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After one last glance at the tavern, Zvain and Orekel shuffled off through the maze of animal pens. Ruari had Pavek's steel knife out when Mahtra came to a stop at his side.
"I told him I wouldn't remove my mask. I told him."
Ruari thought the words were an apology as well as an explanation. It was hard to tell with Mahtra; her tone of voice never varied no matter the circumstances. Bewt might not have understood the risk he was running when she warned him, but then, he shouldn't have tried to take off her mask, either.
"It's all right," Ruari assured Mahtra as he knelt down beside the kirre's pen and went to work on the knotted cha'thrang rope the Jectites used to secure the door. "Zvain's gone ahead—around there—did you see him? He was with a dwarf." The kirre came over to investigate. It touched his hand with a soft-furred
paw. There was some rapport between them, curiosity mostly on the kirre's part. Even a half-elf druid needed time to bond with a creature of such size and ferocity—time they didn't have.
"Did you see them? Zvain and the dwarf? They headed for the mountains. It would be better if you went after them. I don't know what the kirre's going to do when I get this pen open."
"I saw a shadow," Mahtra replied, eyeing the kirre with discomfort. "Ruari—hurry. They're coming. I'm sure they saw me run around the tavern. I'm sorry."
Ruari could hear the Jectites, too. He sawed furiously at the tough fiber. Without steel, he wouldn't have had a chance. "Just go. Follow the dwarf and Zvain. I'll catch up."
But that was her way; Ruari understood the expressions playing across the kirre's tawny eyes better than he'd ever understand the New Race woman.
"Stand away from that pen, boy!" one of the Jectites shouted from a distance. "Call your friends back. You've got deeds to answer for."
Some of the Jectites split away and backtracked toward the front of the tavern, where the racks of spears stood outside the door. The rest, though, weren't coming closer. Ruari gave a sharp push on the knife and sliced through the last cha'thrang fibers. He held the door shut with his knee.
Beautiful kirre, Ruari advanced his thoughts cautiously into the cat's predatory mind. Brave kirre. Wild kirre. Free kirre. He recalled the forest vision he'd received from the white-bark map. The kirre's ears relaxed. Her eyes began to close, and a purr rumbled in her throat.
Those folk. Ruari transplanted his vision of the Jectite villagers into her mind, though a kirre's night vision was probably better than his own. He didn't know how she was captured, so he recalled the battle on Quraite's dirt rampart and transplanted the moments when he'd been most frightened and enraged. The images resounded in the kirre's memory. She echoed spears and nets and the unintelligible yapping of men. Those folk. Ruari repeated, then opened the door.
The kirre knocked Ruari down as she sprang free. He scrambled to his feet while the Jectites screamed and the mighty cat roared. Running toward his own freedom, Ruari assuaged his budding guilt with the thought that whatever happened to the kirre, it was better than death in the Tyr arena. He could still hear her roars when he spotted Mahtra, her shoulders beacon-bright by starlight, running across the barrens beyond the village.
"Wind and fire—cover yourself up!" he advised when he caught up with her.
Zvain and the dwarf, Orekel, were panting from exhaustion, trying to maintain the pace she set, her legs as spindly as an erdlu's and likely just as strong.
"We can slow down." Ruari dropped his own pace to a walk, then stopped altogether when Orekel continued to wheeze. "They're too busy right now to come after us. Catch your breath. How far until we're under cover?"
The dwarf raised a trembling arm toward the mountains. Ruari suppressed a curse. Without kanks, they'd need luck to reach the foothills before sunrise and pursuit. If the villagers were going to chase them, they would be on the barrens long before then.
There were no trails, no places to hide. Ruari pushed his companions as hard as he dared, as hard as Orekel could be pushed. Slow and steady, that was the dwarven way. Even a dwarf as out-of-condition as the drunken Orekel could walk forever, but push him to a trot and he was blowing hard after a hundred paces. If he'd complained once, Ruari would have left him behind, but Orekel stayed game throughout the night.
* * *
Orekel sobered up, too, sweating out the wine and ale. When it came to their distant goal of Kakzim and the black tree, Ruari still didn't give the dwarf a gith's thumb of trust, but in simpler matters—like picking a path across the stone wash that abutted the mountains when Orekel's ankles were as much at risk as theirs—he was willing to let the dwarf have the lead.
The stone wash that they reached shortly before dawn was a nasty piece of ground. A fan-shape of stones ranging in size between mekillots and a halfling's fist spilled out of a gap between the mountains. There was no guessing how many stones there were, or how long it had taken to accumulate them all, but the footing was especially treacherous for long-legged folk like Ruari and Mahtra.
Ruari longed for the staff he'd left leaning against the Ject kank pen, but the rest of the gear they'd abandoned was no great loss. The important things: strips of leather for repairing their sandals, sealed jars of astringent salve they'd been carrying since they left Quraite, a set of firestones, a flint hand axe for firewood, and a handful of other useful objects were in the saddle packs he still had slung over his shoulder. The most important thing of all—not counting the white-bark map that was still in his sleeve and not as useful as the Jectites would have hoped—was Pavek's steel-blade knife, too precious for the sack. Ruari kept it secured in its sheath, and the sheath firmly attached to his belt. He'd use it to whittle himself a new staff out of the first straight sapling they saw, though by then, they'd probably be out of the mountains, where he'd have less need of it.
By midmorning, they'd picked their way across the stone wash, with no worse souvenirs than a collection of scraped ankles. But the worst lay ahead in the steep gap itself. Orekel said it would be safer, if not easier, if they'd had some rope to string between them as they negotiated the narrow ledges and nearly sheer cliff-faces. On the other hand, they could take the treacherous passages as slowly as they needed to: looking back toward Ject, they saw no dust plumes on the barrens.
Even Orekel tried to cheer the shattered boy, offering the loan of his lucky cap.
"This little ves kept me alive more than once, son," the dwarf insisted with the shaggy fur hanging over his hands instead of his ears. "The ves—they're canny little beasts. Made me think I was somewhere I wasn't. Tried to lure me right into their den. Gnaw me down to the bone, they would've. But I got me this'un by the tail here. Squeezed it so hard it had to show me where I was. Then I ate it for my dinner and turned its skin into my lucky cap. But you're looking like you need more luck today than me, so's you wear it."
It was a sincere if inept attempt to get them moving again, and it raised the dwarf a notch in Ruari's opinion; but it did nothing for Zvain, who'd flattened his back against the cliff and refused to take another step.
"Just leave me here. I've gone as far as I can."
Ruari and Orekel tried all manner of encouragement and pleading, but it was Mahtra who found the magic words:
"If this is as far as he can go, why can't we do what he wants and leave him here? The sun's coming around. It's going to be as hot as the Sun's Fist against these rocks in a little while. Why should we all die because he doesn't want to move again?"
