On their own, the centaurs took to ranging into the woods on the open end of Balif’s redoubt. They tried not to be seen, but inevitably Bulnac’s men spied them and gave chase. Zakki’s fellows used a simple blind to hide the location of Balif’s camp-they always fled nomad pursuit eastward, across the river, which they recrossed below the confluence before returning to report to Balif.
Mathi felt their doom was fast closing in. They had no defenses, no stockade, and only the weapons each of them carried. Aside from the Longwalker and a few of his friends, not a single kender had been seen in a week. Even Rufe was long gone. Mathi still owed him a horse, but Rufe was apparently no longer interested in trying to collect. If Mathi had been him, he would have written off the debt too. Treskan alone seemed busy. He inscribed volumes on any surface he could carry-leaves, tree bark, scraps of cloth, all written with charcoal sticks and spit. Mathi thought he would keep scribbling up to the moment a howling nomad lopped his head off.
At night Balif crawled out of his tent and slipped into the trees. He wished to go unseen, but Mathi and Lofotan kept watch from a discreet distance. All they saw was a dark, stooped figure creeping on all fours. It was enough to make the old warrior shut his eyes and shudder.
After his leader had departed on his nightly prowl, Lofotan returned to a project of his own. Mathi found him sitting cross-legged near the cliff edge overlooking the river. He had collected a large mound of green vines and was painstakingly braiding them into a single thick strand.
“What are you making?” Mathi asked.
“A lifeline.”
The scribe didn’t get his meaning at first. Lofotan explained that when the time came, he wanted a rope he could throw over the cliff. That way they could climb down to the river and not be hopelessly trapped on the bluff.
It was a good idea. Mathi asked how much he had made.
“Twenty feet.” About half of what was needed. Mathi fingered the coil of finished rope Lofotan had made. It was tight and supple, amazing handwork. Elven dexterity at work.
She left him to his task. Mathi intended to return to her shelter-she shared the largest tent with Treskan and the elves’ baggage-but first she followed the edge of the hill around, looking down at the water sparkling in the darkness below. She hadn’t gone halfway around when she spotted movement in the heavy shadows along the west bank of the river. Unsure what she was seeing, she slowed, then stopped. More movement, in another place. Someone was down there. More than one someone.
“Lofotan!” she hissed. “Lofotan, come here!”
The elfjogged up carrying his bow. Without a word Mathi pointed to the spot she thought she’d seen figures moving. She held up two, then three fingers. Lofotan nocked an arrow.
“Are the centaurs all back?” Mathi whispered. They weren’t. Lofotan said something about them not coming back from the west.
“Balif?”
“Deer, maybe.” Lofotan waited, bow held loosely waist high. His eyesight was several times better than Mathi’s. He saw something she couldn’t. The bow mounted swiftly to his cheek and the arrow flew. Like most elves, Lofotan used a pinch draw, rather than the three-finger draw favored by humans. The pinch draw was not as powerful, but it had the advantage of nearly silent release. The arrow flashed into the night with only the softest thrum of the bowstring behind it.
There was a thud below, a loud snapping of greenery, followed by a splash. Mathi strained hard to see what had happened. Moments later the answer came floating down river. A body, face down in the water, with Lofotan’s arrow through its neck.
“Watch out,” the warrior said calmly. He leaned aside. Mathi stepped back more slowly and a brace of arrows cut the air where he had been.
“We’re silhouetted against the sky,” Lofotan said. “Stay back.”
He went down on one knee, bow resting on his thigh. Mathi fidgeted.
“Wait,” the elf whispered.
He heard a sound with his keen ears, popped up, aimed, and dispatched an arrow. He was rewarded with a screech of pain. Lofotan dropped down again. An arrow whistled past, high over his head.
“He has the range but not the angle,” was his professional assessment of the enemy archer. “A smart soldier would beat a retreat now.” Another missile thudded into the clay of the bluff. Mathi muttered, “That one’s not smart, he’s angry.”
Lofotan found a loose stone. He pressed it on Mathi and told her to go eight or ten feet away and toss it over.
“He won’t fall for that old trick!”
“Do as I say!”
He had a second rock himself. Mathi crept on her hands and knees to where a small cedar tree was barely clinging to the crumbling cliff. She hurled the stone, then dropped on her belly as fast as she could.
From his position Lofotan pushed his stone off the edge with his foot. Clods of dirt went with it, making a miniature avalanche. A white-fletched arrow sang through the air where the stone fell. If Lofotan had been sitting there it would have hit him in the face.
Straightening his back, the elf took aim and let fly. Without waiting any time to see if he hit the mark he got up, tapped Mathi on the back and said, “Get your spear and follow.”
They descended to the water’s edge. The first victim had floated down thirty yards but was snagged on a low-hanging tree branch. Target number two, the one who had yelled, was dead on his back on the sandy bank. Number three was in a tree, his arms and legs hanging lifelessly over the slow moving stream.
The last nomad fascinated Mathi. She walked under the tree and saw Lofotan’s arrow had gone through four inches of trunk before piercing the man’s skull. He had never seen such marksmanship, especially in the dark and from a height.
“It’s nothing,” Lofotan replied to his amazement. “I have always been counted a mediocre archer. Artyrith could have gotten all three in half the time.”
They hid the bodies in a gully, covering them with vines. The night was too quiet for safety. All the normal sounds of the woods had stilled.
“Too many people around,” was Lofotan’s assessment. They returned to camp.
Zakki and the centaurs were there, waiting. Only nine had come back from their patrol. Two centaurs had fallen trying to escape swarming nomad scouting parties.
“How far from here?” asked the elf.
“An hour’s walk.” For a centaur, that meant eight to ten miles. Even with the thick foliage slowing them down, that meant the nomads could be upon them at any time. Now, in fact.
Mathi looked to the stars. Four hours till dawn. Suddenly she felt very naked. Why did she linger with these doomed fools? Her mission was a failure; part of her was glad of that. Now Balif and his companions faced utter destruction. Why remain? Two reasons occurred to her. One, the woods were alive with vigilant nomads. Her odds of escaping were not high. Even more compelling, she remembered her vow to Balif.
Lofotan broke the spell when he swept his arm in a wide arc from one side of the bluff to the other. “I want a line of sharpened stakes across here, every one six feet long or better.” A line of stakes would halt any mounted charge, but it wouldn’t delay a determined assault on foot.
“Who’s going to make the line of stakes?” Mathi wondered.
“We are, all of us.”
With axes, swords, and jury-rigged mallets the elf, the scribe, Mathi, and the surviving centaurs set to work. Mathi and four centaurs went to where the trees began and started to cut down saplings. Two centaurs dragged these to Treskan where the trees were stripped of branches and had one end sharpened. The elf, Zakki, and two sturdy centaurs drove these at an angle into the clay, then chipped the protruding end to a point. Lofotan spaced them about a foot apart. It would take more than a hundred to cover the ground he indicated.