focusing on the exhaustive catechisms to Lolth she had been obliged to learn as a novice.
"She must be someone important. Look at this armor. I don't think I've ever seen its equal."
"We've a lyre here, and a couple of wands," muttered the ranger with the broken hand as he pawed through her belongings. "Be careful, lads, she may be a bard. We ought to gag her to be safe."
"Bring me that healing potion, quickly. Fandar is dying."
Halisstra glanced over at the elf swordsman whose hip she had shat-tered. Several of his companions knelt by him in the snow and mud, trying to comfort him as he writhed weakly in agony. Bright blood flecked the snow nearby. She watched the scene absently, her mind a thousand miles distant.
"Cursed drow witch. Thank the gods they don't all fight like that."
The elf wizard appeared in front of her, his handsome face taut and angry.
"Hood her, fellows," he ordered the others. "No sense letting her know where she is."
"Where are you taking me?" Halisstra demanded.
"Our lord has some things he would like to know," the wizard replied. His smile had a distinctly cold and wintry cast to it, and his eyes were as sharp as knives. "In my experience, most drow are so venomous they'd rather choke on their own blood than do anything sensible and useful, and I expect you'll prove no different. Lord Dessaer will ask you a few ques-tions, you'll call him something impolite, and we'll take you out back and gut you like a fish. That's a damned sight better than our captives fare in your hands, after all."
The hood came down over Halisstra's face and was jerked tight around her neck.
Chapter TWELVE
Ryld crouched in the shadows of a great tree with a trunk so thick and tall it might have been the forest's Narbondel. Splitter rode between his shoul-ders, virtually unused in the company's most recent battle. He leaned out a little and carefully peered into the dappled moonlight and shadow of the forest floor, searching for a target. With Pharaun he'd waited quietly to guard the party's backtrail, hoping to turn the tables on the elves and humans who'd harried them so long. After several valiant attempts to bring the drow to close combat, the surface elves and their human allies had learned to respect the dark elf party's skill and ferocity. They soon fought a slow and stealthy battle of arrows in the dark, punctuated with quick ambuscades and quicker retreats.
An arrow hissed in the dark. Ryld jerked back just in time to glimpse a white-feathered shaft fly past, so close to the tree trunk that its fletching kissed the bark. Had he relied on the tree for cover, the expertly aimed arrow would have skewered him through the eye.
"No point waiting any longer, now," Pharaun whispered.
The wizard had greeted Quenthel's order to lay an ambush with a dis-tinct lack of enthusiasm, and he wasn't at all unhappy to call the effort a failure and rejoin the rest of the band. He muttered the harsh syllables of a spell and gestured in a peculiar fashion, concentrating.
In a moment the wizard straightened and motioned to Ryld, Come. I've created an image that will make it seem that we still stand guard here, but you and I are invisible to our antagonists. Follow me quietly, and stay close.
Ryld nodded and moved off stealthily just behind the wizard. He took one last glance at the desolate forestbehind them, wondering if the wizard's trick would work.
Halisstra is back there somewhere, he thought. Most likely dead.
The surface dwellers had shown no interest in taking prisoners, and in the logical part of his mind Ryld simply wrote off her loss as another casualty of battle, just as he might account for the untimely fall of any useful comrade. He'd fought enough battles over the years to under-stand that warriors die, but despite that, he found Halisstra's loss strangely unsettling.
Pharaun paused, turning in a slow circle as he searched for some sign of the rest of the company or any foes still on their trail. Ryld held still and listened. A gentle wind moved the treetops and sighed in the branches overhead. Leaves rustled, and branches creaked. A small brook trickled nearby, but he could detect nothing that might signal danger - or Halis-stra's return.
Stupid to hope for such a thing, he told himself.
Something troubles you? motioned Pharaun.
No,the weapons master replied.
The wizard studied him, the brilliant silver moonlight gleaming on his handsome face.