As Wiz charged through the forest, a dim shape flitted from behind a tree into his path. He flinched until he saw it was Moira, her form distorted by her cloak. He clasped her hand and she gave a welcoming squeeze. His cloak was back in the clearing, he realized, as were both their packs. But Moira was safe and none of the rest mattered.
Behind them the reddish glow of the fires lightened the night. Also from behind them came a series of hooting roars.
“They hunt us,” Moira whispered and released his hand. “Come quickly.”
The forest sloped gently downhill and they followed the slope as best they could. Wiz silently blessed the open parklike nature of the Wild Wood here because they could move quickly and quietly through it.
Ahead he could hear the bubble and murmur of a running stream. Behind him came the sounds of the trolls. They seemed to have spread out along the ridge and were casting back and forth, calling to each other as they went. Once Wiz saw a misshapen form silhouetted on the ridgeline by the faint fireglow. He tried to shrink in on himself even though he knew night and distance made him invisible.
They paused on the rocky stream bank while Moira turned this way and that, seeking the best path. There were boulders to serve as stepping stones, but instead Moira led Wiz directly into the chill, swift waters.
“The water will mask our scent,” she explained over the stream’s clamor, “and some things cannot cross running water.”
“You mean like trolls?”
“The trolls are the least of it,” Moira said. “Listen.”
Off in the distance came the sound of a horn and again the hunting roar of trolls echoed through the trees. My God, thought Wiz. Is every nightmare in creation after us?
The water was not deep, but the current was swift and the bottom rocky. By the time they left the stream, some little distance above the place they had entered, Wiz had fallen into holes twice and was soaked from head to foot. Moira had lost her balance once and was thoroughly wet down one side.
With Moira leading they sprinted over the wide pebble beach and into the sheltering dark of the trees. The forest was thicker here and the underbrush more profuse. Wiz and Moira crowded into it and peered back the way they had come.
“Which way?” Wiz panted.
Moira cast about indecisively. “Ahh,” she breathed at last. “They throng to the south and east of us. To the west and north are areas rich in magic.”
“So we go west and north?” Wiz suggested.
Moira shook her head. “To enter a powerful area with the hunt so close upon us would be our doom. With magic all about us we would stand out like ants on a griddle.”
“Lay low?”
Moira didn’t answer. Which was answer enough.
“Can’t you use magic to get us out of this?”
Moira snorted. “If I used magic they would sniff us out at once. We avoid them only because they cannot sense magic upon us.”
A weird, warbling howl pierced the night, chilling Wiz’s blood. Across the stream, a huge wolf-like shape loomed on the ridge, outlined by the rising moon. Even in the moonlight its eyes burned red. It was the epitome of all the wolf nightmares of Wiz’s childhood.
“Dire Beast,” Moira breathed. She squeezed Wiz’s hand even tighter and they crept away, clinging to the shadow and thickets. Behind them the wolf creature howled again but made no move to follow.
Once away from the stream bank they ran. They scrambled up another ridge and half-ran half-slid into a valley. The woods were thicker and darker, but that was no comfort. Still the sounds of their hunters rang and the trees seemed to close in about them to the point of suffocation.
There were brambles to catch at clothing and rip flesh. Once Wiz took a thorny branch full in the face and once they had to stop to disentangle Moira’s cloak from a barbed bush. As they worked the fabric off the grasping thorns Wiz saw that Moira’s hands had been cruelly lacerated by pushing through the spindly growth.