of Elbereth's people, almost half of the remaining elves in Shilmista. The wizard considered the landscape for a moment, then began positioning the elves along both sides of the path, trying to property distribute those better in hand-to-hand combat and those better with their great bows. He called Danica to his side and began his spell-casting chant, walking along the elven lines and sprinkling white birch bark chips.
As he neared the end of the spell, Tintagel took up his own position, Danica moving to her customary spot beside him, and sprinkled chips upon himself and his human escort.
Then it was completed, and where Danica and forty elven warriors had been standing now stood rows of unremarkable birch trees.
Danica looked out from her new disguise to the forest about her, which seemed vague and foggy to her now, more like a feeling than any definite vision. She focused on the path, knowing that she and Tintagel must remain aware of their surroundings, must be ready to come out of the shape-changing spell as scon as Ivan and Pikel began the assault.
She wondered what she looked like as a tree, and thought, as she always thought when Tmtagel performed this spell, that she might like to spend some quiet time in this form, viewing the forest around her, feeling its strength in her feet-become-roots.
But now there was kilting to do.
Chapter Two
"Oo," moaned Pikel Bouldershoulder, a round-shouldered dwarf with a green-dyed beard braided halfway down his back and open-toed sandals on his gnarly feet, as he watched the distant spectacle of Tintagel's spell. The longing gaze was plain to see, and Pikel almost toppled out of the tree in which he sat.
"No, ye don't!" his brother whispered harshly from across the way, disdaining Pikel's druidic tendencies. Ivan tucked his yellow beard into his wide belt and shifted his dwarven-hard buttocks about on the tree branch and his deer-antlered helmet about on his head, trying to find a comfortable position in this very undwarveniike perch. In one hand he held a club made from the thick trunk of a dead tree. A heavy rope had been tied about his waist and looped up over a branch halfway across the trail.
Ivan had accepted the high seat, knowing what fun it would bring, but he drew the line at being turned into a tree - above his would-be druid brother's whining protests. Ivan had offered a compromise, enquiring of Tintagel about a variation of his mighty spell, but the elf wizard had declined, explaining that he had no power to turn people into rocks.
Across the path, in a perch opposite Ivan, Pikel seemed much more comfortable, both with his tree seat and tree-trunk club. He, too, sported a rope about his waist, the other end of Ivan's. Pikel's comfort with the perch could not defeat his frown, though, a frown brought on by his longing to be with the elves, to be a tree in Shilmista's soil.
Guttural goblin grumbling down the path alerted the dwarves of the enemy's approach.
"Sneaksters," Ivan whispered with a wide smile, trying to brighten his brother's surly mood. Ivan didn't want Pikel pouting at this critical moment.
Both dwarves tightened their grip on their dubs.
Soon the enemy band passed directly under them, spindle-armed and ugly goblins mixed in with pig-faced ores and larger orogs. Ivan had to force himself not to spit on the wretched throng, had to remind himself that more fun would be had if he and his brother could hold their positions just a short while longer.
Then, as the dryad Hammadeen had told them it would, a giant came into view, plodding slowly down the path, seemingly oblivious to its surroundings. By the dryad's words this was the last giant remaining in Shilmista, and Ivan wasn't about to let the evil thing go crawling back to its mountain home.
"Sneaksters," Ivan whispered again, the title he had chosen for him and his brother, a title he knew that the giant, above all others, would appreciate in just another moment.
The huge head bobbed steadily closer. One goblin stopped suddenly and sniffed the air.
Too late.
Ivan and Pikel leveled their clubs and, with a nod to each other, hopped off their high perches, swinging down at the path. Their timing proved perfect and the oblivious giant stepped between them, its gaze straight ahead, its head bobbing at just the right height.
Pikel connected just a split-second before Ivan, the heavy dwarves sandwiching the monster's head in a tremendous slam. Ivan immediately dropped his bloodied club