They had found some cooked meat and stuffed it in the pot, tied some sleeping furs around their shoulders, and left the house when a small gaggle of geese came around the corner of the building.
“Be getting more food,” Ruflik announced. He swung his new axe, cleanly taking the head off the first of the birds. Gerbid killed a second, and Fadaarg was chasing a third when a female human, so old she tottered, came out of the nearest shed. When she saw the gnolls she started to scream.
Orsht loped across the farmyard and clubbed her down, also smashing the head of a youngling that came toddling out after the old one, but coming across the field was a third female. She set up an earpiercing howl and ran off, shouting what sounded like names.
“Be getting gone muchly quick,” Gerbid had ordered. They grabbed the dead geese, tied their feet together, and slung them over their shoulders. They were trotting across the plain when they topped a rise and Orsht shouted a warning. On the horizon they could see six humans on horseback, coming after them.
They had been running for miles, and the humans were still on their trail. Gerbid could understand anger and the desire for revenge, but why would so many humans leave the work they seemed to think so important to chase after a couple of axes, a pair of dead geese, and a pot? Surely it could not be because of the two females Orsht had killed. Neither was of any use, being too old and too young to matter.
The gnoll lifted his nose to sniff for danger ahead. The only thing Gerbid could smell was Orsht, who had stumbled into the freestead midden.
“Be getting your stinking self downwind,” he snarled at his companion and waited until Orsht trotted a few steps ahead. When the air cleared, Gerbid sniffed again. Yes, on the westerly wind he could just catch the scents of sweat and anger from the men following, and they were getting closer.
“Is still time to get moving your feets,” he growled at the others, the short, stiff mane rising on the back of his neck. He could feel it pulling at the hide weskit he wore. He had smelled something else from the humans—wariness, as if they were afraid to follow much farther.
Then why didn’t they stop?
While their leader had been testing the air, Ruflik and Fadaarg led the way forward. They were a good sixty paces ahead when they slowed, and none of Gerbid’s commands spurred them to more speed.
“Why start stopping?” he shouted as he closed the gap between them. Up ahead, the range grass and clumps of vegetation were thicker, lusher than the shorter ground cover they had been crossing. Some of the plants looked tall enough to give them adequate cover for an ambush.
“Ground all mushing and wetly,” Ruflik said, stepping carefully.
“Could be being a stream ahead,” Fadaarg suggested, wrinkling his snout. His dark nose twitched as he sniffed for water. Gnolls were not good swimmers. The hair on their bodies lacked the oil to keep it from absorbing water. Their narrow feet, short toes, and long claws were good for traction on firm ground, but did not make good paddles. They also sank deeply in the mud, as Gerbid, Ruflik, and Fadaarg were discovering.
“Not liking this place muchly,” Fadaarg muttered as he shifted his stolen axe from his right hand to his left and grabbed the limbs of a bush to pull himself onto firmer ground.
“Liking losing head to man muchly better?” Gerbid demanded as he waded farther into the swamp.
Privately, he agreed with Fadaarg. The clinging mud had soaked into the hair on his legs. The trousers he had stolen two weeks before were soaked and caked with slime. Between his own wet fur and his clothing, he seemed to be pulling twice his weight. He reached for a handful of tall, thick grass to his left and pulled himself onto slightly firmer ground. He waded through the grass to the end of the tussock, then leapt across a watery area to another.
“Jumping being better than walking in mud,” he told the others.
He leapt from tussock to tussock, and the others followed. They had traveled two miles into the swamp when he paused to sniff the air again. The humans were far behind. The next time he checked, they were gone. They had not followed into the swamp.
“Slimeball men not liking swamp,” Fadaarg said, stating the obvious. “Not jumping so good, maybe.”
Gerbid ignored the others as he stared out at an expanse of what looked like wet sand.
“Is not jumping more,” he said, only partially disgusted. After miles of running to stay ahead of the humans and more than two and a half miles of leaping from one tussock to another, he was tired. And he could not stand the stink from Orsht. He reached behind him and grabbed his malodorous companion and shoved him forward, out onto the damp sand.
“Be staying downwind,” he snarled.
What had looked to be wet but reasonably solid ground, splashed in sluggish waves, and Orsht immediately began to sink. His eyes rolled, and his long tongue bunched in his mouth as he gave a howl of fear.
“Is not sand for walking,” Fadaarg said.
“Be holding out your axe quick,” Gerbid said, catching hold of Fadaarg with one hand and Ruflik with the other. While Ruflik planted his feet securely in the grass of the tussock, Gerbid grasped him, and Fadaarg leaned forward over the treacherous quicksand. Orsht grabbed the axe, and working together, they pulled him back to safety.
While Orsht tried to shake away the wet sand, Ruflik looked up at the sky and sniffed, as if he could smell the coming night.
“Is darking now. Not good jumping in night. We stay here?”
“No fire, no drying, ground too wet for sleeping,” Fadaarg complained. “Think maybe no liking this place a lot of much.”
“You speak many wise many late,” Ruflik told his companion.
They could not go forward, and to go back they would have to wait for daylight so they could see the tussocks. The only thing left to do was to hunker down on the small area of solid ground and wait for daylight. Gerbid and Ruflik plucked the geese and, after a snarling tussle with Orsht and Fadaarg that nearly tumbled Gerbid into the quicksand, he decided it would be the better part of valor to divide with them. After the geese had been devoured, they ate the meat they had stuffed into the pot at the freestead. It was less tasty because it had been cooked by humans, but their bellies were full, and tomorrow would take care of itself.
They squatted on the damp ground, not wanting to sit, and tried to doze. Several times during the night, Gerbid jerked alert as he heard splashing in the swamp.
He had not forgotten the scent of fear from the humans when they neared the edge of the mire.
Czrak was working his way slowly along the edge of the swamp when the sun set. Less than ten miles from the southwestern limits of his domain was the human town of Ansien, the capital of Elinie, and if any intrepid hunter decided to enter the swamps, he would chose the area closest to the town.
But he would not come at night.
Czrak found a mire where the mud was deep and settled down to rest for the night. His constant movement for the last four days had been exhausting. He was nearly asleep when the light breeze brought the smell of blood. He raised his head, sniffing, avid to find it.
Not human blood, some sort of bird. He had tasted most species in his centuries of hunger, but it had been a long time since he had eaten goose. He noticed other smells—gnoll, human excrement. That seemed a strange combination. He moved cautiously toward the scent, careful to make no sound.
Then he found them, the four gnolls squatting on the tussock trying to sleep. His hunger and the desire for blood, any blood, made him twitch with anticipated pleasure, but he did not attack.
Stronger than his hunger was his desire for that weapon from the Shadow World. It had remained in the western arm of Sielwode. To reach it, he had to have minions, and he would begin with the gnolls. They would make poor servants, but they would be easy to subvert to his cause.