Shandril smiled ruefully. “Yes, and hasn’t had a spare moment to draw breath, yet alone enjoy any of it.”
“You married me—and seemed to enjoy that,” Narm protested in mock hurt.
“She must have been deaf, then,” Delg put in, ahead of them. “The way you babble day and night through.”
Narm favored the dwarf with a certain rude sputtering noise made by small children throughout Faerûn.
“You’ll have to be a little closer to kiss me, lad,” the dwarf replied, eyes twinkling. Then his face grew more grave. “Shan—are you having thoughts against this journey?”
Shandril shook her head. “No—whatever I do, danger waits for me or comes looking. At least if I’m going somewhere, I have the feeling I’m doing something rather than just running from the latest attack.” She looked at them both and spread her hands. “If I wasn’t trying to get to Silverymoon—even if it doesn’t turn out to be a friendly haven—I’d be dead by now. I’d have surrendered, just to be free of always running and worrying and fighting. I’m so sick of it all—I could scream!”
Fire danced in Shandril’s eyes for a moment, and then died away, leaving her expression empty, her eyes like two dark, despairing pits. “I do scream,” she added, voice unsteady, “when I have to use spellfire—cursing the gods for playing this jest on me.”
Delg squinted up at her. “Others have cursed the humor of the gods, lass, even among the dwarves—but I’ve heard elders tell them the gods jest with us all, and we are measured by how we deal with what befalls. Of course you want to be free of all who harry you. Who in Faerûn wouldn’t?”
He shifted his heavy pack on his shoulders and added, “More than that: I’d be sad if one so young and inexperienced as you had already decided exactly what she’d do her entire life through … because she’d have to be a fool to be so certain about so little.”
“My thanks, Delg—I think,” Shandril told him a little stiffly.
And then she shrieked. Out of nowhere, something slim and dark tore through the air, leaping past her breast to crash into the leaves beyond.
Delg put his head down and charged bruisingly into Shandril. As they crashed into the damp, dead leaves together, the dwarf snarled, “Down!” in Narm’s direction.
With the hum of an angry hornet, another bolt tore through the air close overhead, and then another. Narm rolled amid dead leaves nearby, cursing.
Shandril fought for breath as Delg wriggled and grunted beside her, shucking his pack, tearing his shield free, and getting his arm into the straps. His axe flashed past her nose as he hefted it.
“The Zhents again!” the dwarf hissed, peering into the trees. “There!”
He pointed. Shandril rolled onto hands and knees and came up beside his hairy hand, looking along the pointing finger—and into the eyes of a Zhent who was loading a cocked crossbow.
From the leaves beside them, Narm muttered something. Two pulses of light leapt from his hand, streaking through the trees. The man grunted as they hit, staggering and dropping his bow.
Shandril saw others behind him, and rose to her feet, pointing. Spellfire roared down her arm, shaking her, and white flames shot out through the trees like the breath of a furious red dragon. Leaves blazed and then were gone. Halfway to the Zhents a tree was burned through by the roaring flames. It toppled slowly, and crashed ponderously among the dead leaves.
Shandril snarled and raised her other hand.
Delg caught her arm from behind. “No, Shan!” Then he cursed and shrank back from her, clutching at his hand. Shandril stared at him in shock. Smoke was rising in wisps from the dwarf’s fingers; he shook his hand, roared out his pain, and looked up at her, eyes bright with tears.
“Remind me not to do that again soon,” he growled, flexing his burned fingers. Then he nodded at where she’d aimed. “You daren’t do that in these heavy woods, lass—look.”
A burnt scar stretched away through the trees from where she stood, to where a tangle of trees had fallen. Shandril stared along her path of destruction, face bleak, and saw dark-armored figures moving amid the trees beyond it.
The dwarf hesitated, then reluctantly reached out and caught at her arm again. This time no ready spellfire burned him. Too many. We must run from them, lass—if you use your fire freely, all these woods’ll soon be ablaze around us.”
They could see Zhent warriors, blades drawn, in the trees to their right and ahead of them. The Zhents were advancing cautiously, moving in as a group so as to arrive together, their blades a deadly wall of steel.
Delg couldn’t see any foes to their left. He heaved his pack back onto his shoulders, hung his shield on it, commanded, “Come!” and broke into a lumbering run, heading to the left.
Narm and Shandril followed, hurrying through the trees. They heard shouts behind them and broke into a panting run. Narm skidded to a halt, waved his hands hurriedly, and then scrambled to catch up with his lady.
Close behind him—too close—Zhentilar soldiers cursed and struggled in the invisible spellweb the young mage had left for them to blunder into.
Shandril looked anxiously back every time her route through the thick-standing trees turned to one side or the other. Narm grinned at her between gasps for air as he closed the distance between them, sprinting and leaping as he’d done as a small boy—and never since, until now.
That invisible web Elminster had taught him had come in very handy. A few Zhents must have gotten around its ends, though—and soon it would melt away, freeing them all. By then, a certain trio of fools had better be long gone.
Narm reached Shandril’s side. They crashed wildly through leaves and tangles, leaping over rocks and fallen branches and slipping on mud and wet leaves underfoot while the dwarf huffed along ahead of them, completely hidden under his pack. The bulging rucksack looked like it was running away by itself, leaping and scuttling through the leaves.
With aching lungs and pounding hearts, Narm and Shandril followed, plunging down a slope of old leaves and soft mosses that gave way and slid under their feet. Soon they reached the bottom of a leaf-choked gully, and ran along it, gathering speed with the easier footing. Their route looked like an old, sunken road hidden below the overhanging trees, cutting through a ridge ahead and then dropping out of sight.
The pack that hid Delg bobbed and wiggled as it fairly flew along ahead of Narm and Shandril, but their longer legs were beginning to close the distance to the huffing dwarf. Now he was only thirty paces or so in front of them. Narm growled and put on a determined burst of speed.
Twenty paces ahead.
Ten.
There was a sharp cracking sound—and then another. The ground in front of Delg rose suddenly, like the drawbridge of a keep, and the two puffing humans saw the bulky pack slip back down its slope. Delg’s axe flashed for a moment as he waved it—and then the dwarf and his pack fell out of sight.
Narm and Shandril came to a shocked halt on the very edge of the pit Delg had fallen into, and they clutched at each other for balance. Delg lay helpless like an upended turtle atop a forest of wooden spikes that had pierced the pack he wore. Shandril looked over her shoulder to find a vine to drag Delg out, but just then, four Zhentarim soldiers with drawn swords rose from behind the trees, atop the banks of the gully.
“Surrender to us,” one said heavily, “or—”