Which thoughts made Pavek wonder why the Lion-King would have lied to him about such a matter, if the truth were so linked to this mission. That was not a question to ask Commandant Javed.
"I hadn't thought of it that way, Commandant," he said. "You're right. Of course."
"You're young yet. There's a lot to learn that never gets taught. You just have to put the pieces together yourself— remember that."
Pavek assured the older, wiser elf that he would, and their march through the forest continued. The sense that the forest itself was hostile to them grew steadily stronger until Javed and the maniple templars sensed it also.
"It's too damned quiet," Javed concluded. "Trees. I hate trees. The forest is an ambusher's paradise. They can put their scouts in the branches and tell their troops to lie low in the shade beneath them. Get out your hair, Lord Pavek; see if our halfling's tried to close a trap behind us."
It was the trees themselves that were looking down on them—at least that's what Pavek thought. The hair indicated it as well. Its line hadn't varied since they used it first at Khelo: Kakzim was still ahead of them.
But the two-time Hero of Urik took no chances. He tightened their formation, giving orders to every third templar: "Keep your eyes on the trees ahead of us, on either side, and especially behind. Anything moves, sing out. I'd sooner duck from wind and shadows than have halflings running up our rumps."
They did a lot of shadow dodging that morning, but they also got a heartbeat's warning before the first arrow flew at them. Trusting their silk tunics and leather armor, Commandant Javed ordered the maniples together in a tight circle. He commanded them to kneel, presenting smaller targets to the hidden archers and safeguarding their unprotected legs.
"Defend your face! That's where you're vulnerable," Javed shouted, taking his own advice when an arrow whizzed toward him. "But mark where the arrows are coming from. We'll take these forest-scum brigands when their quivers are empty."
The soft, smooth silk lived up to the commandant's claims, and the lightweight, slow-moving arrows failed to find targets time and again. One templar cried out when an arrow grazed her hand, and moments later she'd fallen unconscious. But she was their only casualty, and gradually the arrow flights came to a halt and the forest was silent.
"Mark where you saw 'em. Move out in pairs." This time the commandant gave his orders in a voice that wouldn't carry to the trees. "We don't have to catch them all, just one or two." Then he turned to Pavek and whispered: "You mark any, my lord?"
Pavek pointed to a crook halfway up one substantial tree where he'd spotted a shadowed silhouette against the branches.
Javed flashed his black-and-white smile. "Let's go catch us a halfling—"
But fickle fortune was against the heroes. Their quarry dropped down and hit the ground running. Javed's elven legs weren't what they'd been in his prime, and Pavek had never been much of a sprinter. The halfling went to ground in a stand of bramble bushes.
Other pairs were luckier. When the maniples reassembled near the body of the unconscious templar, they had captured four halflings, none of whom seemed to understand a word Commandant Javed said when he asked where their village was.
Intimidation was an art among templars. Pavek had been taught the basic skills in the orphanage. Being big, which Pavek had always been, and ugly, which he'd become early on life, Pavek had a natural advantage. The joke was that he was a born intimidator, but the truth was that Pavek didn't enjoy making other folk writhe in terror or anxiety. He was good at it because he hated it, and now that he held the highest rank imaginable, he intended never to professionally intimidate anyone again. He gave a hands-off gesture and stepped aside to allow the commandant to finish what he'd begun.
"You're lying," Javed told the captives who knelt before him. He looked aside to Pavek and began speaking above heads that rose no higher than his thigh. "My name is Commandant Javed of Urik, and I give you my word as a commandant that we're searching for one man, one male halfling with blond hair and slave scars on his face. He committed crimes in Urik, and he will answer for them. No one else need fear us. We won't harm you or your families or your homes if you give us the criminal we've come for. You will help us—understand that. Dead or alive, one of you will guide us to your homes. Now, which one of you will it be?"
From the side, Pavek knew what was coming next. He'd seen two of the halflings flinch when Javed implied the necromancy for which the templarates were infamous. A third had lowered his eyes when the commandant asked for a volunteer. Although necromancy would be more difficult without borrowed spellcraft, Pavek trusted that Javed wouldn't have made the threat if he didn't have the means to carry it through. He also trusted that one of the other templars would have seen the halflings' reaction and would report them to the commandant. Pointing out an enemy who'd shot poisoned arrows at him didn't trouble him, but condemning a man to death and worse because he wouldn't betray his home and family wasn't something Pavek could do.
As Ruari had told him when they'd argued in Escrissar's garden, he had a convenient conscience.
And not long to wait. The maniple templars had caught all four halflings reacting to Javed's speech. The commandant grabbed the lone woman in the group, not—Pavek assumed—strictly because of her sex, but because she had huddled close by one of the men. When templars of any rank, from any bureau, wanted fast intimidation results, they turned their attention to the smaller, weaker partner in a pair, if a pair was available.
While one templar held the woman from behind and another pressed his composite sword's blade against her pulsing throat, Commandant Javed removed a scroll from his pack. He broke the heavy black seal and began to read the mnemonics of the same necromantic spell Pavek had expected the Lion-King to use on him at Codesh. Midway through the invocation, the sword-wielding templar pricked the halfling's skin with the blade's razor-sharp teeth.
The woman gave no more reaction to the pain and the trickling of her own warm, red blood than she had to the commandant's speech, but the sight was too much for the halfling she'd huddled against. He sprang to his feet.
"Spare her, and I'll lead you to our village," he said in the plain language of the Urik streets.
His halfling companions, including the woman whose life he was trying to save, sputtered epithets in their clicking, screeching language. The woman got another nick in her throat; the other two halflings got savage blows from the hilts of templar weapons. Templars did not tolerate in others those treacherous, divisive behaviors they practiced to perfection among themselves.
"And the scarred, blond-haired halfling?" Javed asked.
The traitor wrung his hands. "I know of no such man."
Javed's long arm swung out to clout the halfling. He staggered and tripped over his indignant companions.
"We know he came this way!" the commandant thundered. "I will have the truth, from your mouth or hers!" He shook the scroll he still held in his right hand and began again to read the mnemonics.
With a hand held over his bleeding mouth, the halfling scrambled toward Commandant Javed. "Great One," he cried, "there is no such man. I swear it."
"What do you think, Lord Pavek? Is he telling the truth?"
Eyes turned toward Pavek, who scratched the bristly growth on his chin before asking: "Which way to your village?"