ears and braided with his long hair (which he had recently redyed forest green) halfway down his back. Gently Danica moved the tousle aside, drawing a semiconscious "Hee hee," from the snoozing dwarf, and lifted one of the buckets.
The next thunderous roars resounding from the camp sent animals for nearly a mile around scurrying for cover. Even a fat black bear, out to catch some morning sunshine, raced through a tangle and up the side of a thick oak, sniffing the air nervously, fearfully.
The dwarves ran about in circles, crashed into each other several times, and threw their blankets into the air.
"Me weapon!" Ivan cried in distress.
"Oo oi!" Pikel wholeheartedly agreed, unable to locate his tree-trunk club.
Ivan canned first, noticing Danica standing next to a tree, her arms folded across her chest and her grin spreading from ear to ear. The dwarf stopped his running altogether and regarded her with dart-throwing eyes.
He should have looked out for his brother instead.
Pikel hit him broadside, and the two flew away into some brambles. By the time they extricated themselves and had stomped back into the camp, their beards were thrown wildly about and their nightshirts seemed almost furry with burrs.
"Yerself did that to us!" Ivan shouted accusingly at Danica.
"I wish to be in Carradoon no later than tomorrow," the woman replied just as angrily. "I welcomed your company, but did not know it would mean holding camp until after noon each day! I thought dwarves were industrious!"
"Oooo" Pikel moaned, ashamed of his perceived laziness.
"Not our fault," Ivan muttered, also on the defensive. "It's the ground," he blurted. "Yeah, the ground. Too hard and comfortable for a dwarf to want to get himself up in the morning!"
"You have forfeited breakfast," Danica scolded.
"When halflings shave their feet!" Ivan roared, and Danica suspected - correctly - that she was overstepping her bounds. Throwing ice-cold water down the backs of sleeping dwarves was one thing, but denying them food was something altogether different, something downright dangerous.
"A quick meal then," she conceded, "then we are off."
Sixteen trout, four tankards of ale (each), half a sack of biscuits and three bowls of berries (each) later, the dwar-ven brothers gathered their belongings and skipped off down the mountain trails behind Danica. Impresk Lake was clearly visible whenever they came to an open ridge, and Carradoon soon came into sight as well, far below.
Despite Danica's desire for haste, the trio took all caution in their trek. The Snowflake Mountains were a dangerous place, even in their southern reaches, where the charges of the Edificant Library dominated the region. With war brewing in the north and battles continuing back to the west, in Shilmista, the companions had to assume that the trails would now be even more dangerous.
Danica led the way, bending low to inspect every track, every bent blade of grass. Ivan and Pikel bobbed along behind her, Ivan in his deer-antlered helmet and Pikel wearing a many-dented cooking pot for lack of any true headgear. Even though Danica continually searched the ground as she traveled, the speedy monk had little trouble outpacing the dwarves and forced them to scurry along just to keep up.
Danica slowed considerably; Ivan and Pikel nearly ran her down. "Uh-oh," Pikel muttered, seeing Danica's curious expression.
"What'd ye find?" Ivan asked quietly, pulling his brother along behind him.
Danica shook her head, unsure. "Someone has passed this way," she declared.
"Avery and Rufo," Ivan replied.
"More recently," Danica said, standing straight again and taking a long, hard look at the nearby brush.
"Coming or going?" Ivan pressed.
Danica shook her head, unable to decide. She was confident that her guess had been correct, but what bothered her was the nature of the tracks, the scratching marks made over the apparent boot prints. If someone had crossed this trail earlier that morning, then they had gone to great lengths to conceal their tracks.
Ivan looked down at the unremarkable ground and, scratching confusedly at his yellow beard, produced yet another stubborn burr. "I don't see tracks," he huffed.
Danica pointed out a slight depression in the ground, barely visible, then indicated the pattern that made her believe that brush had been scraped over the ground.
Ivan snorted in disbelief. "That all ye got to go on?" he asked loudly, no longer afraid of the volume of his voice.
Danica didn't even try to hush him. She remained confident ofher guess; she could hope only that some ranger, or one of Elbereth's elven kin, perhaps, was in the region. If not a ranger or an elf, then