Eileen let out a roar of pain and anger and exploded to her feet. The archer turned on his heel and ran down the tunnel, with the dragon in hot pursuit.

Well, maybe warm pursuit; Eileen's last nap had lasted several weeks, and since she had a habit of sleeping on her side-plate-armored cheek pillowed on scaly paw-one foreleg was numb and uncooperative. Therefore what she had intended to be a fearsome charge was in feet reduced to an uneven, loping, three-legged hop

Eileen skidded to a stop and plunked herself down on her haunches. She lifted both forelegs and regarded them. After a moment's thought, a solution presented itself, one she thought quite ingenious. The dragon sucked in a long breath of air, held her good leg up close to her fanged jaws, and blew upon it a long, icy blast. This, Eileen's breath weapon, could put out a raging fire or freeze a full-grown centaur to solid ice in midstride. It could even slightly benumb her own flesh, despite her natural armor and her uncanny resistance to cold.

Eileen dropped back onto all fours and tested her front legs. Yes, they were both equally numb now. With her equilibrium restored, the dragon resumed her charge, slowly, to be sure, but with a more even and dignified gait.

Her two-legged tormenter was well out of sight now, but Eileen easily followed the scent of mint. Although her wit was about as sharp as a spoon, she possessed a keen sense of smell-not to mention a particular fondness for wintermint.

As the dragon trotted through the cavern's tunnels and out into the forest, two things happened. First, both of her front legs gradually returned to normal and her pace accelerated into a dizzying, plant-crushing charge. Second, it began to occur to her that she was very, very hungry and that perhaps this interruption was not such a bad thing after all.

Night was falling upon the Forest of Tethir, and Vhenlar eyed the deepening shadows with an intense and growing dread. In the days that followed the battle at the pipeweed farm, the mercenaries had pursued the elven raiders deep into the forest-far deeper than ever they had ventured before, and much too deep for Vhenlar's peace of mind.

The ancient woodland was uncanny. The trees had a watchful, listening mien; the birds carried tales; the very shadows seemed alive. There was magic here-primal, elemental magic-of a sort that put even the hired mages on edge, even the high-ticket Halruaan wizard in whom Bunlap put such store.

Other, more tangible dangers abounded. Since daybreak, unseen elves had been clipping arrows at the humans' heads and heels, nipping at them like sheep dogs gathering a flock for spring shearing. Beyond doubt, the mercenaries were being herded-toward what, Vhenlar could not say.

But he had little choice other than to move the band as swiftly northward as they could go. He'd tried to keep on the trail of the southbound elves, and lost five good men for his troubles. And so they headed northward, as their unseen tormenters intended. They would pick up the trail later, after… whatever.

Nor were the wild elves the mercenaries' only unseen foe, or their unknown destination their only worry. There was trouble enough to be found along the way. Not even the best woodsmen among them-and these included foresters, hired swords who'd knocked about in a dozen lands, and a couple of rangers gone bad-could identify all the strange cries, roars, and birdcalls that resounded through the forest. But all of the men had seen and heard enough to know there were creatures here that were best avoided. They'd stumbled upon a particularly unsubtle piece of evidence shortly before highsun. It was an image that stuck in Vhenlar’s mind: a pile of dried scat in which was embedded the entire skull of an ogre. Whatever had killed that ogre-which had been an eight-footer, by the look of the skull, a creature probably as strong as any three men-was big enough to bite off the monster's head and swallow it whole. Ogres were bad enough, in Vhenlar*s opinion, and he didn't even want to contemplate a creature big enough-and hungry enough-to eat such grim fare.

Monsters had always lived in the forest, but if tavern

tales and lost adventuring parties were any fair measure of truth, the sheer variety and number of such creatures was spiraling into nightmarish proportions. To Vhenlar's way of thinking, this was partly the result of the troubles the elves were currently facing. Their attention had been diverted from forest husbandry to the more pressing matter of survival. This was, of course, precisely what Bunlap and the mercenary captain's mysterious employer had intended.

"Bunlap just had to order us to follow them elves," muttered Vhenlar. "Don't matter to him, what with his being snug behind fortress walls with nary a tree in sight, and no damn wild elves planting arrows in his backside!"

"Speaking of which," put in Mandrake, a mercenary who also doubled as the company surgeon, "how's yours?"

It was not an unreasonable question, considering that the surgeon had plucked two arrows from the back of Vhenlar's lap since sunrise. The unseen elves who harried them had slain the hounds, but they apparently had a more lingering, humiliating fate in mind for the mercenaries.

"It's in a Beshaba-blasted sling, that's how it is!" Vhenlar said vehemently. "Along with yours, and his, and his, and his, and every damned one of us in this thrice bedamned forest!"

"Big sling," agreed Mandrake, thinking it best to humor Bunlap's second-in-command.

The archer heard the condescending note in Mandrake's voice but did not respond to it. He grimaced as a new wave of pain assaulted him. Walking was exceedingly painful, what with his new and humiliating wounds. The elven arrows had dealt him shallow and glancing blows, but somehow Vhenlar couldn't find it in his heart to be grateful for small mercies. Nor could he continue walking much longer. The damp chill that heralded the coming night was making his legs stiffen and wasn't doing his aching butt one bit of good.

"Send Tacher and Justin to scout for a campsite again," Vhenlar said.

"And let those wild elves pick us off while we sleep?" the surgeon protested. "Better to keep moving!"

Vhenlar snorted. If the man was such a fool as to think those deadly archers would be challenged by a moving target, there was no sense in wasting breath telling him otherwise. "A campsite? Now?" he prodded.

The mercenary saluted and quickened his pace so he could catch up to the men Vhenlar had named.

He might have disobeyed, Vhenlar noted resignedly, but for the fact that Bunlap had made it plain they were all to follow Vhenlar's orders. People tended to do what Bunlap said, and not merely for fear of reprisal- although such was usually harsh and swift in coining- but because there was something about the man to which people responded. After years in Bunlap's company, Vhenlar thought he had this elusive quality figured out. The mercenary captain knew precisely what he wanted, and he went about getting it with grim, focused determination. Men who lacked a direction of their own-and Tethyr was full of these-were attracted to Bunlap like metal filings to a magnet. So when Bunlap told them to pursue the elves into the forest, they went. And they were still going, and they would likely die going, Vhenlar concluded bitterly.

Their task was important, Bunlap had insisted, though he himself had taken off for the fortress to gather and train men for the next assault. The captain had left right after the failed ambush, for he realized they were unlikely to catch up to the elven raiders, much less engage them in pitched battle. Vhenlar's task was to follow the elves, kill a few if he could, and collect as many bows and bolts of black lighting as he could get. His men were also supposed to retrieve the bodies of the elves slain in battle, as well as any who might die of their wounds and be discarded along the way, fot such