"Judar," Artus said, "get the bearers to form a circle between those two large trees."

Another roar, close at hand. Artus stared hard at a cluster of frond-heavy plants. The sound seemed to come from there…

The dinosaur opened its mouth to roar again, and the flash of hundreds of daggerlike white teeth gave its location away. Gods, Artus shouted in his mind, they're close! They've probably been lurking around us since we left camp!

The altispinax turned, and its sail caught the sunlight bleeding through the canopy. The dinosaur growled, rolling its red-rimmed eyes. Artus dropped his pack, stepping slowly backward toward the bearers. He could hear the worried murmuring of the Tabaxi as they propped their packs around their position in a waist-high defensive wall. "Should we climb the trees?" Judar asked, gripping his bamboo pole with trembling hands.

Artus glanced at the closest trees. Their trunks were too fat around, their bark too smooth. The lowest branches lay hundreds of feet off the ground. The men would never be able to climb fast enough or high enough to avoid the dinosaurs.

"We're going to have to make a stand here," Artus said, stringing his bow. "Let's just hope they're not very hungry or-" he nocked a blue-fletched arrow "-that we can prove we're not an easy meal."

The red-eyed altispinax moved forward cautiously, testing the air with its wide nostrils. It casually kicked Artus's pack. The three claws on its foot tore a hole in the sturdy canvas as if it were gossamer. With two gulps the dinosaur devoured the rations Artus had carried there, along with the rest of his clothes, a spare pair of boots, his canteen, and the remains of the shredded pack itself. That meager fare gone, it looked once more at the explorer and his trapped party.

All around the makeshift fort, the bearers faced sail-backed monsters with equally ravenous looks in their eyes. These were smaller than the one that had devoured Artus's pack, but they also seemed more anxious to get at the men. The Tabaxi held their bamboo poles out like spears, prodding any altispinax that got too close. That only seemed to irritate the creatures further, especially since the sharpened points did little more than scratch the dinosaurs' tough hide.

The brute in front of Artus roared, then started forward at a jog. As he went to draw the longbow, Artus saw Judar reaching for him. More precisely, the guide seemed to be pointing at the now-useless Mulhorandi amulet hanging around his neck. The white paste that damped its magical energy shone dully in the perpetual twilight beneath the canopy. "That can't do anything for us," Artus snapped, elbowing the slight youth aside.

He fired at the dinosaur twice before it crashed into the packs. One arrow struck a shallow wound in its wide forehead, right between its eyes. The shaft bobbed as the creature ran. The second arrow went right into the altispinax's mouth. Blood drooled from the beast's jaws as it chewed the arrow to pieces.

The altispinax almost leaped high enough to clear the pack standing between it and Artus. Luckily, it didn't quite succeed. As it scrambled for footing, the pack fell to bits beneath its claws. More supplies tumbled onto the ground, only to be gobbled up by the smaller sail-backed monsters.

The bearer closest to Artus dropped his pole and gamely hacked at the beast with his machete. Artus himself was forced to use his bow as a club. He slammed it again and again across the beast's skull, waiting for the wood to break. The bow never did shatter, though most would have. The sailor who had sold it to Ibn had been telling the truth; the weapon had been crafted by the servants of the elven court on Evermeet. Such bows, though not created by sorcery, always proved amazingly resilient.

With one snap of its powerful jaws, the altispinax bit through the bearer's bamboo spear. Another snap, and the Tabaxi was dead. The man's scream excited the dinosaurs into a frenzy, like hungry sharks spurred on by blood-filled water. The smaller creatures tore at the packs, while three or four larger beasts tried to climb over the crumbling barricades. Another bearer was pulled from the circle and immediately set upon by a half-dozen dinosaurs.

The red-eyed altispinax turned back to the embattled men, its snout and jaws crimson with blood and gore. It was then that a brilliant flash lit the area, followed by a roar of thunder louder even than the dinosaurs' growling.

For an instant, everything stood still. Artus had the wild, irrational thought that Pontifax was trying to save him, reaching out from beyond the grave to extract him from one last impossible situation. Or maybe Ibn had summoned the Harpers. Then he saw Judar, crouching at the center of the baggage circle. A shiny stone and a handful of gray powder slipped from his fingers.

"You're a mage?" Artus gasped.

But the guide was already on his feet and running, As he passed Artus, Judar grabbed him by the hood. "Quick!" he shrieked.

Drunkenly the dinosaurs stumbled about, shaking their heads or working their jaws in stunned silence. At least it seemed to Artus they were silent, though his ears were ringing too badly to tell for certain. The remaining bearers took advantage of the confusion to escape, too. They ran off in a different direction from Artus and Judar. Before the explorer could signal the surviving Tabaxi to follow, they had vanished.

The dinosaurs recovered soon after. They milled about the remains of the packs and the two corpses in confusion, then charged after the survivors. Artus could hear them breaking through the undergrowth close behind, splashing through the fetid water, churning up the thick mud. Only one of the beasts caught up with Artus and Judar; in fact, it somehow got in front of them. It was a small specimen, nine feet long with a stunted sail upon its back.

Judar was intent on getting the dinosaur out of their way, and quickly. In one fluid movement, the guide reached into his white robes, withdrew a pinch of sand, and tossed it at the dinosaur. As it traveled forward, the sand expanded into the shape of a lion twice as large as a man. The conjured creature struck the altispinax head on. Artus lost sight of the dinosaur, but when the cloud lost its form and the sand settled to the ground, not even a single bone remained.

"Why didn't you tell me you were a mage?" Artus asked as they took off again at a run.

The guide said nothing, only stepped up their grueling pace. Soon the roars of the dinosaurs faded, masked by the cries of birds and other creatures high in the canopy. A short time later, they were out of the swamp. While that meant no more slogging through mud, the undergrowth grew more dense here. Without the bearers' machetes, they were forced to rely on Artus's dagger to hack their way through the thick vines and fronds blocking their path. The going was tough and very slow.

"I want an explanation," Artus said. He dropped the vine he was cutting through and wiped his brow. The day was growing intolerably hot, even with the protection of Theron's tunic.

Judar slumped to the ground. "I really do not wish to discuss it."

"If you'd been honest and told me you had spells at your control, we might have avoided that fight with the altispinax altogether," Artus snapped. "Those bearers would still be alive!"

The guide shook his head slowly. "In most Tabaxi tribes, only village elders and those the elders choose as apprentices may use magic. The bearers would not have traveled with a renegade like me." He turned his large eyes to the explorer. "We would still be at the port."

Artus paused, considering the explanation. He had heard something about Tabaxi mages being protective of their craft, but that still didn't explain everything. "At the start of the fight, you reached for the medallion I wear. Why?"