in return. All right, so he had located the hunter and her companions, but that was a small thing. And what could he, Ratboy, have to fear from a dog, a tamed one traveling with its masters?
Quivering elation rippled through him. Had he found his prey so easily? Could this woman be the woman? Had she literally made camp within sight of his sleeping den?
Orange flames from the fire were just visible through the trees, and he wanted to get a better look. He dropped down to his belly and cast about for some way to cross the road unseen. The road offered no possibility of cover, so he decided to simply cross it quickly. In a blink, like a shadow from flickering firelight, he was across the hard dirt path, blending into the trees and brush on the far side. He crawled closer to view the camp.
The woman was tall, wearing studded leather armor, and looked younger than Ratboy expected. She was almost lovely, with a dusty, black braid hanging down her back as she poured a flask of water into a pot near the fire. Her companion was a thin, white-blond man with elongated ears and dressed almost like a beggar, who stood digging about in the back of a small cart and then…
A silver-gray dog, nearly the height of Ratboy's hipbone, leaped to its feet and stared right at him, as if the foliage between them did not exist. Its lips curled up. The growl escaping its teeth echoed through the quiet forest to Ratboy's ears. Something in the sound brought a strange feeling into his chest. What was this feeling? He hated it, whatever it was, and it made him pull back behind the thick trunk of a tree.
Edwan had said something about a dog.
A dog was nothing. Peering out again, he saw the woman grab her sword, and he smiled.
"What's wrong with him?" Leesil asked. Chap's low snarling continued, but he stood his ground, not attempting to advance in any direction.
"I don't know," Magiere answered, for lack of anything better to say. And in truth, she didn't know, but she was beginning to suspect the hound harbored some extra sense, some ability to see what she could not. "Get the crossbow from the cart and load it."
For once on this trip, Leesil didn't argue and moved quietly and quickly to follow her instructions.
Chap's growls began rising in pitch to the same eerie sound he had made that night by the Vudrask river. Magiere moved toward the dog, reached down, and grasped the soft fur at the back of Chap's neck.
"Stay," she ordered. "You hear me? You stay."
He growled in low tones but did not move from his place. Instead, his locked gaze shifted to the left and his body turned to follow.
"It's circling the camp," Magiere whispered to Leesil.
"What?" Leesil looked about, foot in the crossbow's stirrup and both hands pulling on the bowstring to lock it in place. "What's circling the camp?"
She looked at her partner, at his narrow face and wispy hair. At least this time he wasn't drunk and had the crossbow loaded, but now she wished she'd told him more about killing the mad peasant. How strong the pale man had been, how terrifying… how she'd felt the strange hunger suddenly grow in the pit of her stomach. Afterward, the whole occurrence had seemed too unreal, and she'd passed it off as just her own mind mixing up all the trappings and tricks of playing the game too long. A bad encounter had made her slip into believing her own lies for a panicked moment.
And now she had no answer to Leesil's question.
Chap's white-and-silver muzzle rose, and she expected him to start wailing. Instead, his gaze started moving up and across, up and across, up and up.
"The trees!" she called out, crouching low behind the cart for fear of what a skulker might do from a high vantage point. She reached over the cart's side, pulling Leesil's belt until he crouched low. "It's up in the trees."
The dog's ability to follow his position was becoming more than a mere annoyance to Ratboy. There was no way to try a flanking or head-on attack, so he worked his way over and above his target through the tree limbs. He inched along carefully.
"I'm going to bring your skin home for a rug, you glimmering hound," he whispered, making himself feel better picturing the animal's bloody silver fur draped over his own shoulders. Teesha