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Tavis brought his small procession to a halt. "We'll use the river ahead to make our break south," he said. "It's time to convince the ogres that we're heading for hill giant country."
"How?" Morten asked.
"You'll carry Avner," Tavis said. "He's light enough that he won't make a difference in the depth of your tracks; the ogres will think he's suddenly taking care to leave no spoor."
"What about the rest of us?" Bria
"You and Morten try to avoid leaving tracks. Stick to solid ground and walk on rocks when you can. Stay away from thickets and dust," Tavis said. "There will still be plenty of signs, but it'll look like you're trying not to leave any, and that's what's important. My own trail will all but disappear, and well take a crooked path, laying a false trail heading northwest. The ogre trackers will think we're trying to lose them."
"And how do we really lose them when the time comes?" Avner asked, climbing onto Morten's back.
"We'll lay another false trail on the other side of the river, then float away," Tavis explained. "There won't be any signs for the ogres to follow."
"Good plan," grunted Morten.
"Of course," said Avner. "Tavis will get us back to Hartsvale. He knows everything."
"Not everything," Tavis corrected. He didn't know how to make Bria
With that, Tavis turned and resumed the journey. Moving more slowly now, the scout led the group on an erratic course that took them more or less northwest. Whenever the mood struck him, he would make a sharp turn, sometimes heading east, sometimes west, and occasionally even back the way they had come. Always, he kept a sharp eye out for any disturbance caused by the large, flat foot of a verbeeg, and he listened carefully for the sounds of someone clumsy moving through the forest.
Tavis did not confine his steps to hard ground or rocks as he had advised Bria
Rather, Tavis moved with careful, light steps, keeping to the pine needles covering the forest floor, placing his feet down as slowly and gently as he could. With each step, he listened intently to the sound of his supple boot soles settling on the ground. Every now and then the soft crack of a snapping twig or the muffled crackle of crumbling pine needles came to his ears. Whenever he heard such a sound, he stopped to retrieve the object that had made the noise, slipping it into his cloak pocket. Then he would look over his back trail to see if he had left any other obvious signs of passage. Occasionally, he would spy a small dip where his foot had rested too long in one place, but these depressions did not worry him. The pine needle carpet was spongy enough to return to its normal state long before their pursuers came.
Soon the scout's wandering path came to a steep bank that descended to the river's refuse-littered flood plain. Solitary boulders, carried ashore by winter ice, lay interspersed among jumbles of old weathered logs strewn over the small flat. Here the forest's regal lodgepoles gave way to trees more suited to the boggy ground, shabby black spruces carrying as many tangles of dead gray branches as they did live green boughs.
The river itself was close to a hundred paces wide, racing down a broad, cataract-strewn cha
The scout sent Morten and Bria
It was a hoofprint. The horse's leg had sunk close to a foot in the black mud, leaving a round, postlike hole half filled with water. A long line of similar craters led to the river's edge. By the slow rate at which they were filling with seep water, Tavis estimated the tracks were between thirty minutes and an hour old. Given the harsh terrain of the surrounding mountains and the proximity of a elan of hill giants-who prized horse meat as a delicacy only a little less desirable than halfling flesh-the scout did not think it likely a wild horse had left the print.
Tavis scampered across a network of stones and toppled tree trunks to the rocks on the river's shore. Here, the prints no longer sank deep into the ground, but on the stones he saw several rusty red streaks where an iron horseshoe had scraped over the surface.
Bria
"Your mare's trail." Tavis pointed to the signs he had discovered. "She seems to be moving upstream."
"Blizzard?" Bria
"She's the one who led us to Morten in the first place," Tavis said. "And she's been following us since. We saw her on the Needle Peak glacier shortly before we rescued you, and here she is again."
Bria
Tavis hesitated before answering. Recovering the horse might help him win Bria
"Finding Blizzard right now wouldn't be wise," he said. "As intelligent as she is, I don't think we could convince her to float down the river with us. And if she starts following us along the shore, the ogres will spy her in an instant. That would ruin our whole plan."
"We can change plans," Bria
"No," Morten said. The bodyguard cast a wary glance at the raging river. "This is the best plan. The ogres will never expect us to float down that."
"I'm sure there are other ways," Bria
"Not that special," Morten objected. "I won't put you in greater danger for the sake of a horse."
"You're not putting me anywhere," Bria
"That may be, but what of the danger to Avner and Earl Dobbin?" Tavis asked. Although he was thinking more of the princess's welfare, he knew Bria
Bria
Tavis wanted to offer her some reassurance about the horse's welfare, but to do so would have been to lie. Even if there had not been hundreds of murderous ogres in this valley and a clan of horse-eating giants in the next. Blizzard had to be close to starvation by now, and montane forests were not good grazing grounds.
The scout went over to a log tangle and snapped eight-foot sections off three treetops. He handed one of the makeshift staffs to Bria
"We'll wade upstream until we find a safe place to cross," he said. "Use these to brace yourselves, or the water will sweep your feet from beneath you."