the rock why you came back? It is the thing Vreesar seeks, true? The way back to his home?"
"Get up," she ordered abruptly, ignoring his questions. The discovery of the rock and the knife eliminated the need for several steps in her plan, but now it left her with a new problem. She couldn't leave the Word-Maker behind. Already the shaman had correctly guessed too much. Vreesar would almost certainly learn the truth from the gnoll. Nor could Martine bring herself to kill the shaman now that she'd caught him. The practical solution was too coldblooded for her to stomach.
Like it or not, I've got myself a prisoner, she thought ruefully.
"Move," the ranger snapped, furious with the situation, herself, and her ever-present sense of right and wrong. Once more she doubled back, this time turning in the direction of Samek. Dragging along Krote as a prisoner didn't improve her chances of reaching the gnomes safely. She doubted he'd be of much value as a hostage, and there was every chance the gnoll would betray her at the first opportunity.
With the shaman in the lead, the pair followed the gnoll trail once more, traveling the same direction as she had before. It was a good plan. Certainly any tracker would be confused, although there was considerable risk that they might run into the returning gnolls. Knowing these things did nothing to lessen her nerves, which were as jittery as a rabbit's.
They reached the granite outcropping that marked the place where she had begun to backtrack. Kneeling, Martine examined the trail she had not taken. It was with some relief that she noted the tracks of the hunting parry continued on. They missed my backtrack, she thought, pleased with herself even though she knew they might return at any time.
Leaving the trail once more, the Harper guided her prisoner over the ice and rocks, rousing the dark ravens from their roosts. As before, she used the hard surfaces of granite and ice to make their trail disappear, although this time she did not backtrack toward the village but instead headed south toward the dark saddleback ridge that was the pass to Samek.
Descending from the rocky ledges, Martine plunged into the darkest heart of the woods. At sword point, she forced Krote to plow through drifts that sometimes reached well beyond his knees. There was no hiding their trail now, should her pursuers somehow find it. Speed was all
important, and the race was against cold and exhaustion as much as those who hunted for her.
The forest here was virgin pine, the kind cut elsewhere for their long, straight logs. The Harper doubted that any axe had ever touched most of this wood, for the trees were incredibly tall and barren except for bursts of needled boughs near the top. The drab green canopy was laden with snow, casting the forest floor into a perpetual quasitwilight
Their journey wasn't easy. The snow ranged from shallow to deep as it drifted around the tree trunks. Frequently brambles conspired to block the way, and steep ravines stood in their path at several points. Massive deadfalls, where several trees had fallen in a single storm, created impassable snarls that could only be bypassed. All around these fails, uprooted pines leaned perilously on their neighbors. The woods softly resounded to the creaking trunks and the dismal hiss of the wind. Ravens spoke of their passage, the birds' harsh voices ringing far through the mute woods.
Although Martine was born to the outdoors and knew it well, this forest was different from others she was familiar with. The endless tracts of pine were not like the woods of oak and elm in Sembia and the Dalelands. The forest here was tall; muffled, and cold.
A feeling of dark watchfulness tingled at the back of Martine's neck, and she knew it was the spirit of the forest. Others, townsfolk and farmers, never felt it That sense was knowledge only true woodsmen knew by the way the wind rustled the leaves, the direction the water flowed, or even how a rabbit left its tracks. This forest's spirit was ungenerous and unforgiving, barely tolerant of intruders. Martine didn't feel any warmth in these woods like those of her homeland.
Exhausted, the Harper finally called a stop as she leaned, perspiring in the chill, against the trunk of a tree. Krote squatted, his jaw slack and tongue hanging as he panted clouds of frost, almost as spent as she and glad for the rest.