Aren't you finished yet?" Tantaerra hissed. "It's cold, sitting here with the wind whistling up my legs."
"The light isn't the best," Tarram told her irritably, "and no, I'm not. Damned thread keeps bunching."
"Next time, steal finer stuff," the halfling hissed back.
"She was going for her bow. I only had time to grab what I could see," he replied. "Are those groundchokes roasted yet?"
The halfling probed into the ashes of the dying fire with her belt knife. "No," she replied disgustedly. "I suppose I'm condemned to wait for everything, tonight!"
"Not your death, Molthuni!" The voice roared at them out of the trees, followed by three arrows.
One tore the underkirtle from Tarram's fingers, needle and all, leaving behind stinging blood. Another sent torn leaves swirling beside his ears, and the third sent embers, ashes, and half-done groundchokes spraying up into Tantaerra's face.
She went over backward, sputtering, as Tarram kicked hard at the ground and curled over into a backward roll in the other direction, clawing out daggers.
"I'm getting more than tired of this," he snarled aloud.
Luraumadar, the mask chirped helpfully.
He ground his teeth in irritation as he arrived behind a tree and found his feet in the same moment, coming up in a sprint. If there were more archers with shafts ready, he and Tantaerra were dead anyway, but if he could get to the bowstrings of those who'd just loosed before they could see someone to take down …
A wild shriek and some crashings of dead leaves and branches off to one side told him Tantaerra was trying to provide him with a noisy diversion.
I'll not waste it, he told himself fiercely, sprinting around tree trunks and ducking under branches-only to plunge right into the heart of the Nirmathi warband.
There were only five-no, six-of them, and one was cursing a snapped bowstring while two others lacked bows and were raising large, rusty old swords to hack at him, faces tightening with the effort. He slammed into one swordsman, not bothering to launch an attack, and used the solid crash of their meeting to deflect himself into the nearest bowman, where a slash of his dagger severed a bowstring while the man was frantically fumbling to defend himself. Tarram spun away from him into a headlong charge at the next bowman-who fell precipitously before he could get there.
He heard rather than saw Tantaerra rolling out from under the falling man's ankles, grinned savagely, and slashed at the face of the next Nirmathi, who ducked away with a yell.
"We make a good team!" he announced cheerfully, spinning and ducking down to batter the head of the fallen man with both dagger-pommels. Then he sprang back up to meet the second swordsman, whose wild swing sliced the bark of a defenseless and innocent tree-before a leaping ball of halfling arrived in the man's face, feet-first. The Nirmathi staggered back, into the man with the snapped bowstring. They both groped for balance, the bowman trying not to put the dagger he'd just drawn into his fellow Nirmathi, so Tarram raced right past them, trying for the last bowman before the man could raise his bow and aim.
He got there as the bow came up, knocking the arrow away and getting his elbow into the man's throat. The man went over with a choking sob, and Tarram rode him to the ground and clubbed him solidly with a dagger-pommel.
Behind Tarram, a man groaned. He spun around again, in time to see a triumphant Tantaerra striking a pose atop two senseless Nirmathi-that second swordsman and the man whose string had parted.
Which left two Nirmathi still on their feet, and no bows intact. The soldiers were now backing uncertainly away through the trees, with two daggers each raised and ready in their hands.
Tarram gave them his coldest smile and stalked toward them, Tantaerra trotting to his side.
He took another menacing step, then spun and fled from them, heading on in the general direction of Hurlandrun-only to stumble and almost fall as Tantaerra sprang and wrapped herself around his right shin, dragging at him.
"Hold, masked man!" she panted. "I want my underkirtle! Where'm I going to find another my size, here in the middle of this oh-so-beautiful wilderness?"
Tarram hopped to an awkward halt, aided by a handy tree he could carom off, and snarled, "All right! But-"
Tantaerra let go, sprang high, caught hold of his belt, and pulled.
She was too small to overbalance him into a face-first fall, but he stumbled, trying to keep his eyes on the two Nirmathi-now mere dark, distant shiftings amid the leaves, slipping away into the trees-and snarled, "All right, I said!"
"Tarram," the halfling said, eyes not leaving his as she let go and fell to land on both feet, "look behind you."
The Masked whirled.
And saw the faintest of glimmers. A fine, sharp wire was stretched across where he'd been about to run, at just the height of his throat.
"There's another one, about three strides on," Tantaerra told him.
The Masked turned and looked at her. "The Nirmathi are getting nasty," he said slowly.
"No. I'm thinking Voyvik is. I'd say he guided that warband to us. I'll have to do a better job, next time I knock him off a cliff. Let's get away from here, before he finds any more soldiers."
"No disagreement from me," The Masked told her. "Find your kirtle and let's be gone."
Luraumadar, the mask purred in the depths of his mind.
"Be silent," he muttered at it, aloud.
The dirty, half-cooked groundchoke Tantaerra presented him with, a short but panting forest trot later, tasted surprisingly good.
∗ ∗ ∗
They blundered across a trail heading roughly in the right direction, and walked along it the rest of the day and all that night, Tantaerra's mood cheerful thanks to her recovery of her kirtle with thread and needle intact, and only a meager spattering of Tarram's blood on it.
"I can pass that off as battle scars," she said brightly.
"Oh? To whom?" he asked pointedly, rousing the merriest laughter he'd heard out of her in quite some time.
Then they sank back into silence, belatedly mindful that not only Voyvik but all armed Nirmathas was out there in the trees on all sides, only too eager to do harm to intruders.
They walked on, listening tensely, hearing rustlings all around them-some distant, but a few close indeed.
Yet no daggers came, and it seemed their apprehension had been misplaced, because they heard nothing but hooting night birds and small rustling things until morning, when they were both staggering along yawningly seeking a place to hide and sleep for the day.
That was when the faint, distant din of a pitched battle came to their ears.
Wearily walking on toward it, they came to a long valley that narrowed to the north. In the distance, they could see a bridge that carried the best road they'd seen thus far in Nirmathas from one bank of a shallow, rock-studded river to the other.
What was left of quite a large Molthuni army was scattered across the valley floor, their numerous dead all around them.
By the looks of things, Nirmathi bowmen had harassed them from the wooded heights on either side of the valley, turning the bridge into a slaughter-chute until the Molthuni had broken ranks and fled down into the valley-whereupon a line of Nirmathi had formed across the valley and sent a withering storm of arrows down Molthuni throats until the soldiers of Molthune had reached them and started hacking.
"Hurlandrun's somewhere the other side of this valley, isn't it?" Tantaerra asked glumly.
"One ridge beyond what we're looking at, if the map can be trusted," Tarram told her. "I keep looking at it so that if we lose it, my mind will still hold what's left of our way to the Shattered Tomb."