“Pa-pa!” cried the tiny elf, beaming.
Kith blushed and stepped aside. “There’s your papa,” he said, indicating Sithas.
Kith-Kanan noted how much Vanesti had changed during the course of their winter in the mountains. Conceivably the war could drag on for several more years. The toddler would be a young boy by the next time he saw him.
“Come to Uncle Kith, Vanesti. Say good-bye before I ride the griffon!” Vanesti pouted briefly, but then he wrapped his uncle in a tight hug. Lifting the tiny fellow up and holding him, Kith felt a pang of regret. Would he ever be able to settle down and have children of his own?
Once again Kith-Kanan and Arcuballis took off on an important mission. The vast forestlands of Silvanesti sprawled beneath them. Far to the south, Kith caught an occasional glimpse of the Courrain Ocean, which stretched past the horizon with a limitless expanse.
Soon he came to the plains, and they continued to soar high above the sea of grass that stretched to the limits of his vision. He knew that, northward, his embattled Wildrunners still held their fortress against the pressing human horde. Soon he would join them.
He spotted the snowy crests of the Kharolis Mountains jutting into the sky. For a full day, Kith watched the imposing heights grow closer, until at last he flew above the wooded valleys that extended from the heart of the range and he was encircled on all sides by great peaks.
Here he began his search in earnest. He knew that the kingdom of Thorbardin lay entirely underground, with great gates providing access from the north and south. The snowmelt had long passed from the forested valleys to the high slopes. The gate, he reasoned, would occupy a lower elevation, both for enhanced concealment and easier access.
He searched along these valleys every day from first to last light, seeking a sign of the passage of the dwarven army. The land consisted of almost entirely uninhabited wilderness, so he reckoned that the march of twenty thousand heavy-booted dwarves would leave some kind of obvious trail. For days, his search was fruitless. He began to chafe at the lost time. Borne by his speedy griffon, he crossed the range two full times, but never did he find the evidence he sought. His search took him through all of the high valleys and much of the lower foothills. He decided, in desperation, that he would make his last sweep along the very northern fringe of the range, where the jagged foothills petered out into low slopes and finally the flat and expansive plains. Frequent rainstorms, often accompanied by thunder and lightning, hampered his search. He spent many miserable afternoons huddled with Arcuballis under whatever shelter they could find while hail and rain battered the land. He wasn’t surprised, for spring weather was notoriously violent on the plains, yet the forced delays were extremely dispiriting.
Nearly two weeks into his search, he was working his way to the north, following a broad zigzag from east to west. The sun was high that day, so much so that he could see his shadow directly below him. Finally the shadow ebbed away toward the east, matching the sun’s descent in the west. Still he had seen no sign of his quarry.
It was near sunset when something caught his eye.
“Let’s go, old boy—down there,” he said, unconsciously voicing the command that he simultaneously relayed to Arcuballis through subtle pressure from his knees on the griffon’s tawny flanks. The creature tucked his wings and swooped low, flying along a shallow stream that marked a broad, flat valley bottom.
At one place, however, the river spilled over a ten-foot shelf of rock, creating a bright and scenic waterfall. It wasn’t the beauty of the scene that had caught Kith-Kanan’s eye, however.
The elf noticed that the brush lining the stream banks was flattened and trampled; indeed, there was a swath some twenty feet wide. The matted brush and grass extended in an arc from the streambed above the falls to the waterway.
Kith-Kanan could see no other sign of passage anywhere in this broad, meadow-lined valley, nor were there any groves of trees that might have concealed a trail. Arcuballis came to rest on a large boulder near the stream bank. Kith swiftly dismounted, leaving the griffon to preen his feathers and keep an eye alert for danger while the elf explored the terrain. The first thing he noticed was the muddy stream bank. Higher up, where the earth was slightly drier, he saw something that made his heart pound. Boot prints! Heavy footgear had trod here, and in great numbers. The prints indicated their wearers were heading down the valley after emerging from the streambed. Of course! The dwarves had taken great pains to keep the entrance to their kingdom a secret, and now Kith understood why there had been no road, nor even a heavily used path, leading to the north gate of Thorbardin. The dwarves had marched along the streambed!
“Come on—back into the sky!” he shouted, rousing Arcuballis. The creature crouched low to allow Kith to leap into the wide, deep saddle. The elf lashed himself in with one smooth motion and kicked the griffon’s flanks sharply.
Instantly Arcuballis sprang from the rock, his powerful wings driving downward to carry them through the air. As the griffon began to climb, Kith-Kanan nudged him with his knees, guiding him low above the stream. They glided along the course of the stream while Kith-Kanan searched the ground along either bank for more signs. Thank the gods for that waterfall!
Dusk soon cast long shadows across the valley, and Kith-Kanan realized that he would have to postpone his search until the morrow.
Nevertheless, it was with high spirits that he directed Arcuballis to land. They camped beneath an earthen overhang on the banks of the stream, and the griffon snatched nearly a dozen plump trout from the water with lighting grasps of his eagle-clawed forefeet. Kith-Kanan feasted on a pair of these while the griffon enjoyed his share.
The next morning Kith again beat the morning sun into the sky, and within an hour, he had left the foothills behind. The mountain stream he followed joined another gravel-bottomed watercourse, and here it became a placid brook, silt-bottomed and sluggish. Here, too, there were signs that the dwarven column had emerged to march overland.
Now Kith-Kanan urged Arcuballis ahead, and the griffon’s wings carried them to a lofty height. The trail became a wide rut of muddy earth, clearly visible even from a thousand feet in the air. The griffon followed the path below while the elf’s eyes scanned the horizon. For much of the day, all he could see was the long brown trail vanishing into the haze of the north.
Kith-Kanan began to worry that the dwarves had already reached Sithelbec. Certainly they were tough and capable fighters, but even in their compact formations, they would be vulnerable to the sweeping charges of the human cavalry if they fought without the support of auxiliary forces. It was late afternoon before he finally caught sight of his goal and knew that he was not too late. The marching column stretched as straight as a spear shaft across the plains, moving toward the north. Kith urged the griffon downward, picking up speed.
As he flew closer, he saw that the figures marched with military precision in a long column that was eight dwarves wide. How far into the distance the troops extended he could not be certain, though he flew overhead for several minutes after he had observed the tail of the column before he could even see its lead formations.
Now he was spotted from below. The tail of the column split and turned, while companies of short, stocky fighters broke to the right and left, quickly swinging into defensive postures. As Arcuballis dove lower, he saw the bearded faces, the metal helms with their plumes of feathers or hair, and, most significantly, the rank of heavy crossbows raised to fire!
He pulled back on the reins and brought Arcuballis into a sharp climb, hoping he was out of range and that the dwarves wouldn’t shoot without first identifying their target.
“Ho! Dwarves of Thorbardin!” he called, soaring about two hundred feet over the ranks of suspicious upturned faces.