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Morten examined the thick end of his staff, then looked toward the broken treetop from which it had come. "Won't the ogres find the fresh breaks and know we've gone into the river?"
"That's right," Tavis said. "When they see we've made staffs, they'll know we're wading upstream-they might even think we're following Blizzard."
The scout walked into the river until it was about knee-deep. Although the snow-fed waters were cool, they were not as bone-chilling as the streams of the Needle Peak glacier. He was not a good judge of how well humans tolerated cold, but he hoped that they would be able to endure the frigid currents for a short time.
Nevertheless, he took the precaution of turning to Bria
The princess nodded. "I was just thinking that."
Bria
Ignoring the boy's yelp of pain, the scout started upstream. He moved quickly and carefully, using his staff to brace himself each time he moved a foot over the round, slick rocks of the riverbed. Occasionally, one of the stones shifted or turned over, but he did not bother to stop and return it to its original place. The ogres might notice a void or change in color that told them it had been moved, but such signs would be few and far between. The swift current would destroy most of the other marks of their passage, so the scout doubted that his foes would realize he was deliberately leaving a trail for them.
After about two hundred paces, they reached a pool of slow-moving water. Tavis told his companions to cross the river, then continue another hundred paces upstream. There, Avner and Earl Dobbin were to remain in the water while Bria
"Just be careful not to step on your own tracks when you back up," Tavis said, finishing his instructions. That's the only thing that will let the ogres know what you're doing. Otherwise, as long as you avoid soft ground, you won't leave enough prints to make them realize you've passed over the same place twice."
"What will you be doing?" asked Morten.
"Get something to hold as we go down the river," the scout said. "The current's too fast to swim on our own."
"Then perhaps I should wake Earl Dobbin while I'm waiting for Morten," Bria
Tavis nodded. "Do what you can to keep him quiet."
Morten did not move to cross the river. "All this will take time," he complained. "The ogres will catch us."
The scout shook his head. "Not likely. That's why we laid a crazy trail. It'll take the trackers a few minutes to find our path each time it changes direction-especially if they have a lot of their own warriors trampling the signs."
This seemed to satisfy the bodyguard, so Bria
Once the princess and the others had reached the other shore safely, Tavis started to wade again. Because the river was not as violent here as below the pool, he moved into deeper water, where the dark currents would prevent the ogres from seeing anything he happened to disturb on the riverbed. Half swimming and half wading, he continued upstream long after Bria
When he had finally gone far enough to be certain the ogres would no longer be coming up this side of the river, the scout went ashore. He found two of the largest logs he could move and pulled them to the river's edge. After tying the boles together with two short lengths of rope, he slipped his wading staff under the bindings and guided the makeshift raft into the dark waters.
The swift currents carried him downriver in a fraction of the time it had taken to wade up it. He soon saw his companions waiting just above the slow-moving pool where they had crossed the river. Bria
The scout waved, and they came out to meet him, Avner and the princess swimming. Morten waded, carrying the lord mayor on his back and using both his staff and Bria
"Hold fast!"
The two firbolgs each locked an arm under the front binding and barely got their legs pointed downstream before crashing through the froth. The raft bucked so hard Tavis thought it would jerk his arm from the socket.
Pitching side to side and threatening to fling its passengers into the churning waters, the raft shot into a boiling, roaring cataract filled with boulders as large as stone giants, bottomless craters of bubbling water, and eddies spi
The journey only grew worse as more water poured in from side streams. The canyon grew deeper, the cha
How long the torture continued, Tavis could not say. But he started to hear a certain sonorous undertone in the roaring waters, and the logs rolled with less frequency. Soon, the cataracts grew gentle enough that the raft stopped spi
Ahead of them lay a basin of swift, dark water. On the other side of the pool, the river disappeared, as did its banks and the forest rising above its flood plain. The world just seemed to end, dropping away into nothingness, with only blue sky and distant mountains beyond.
Tavis pulled his arm out of the rope that held the raft together. "Swim!"
The command was useless, for even the scout could not hear the word he had just screamed over the roar of the waterfall. Nevertheless, he found himself trailing behind his four companions as they splashed and kicked, in seeming silence, away from the raft.
Though the river's bank was not distant, Tavis thought they would never reach it. The closer they came to the rocky shore, the faster it seemed to slip past. The scout swam with all his might, trying to angle upstream away from the deafening plunge, yet he felt himself drawn inexorably backward. He caught up to the others, but that small accomplishment brought him no relief. In the corner of his eye he could see nothing but blue sky.