It was cold, and he'd been feeling it.
"Alone I faced the dragon," he muttered to himself, barely above a whisper.
"And lived to tell the tale," she whispered back, her soft breath almost a tune. "And before you think of it, don't bother telling me to go back to sleep. I'm too chilled for slumber. In fact…"
Florin felt deft, iron-strong fingers sliding in under the waist of his breeches, reaching into the warmthHe stepped away. "No. Not now."
Pennae moved back against his chest. "Flor, I'm not after… what you think I am. Right now, at least. I only wanted to get the tips of my fingets a little warmer, and there's always just enough room-"
"Indeed," the ranger growled into her ear in mock disapproval. Then he put his arm around her again and drew her gently back against him to settle into just where she'd been before.
"Who d'you reckon is still after us, now?" she whispered, sliding her fingers a little way back in under his breeches, then bringing them to a firm halt.
Florin shrugged. "Half the stlatning Realms, it seems," he murmured. "To say nothing of Those Who Harp and anyone else who may just be watching what befalls us, rather than hunting us down to do the befalling. I-"
He stiffened suddenly and thrust her away.
"What?" Pennae hissed, seeing his intent face and his rising sword. He was staring tensely out into the night, gaze hard upon something. Yet she hadn't heard a thing.
Trying to look down into the dark forest before them, she stiffened. That was just it.
She, too, couldn't hear a rhing from in front of het. No little night noises, no gentle sighing of ghost-breeze-driven leaves.
Nothing at all.
She could hear those faint forest sounds coming from off to her right-and to the left, too, when she crouched and turned. Yet straight ahead, nothThen she saw it. A movement in the trees, a thrusting that was mirrored by Florin's sword lifting sharply in response beside her.
Something large was approaching through the night-gloom. Something that was tearing aside trees and trampling down bushes and saplings in the heart of that eerie silence.
It was massive-a great, gray, neckless, hulk of stonelike hide and tippling muscle, reaching out with two huge black-taloned, manlike arms so long that they dragged knuckles through the brush whenever they weren't reaching up to claw aside a tree trunk. It was shouldering through a thick stand of trees to reach their ledge, lumbering along heavily, massive shoulders and that bony snout that thrust forward from between the shoulders rather than rising above them on any sort of neck.
Florin cutsed softly, then told Pennae, "Wake the others now, in case its silence comes right up here onto the ledge with it. Not Jhess, but stand over her, ready to kick het awake or drag her aside if you have to."
The thief nodded, staring at black fangs jutting out of large, parted jaws, as the snout lifted to better peer in their direction. A line of three small, amber yellow eyes ran down each side of its bone-ridged head and beheld her with dull, hungry malice. Or was it merely hunger?
Drathar winced. The render's hunger was quickening, and that made its mind a flaring, roiling thing that threatened to draw him in. He didn't want to end up lost in that hunger-driven flood.
He was too good, mayhap, at this beast-coercing. Best to hang back farther. He'd intended to, anyhail, to keep well away from the thief's hurled daggers. The mindlink would tell him when it was feeding. There would be time enough when the real battle was over to skulk in closer and see how matters lay.
He'd cast silence on the creature to cloak its approach. That would have to be cleverness enough. Else he'd be striding along after it, bloodying his fingers on trees, presenting himself as ready meat for anything bold enough to get close to a feeding gray render.
Which would have to be something so bold, he wouldn't want to face it at the best of times.
"Tempus, Tymora, and doom," Islif muttered, managing to look angry and sleepy at the same time. "I don't like the chances of my sword being able to carve that. D'you think there are any loose shards of rock up atop this cliff you could climb up and shove down onto its head?"
Pennae shrugged. "I saw some deep clefts up there, with greenery doing the lush tumble down out of them. Whether I can get anything free in time is another thing. I'll take that battlehammer Semoor lugs with him but never wants to use and see what I can do-but mind, falling stone really doesn't care if it hits ugly monster or valiant Knight of Myth Drannor."
"Pennae," Islif replied, "We're too desperate to worry about that. Get climbing."
The thief nodded, turned away, and starred up the weathered stone as if it were a well-lit ladder.
Islif wondered what Pennae would do if there were other forest prowlers waiting for her with bared and grinning fangs at the top of the cliff.
Then she wondered if the thief had alreadv stolen the Pendant and, upon reaching the top of the cliff, would just sidle off through the trees, leaving the rest of them to a swift and bloody doom.
Then, joining Florin and a reelingly sleepy Doust and Semoor in a line along the ledge, she wondered if she'd have time to even know what was killing them, before it did.
What must be magical silence was ebbing as the hulking thing clawed its way up the gravel slope. She could hear faint clackings and rattlings as stones tumbled in a constant, growing flood.
Rolling over those sounds, she could hear something else-a deep, wet rumbling, like a dog growling deep in its throat. The thing was large-half again as tall as she was, its shoulders far broader than hers. Hairless and seemingly sexless, it stood upon squat, massive legs and had a stumpy little flap of a tail. There'd be a channel beneath that tail where it relieved itself. That and its pale, wet maw and the eyes-six of them-were the only vulnerable spots she could see.
Shaking her head, Islif wondered if she'd be able to reach any of them and if they really were weaknesses her blade could pierce.
Ar least she had time to ponder such things, as a little gravel showered and bounced down from above, marking Pennae's climb. This beast was digging into the loose stones below theit ledge more than it was managing to climb them.
Yet there had to be solid rock or sturdy earth under all the rocks, pebbles, and gravel, if one went deep enough. It would only be a matter of time.
"Can we try to blind it, d'you think?" Florin asked. "Before it gets up here with us? Pennae?"
"She's gone," Islif said, not knowing if the thing could hear and understand them. "Up. So depend upon no cleverly thrown daggers to help us."
"Both of you should be able to reach the eyes with your blades, if standing right beside it," Semoor muttered. "If it doesn't stand up tall, that is, and all the shifting stone doesn't just slide you on past." It was obvious who "both of you" were meant to be.
"If we get down onto that loose stuff," Florin murmured, "can we get up here again?"
"Can we stand up to fight it at all?" Islif asked. "I'm not welcoming the thought of wallowing, scarce able to land a sword cut, and ending up sprawled flat in the scree, sliding helplessly down to its legs as it digs and churns, so it can reach out and break my back- or claw me up to dine-whenever it pleases."
"We could try to reach out and haul you back," Semoor suggested, eyeing those black-fanged jaws. The beast was clearly watching them, turning its head to regard each Knight in turn, and its rumbling was rising in tone and volume. It sounded angry.
Islif and Florin both shook their heads.
"That'll just mean you get hauled helplessly into the same doom as ours," Islif said.
Florin sighed and fixed both priests with stern looks. "No holy magic that can help now, at all?"
Doust and Semoor gave each other uneasy looks then shook their heads in unison. The ranger sighed then ducked down until he was half-kneeling-and sptang.