With a few amazing strides, the gigantic wolf broke free of his unliving counterparts, striking one last foe with his hind paws as he passed by. The dreadwolves gave chase, but they were soon left far behind.

“Thank the gods that is over,” Sardal muttered.

Kaz, happening to gaze skyward, saw something he had hoped never to see again. “We’re far from safe, though, Sardal. Look up there!”

Circling menacingly above a mountain a short distance to the north was the stone dragon.

Greymir began slowing. “I have brought you as far as I can. You will have to go by foot the rest of the way, but it is not far. Perhaps it is even too close.”

“Where will you go?”

“I asked one boon when my lord Habbakuk sent me forth, and he did grant it.” Greymir came to a halt. “Please dismount.”

The two did. The great wolf turned to face toward the direction they had just come from, back where the dreadwolves still roamed.

“We thank you sincerely for your aid, emissary of Habbakuk.”

“Your request gave me an opportunity of my own. I could not come to this land without a reason. If anyone should be thanked, it is you and the minotaur for enabling me to complete a task that has long been overdue, a curse upon my kind.”

In the distance, they could hear the howling of a dreadwolf or two.

Greymir’s burning eyes narrowed at the sound. “I could do nothing before, what with you two on my back. Now I shall deal with them properly. May you gain success in your own quest.”

With that, the huge wolf raced off.

“It has pained him for the past few years that such as the dreadwolves exist,” Sardal said. “He goes to destroy those twisted forms so that the souls of the pack members who once fostered them may rest in peace.”

“I thought they’d all died with their original master, Galan Dracos. Where did Argaen Ravenshadow learn such foul sorcery? I wouldn’t have thought him capable of it.”

Sardal looked at him grimly. “Argaen is not capable of it, although he may have come to believe that he is responsible. Argaen, you see, is only a tool. No, minotaur, the dreadwolves still obey their first and only master.”

“The emerald sphere! I felt it!”

“Yes, my friend. Galan Dracos lives!”

“Thos mountains in the midst of the, I think,” Bennett commented calmly to Sir Grissom. The other knight nodded obediently. Behind them, Darius, Tesela, and Delbin listened with various combinations of impatience, anxiety, and anger. Kaz was gone, swallowed up by some fiendish trap. It was not the column moving too slowly that bothered them, but that Bennett seemed to accept the disappearance of Kaz so easily.

“This is war” he had replied to Tesela’s angry questions. “As much a war as the one fought more than five years ago. Kaz knows, if he is indeed alive.”

There were traces of recent activity, men on horseback and on foot. The tracks went toward the mountains, away from them, parallel to their own path-essentially everywhere. A few times, men had thought they had seen the stone dragon.

“Ready arms,” Bennett ordered.

The men in front had lances, should the foe block the mountain paths. The men in the ranks were divided between those with bows ready for any enemy hiding in the rocks and mountainsides, and others who had swords in case they were set upon from low ground. It was the unspoken duty of Darius that he would watch over the cleric and the kender. He was more than willing to test his blade in their defense. Tesela, meanwhile, was composing herself. In defense of the column, she would utilize her powers as best as she could.

Even Delbin was ready. He had succeeded in finding a sling and ammunition. The sling was a lucky find; he had been looking for his book, in order to record the coming battle. The sling seemed as though it might be useful, so he kept it at the ready.

The column moved into the mountains.

Perched atop one peak, the stone dragon, momentarily unnoticed, continued to watch them. It had not been given orders to attack. Not yet.

That was quite fortunate, for soon it was apparent that the knights had other concerns-concerns wearing armor and sporting a nasty variety of weapons.

Their first mistake was in believing that the knights would even think of retreating. Their second was assuming that fifty men were just fifty men, when they were actually dealing with the best-trained fighters in all of Ansalon. The first wave of attackers, both on the ground and on the slopes of the mountain, died nearly to a man as each knight did his part. Only one knight died, an arrow through his neck, and only two others were injured. Some twenty or thirty of the enemy perished, however. The fierce battle lasted several minutes.

As the disorganized figures scurried back into the safety of the mountains, Bennett ordered those who would prefer to give chase to maintain their positions.

The column would move as a whole or not at all. The next clash came only five minutes later.

“How much longer can we afford to stay here, minotaur?”

Kaz gazed down to where another patrol was scouring the nearby area. It was all too obvious what-or rather, whom-the patrol was looking for.

“As long as it takes our friends down there to tire themselves out.”

They were slowly inching their way toward the keep that Argaen Ravenshadow had made his own. Finding it had been fairly simple; the two of them had moved steadily and stealthily in the direction of the peak where the stone dragon now perched. As they had assumed, the keep lay below that particular mountain.

Getting there… now, that was a nasty problem.

The region was a kendertown of activity. Patrols scurried everywhere. Kaz was truly astonished at the number of hardened fighters; this was the bulk of what remained of the once-terrible force of the Dragonqueen. The dark elf was indeed building himself an army! How long had he planned such a thing? When had he first contacted the various raider commanders? What had he offered them?

Ravenshadow’s keep had been built long ago, probably by someone dreaming of a new life. It was old but solid. A high, serviceable wall surrounded it, save at the back of the keep, where a mountain provided a natural barrier to outsiders. There were several taller buildings toward the back end of the keep, one a squat tower that had probably served as the lord’s residence. It was in that tower that Kaz suspected he would find Argaen Ravenshadow himself. Despite the damage the elements had done to the keep as a whole, the dark elf had apparently seen no reason to have it repaired. What had happened to the original inhabitants, neither Sardal nor Kaz could even guess, but at one time, the minotaur estimated that the place could have held almost four hundred souls. Certainly the size of the keep indicated that. The size also hinted at how massive Argaen’s army had become; the keep was fairly overwhelmed by men and horses. There were groups of ogres and other races that had forged alliances with Takhisis.

Time was rapidly running out. So much activity meant only one thing to Kaz: His friends were under attack. Every moment he delayed brought them closer to death-if it was not already too late.

The going was too slow. Dodging patrols and riders. Being forced, at one point, to wait and quietly kill a trio of searchers who had gotten too close in their search. Still the keep was far away.

“They are moving on,” Sardal whispered.

The patrol had decided to continue down the path before them. No one would find the three men Kaz had been forced to dispatch, but if they went far enough, they might find traces of one very large wolf.