squint against its glare. Farther west, the hrybis Mountains were
a jagged black tear across the horizon that separated earth and
sky and cast the first of night’s shadows across the vast sprawl
oftheTirfing.
Another hour, maybe a bit more, and it would be dark, she
thought.
She paused at the edge of the lake and, for just a moment, let
the solitude of the approaching dusk settle through her. All about,
the Westland stretched away into the shimmering heat of the
dying summer’s day with the lazy complacency of a sleeping
cat, endlessly patient as it waited for the coming of night and
the cool it would bring.
She was running out of time.
She cast about momentarily for the signs she had lost some
hundred yards back and found nothing. He might as well have
vanished into thin air. He was working hard at this cat-and-
mouse game, she decided. Perhaps she was the cause.
The thought buoyed her as she pressed ahead, slipping si-
lently through the trees along the lake front, scanning the foliage
and the earth with renewed determination. She was small and
slight of build, but wiry and strong. Her skin was nut-brown
from weather and sun, and her ash-blond hair was almost boy-
ish, cut short and tightly curied against her head. Her features
were Elven, sharply so, the eyebrows full and deeply slanted,
the ears small and pointed, the bones of her face lending it a
narrow and high-cheeked look. She had hazel eyes, and they
shifted restlessly as she moved, hunting.
She found his first mistake a hundred feet or so farther on, a
tiny bit of broken scrub, and his second, a boot indentation
against a gathering of stones, just after. She smiled in spite of
herself, her confidence growing, and she netted the smooth
quarterstaff she carried in anticipation. She would have him yet,
she promised.
The lake cut into the trees ahead forming a deep cove, and
she was forced to swing back to her left through a thick stand
of pine. She slowed, moving more cautiously. Her eyes darted.
The pines gave way to a mass of thick brush that grew close
against a grove of cedar. She skirted the brush, catching sight
of a fresh scrape against a tree root. He’s getting careless, she
thought-or wants me to think so.
She found the snare at the last moment, just as she was about
to put her foot into it. Its lines ran from a carefully concealed
noose back into a mass of brush and from there to a stout sap-
ling, bent and tied. Had she not seen it, she would have been
yanked from her feet and left dangling.
She found the second snare immediately after, better con-
cealed and designed to catch her avoiding the first. She avoided
that one, too, and now became even more cautious.
Even so, she almost missed seeing him in time when he swung
down out of the maple not more than fifty yards farther on. Tired
of trying to lose her in the woods, he had decided to finish
matters in a quicker manner. He dropped silently as she slipped
beneath the old shade tree, and it was only her instincts that
saved her. She sprang aside as he landed, bringing the quarter-
staff about and catching him alongside his great shoulders with
an audible thwack. Her attacker shrugged off the blow, coming
to his feet with a grunt. He was huge, a man of formidable size
who appeared massive in the confines of the tiny forest clearing.
He leaped at Wren, and she used the quarterstaff to vault quickly
away from him. She slipped on landing, and he was on top of
her with a swiftness that was astonishing. She rolled, using the
staff to block him, came up underneath with the makeshift dag-
ger and jammed the flat of its blade against his belly.
The sun-browned, bearded face shifted to find her own, and
the deepset eyes glanced downward. “You’re dead. Garth,” she
told him, smiling. Then her fingers came up to make the signs.
The giant Rover collapsed in mock submission before rolling
over and climbing to his feet. Then he smiled, too. They brushed