side of the mountains. My rump would appreciate an easy passage, but not if I miss another chance to nab Kakzim.”
The commandant’s frown had deepened all the while Pavek explained the thin logic of his decision. He considered reversing himself, but the stubbornness that had kept him trapped in lower ranks of the civil bureau took hold of his neck and stiffened his resolve.
He faced Javed squarely, matching his scar-twisted smile against the elf’s frown. “You wanted my decision, Commandant. Now you’ve got it: we hold steady, straight into those mountains ahead and the forest beyond. I want my hands on Kakzim’s neck before the moons occlude.”
“Good,” the commandant said softly, almost as if he were speaking to himself, though his amber eyes were locked with Pavek’s. “Better than I expected. Better than I’d hoped from the Hero of Quraite. Four days left from thirteen. Let’s put on some speed, Lord Pavek. I could walk faster than this. We’ll sleep tonight on the mountain crest. We’ll sleep on the mountain, and we’ll find your halfling before Ral marches across Guthay’s face. My word on it, Lord Pavek.”
* * *
Commandant Javed’s word was as good as the steel he wore around his neck. Leaving behind the kanks, the slaves, and everything else that a templar couldn’t carry on his back, the elf had had them sleeping on top of the mountain ridge one night and on the forest floor the next. They’d lost two templars in the process, one going up the mountains, the other coming down.
Carelessness, Javed had said both times, and refused to slacken the pace.
At the forest-side base of the mountains, the templars, including Pavek and Javed, paused to exchange the shirts they’d been wearing for long-sleeve tunics and leather armor that was fitted from neck to waist and divided into overlapping strips from there down to the middle of their thighs.
It was all part of the equipment Pavek had been given at the beginning of this journey, and he thought nothing of Javed’s order until he touched the tunic’s drab, tightly woven fabric.
“Silk?” he asked incredulously, fingering the alien fabric, which he’d associated with fawning nobles, simpering merchants, and women he couldn’t afford.
“It’s tougher than it looks,” Javed answered, unperturbed. “Tougher than leather or even steel, in the right conditions. These halflings are fond of ambush. They lurk in these damned trees and spit arrows at you from their tiny bows; the bows are rather silly, but the poison will kill you. Leather can protect your vitals, elsewhere—” Javed smoothed the fabric on his arm. “Like as not, those halfling arrows will slide right off—but even if they don’t, your own hide will split before the silk does, and the arrow will push the cloth right inside you.”
“That’s protection?” For all that the commandant had experience with the forest halflings on his side, Pavek began to remove his slippery tunic.
“Damn sure is. The barbs on the arrowheads don’t catch your guts. Ease the silk out; and you ease the arrowhead out, too—with the poison still on it.”
“Still on the arrow?”
Javed’s enigmatic smile flickered at him. “Didn’t believe it myself till I was fighting belgoi north of Balic. Watched a healer work an arrow clean out of a man’s gut; silk was as good as new, and so was the man ten days later. Been a believer ever since. My advice, my lord, is to keep it on. We know your man’s a poisoner.”
* * *
The protection Mahtra’s makers had given her against living creatures had no effect whatsoever on woven vine net. Unfortunately, she had exhausted herself against the halfling-made net before she realized that fact. She’d had nothing left when the halflings lowered them to the ground, and so she stood helpless, barely able to stay upright, when Kakzim had personally bound her wrists behind her back and taken her mask away.
Five days later, imprisoned beneath the great Black-Tree, surrounded by dank, dark dirt, with Zvain and Orekel little more than voices in the blackness, she still shuddered at the memory.
That theft had been Kakzim’s personal vengeance against her. He’d humiliated the others, too, especially Ruari. When the half-elf told Kakzim that Pavek was already dead, the former slave had reeled backward as if Ruari had landed a blow in a particularly vulnerable place, and then transferred all his vicious hatred from Pavek, who was beyond his reach, to Ruari, who had no defense.
Throughout their two-day-long, stumbling, starving walk through the mazelike forest, Kakzim had harried