She impatiently waved this away. "You left your hirelings to die."

The elf lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. "They are human."

"I am half human," Arilyn retorted.

"You are also half dead," Elaith pointed out. Though the remark was said in dark humor, there was more truth in it than he liked to speak. He put a hand on the stubborn warrior's shoulder to keep her from rising, and then knelt to tend her. He took a knife from a wrist strap and carefully cut away the blood-soaked fabric other shirt.

As Elaith examined the wound, the invisible fist that gripped his heart began to relax. "It is not as bad as I feared. None of the main blood routes are severed, and there appears to be no serious damage to the muscles. I will have to clean and stitch it, though."

Arilyn nodded, then waved away the bit of thick leather he handed her to bite upon. She set her jaw and looked away as he worked, her eyes scanning the forest.

"The stream there. We can follow it for a while, then run, then take to the trees and double back to the stream. Do that repeatedly, and vary the pattern twice or thrice, and veer off to another stream when the flow converges, and even the Malarites will be hard pressed to follow our trail."

The plan was solid, and under better circumstances it may well have worked. "But how long could you hold such a pace?"

Arilyn turned and met his eyes. "As long as I have to."

Elaith did not doubt that she would try. "And if we are overtaken, you would stand and fight?"

She shrugged, as if asking him to get to the point.

The moon elf sighed. Arilyn might be only half elven by blood, she was as stubborn and heartstrong as the elven princess who'd birthed her. Because of Arilyn's heritage, Elaith owed her an elf lord's allegiance, as well as the loyalty of near kin. But there were times, and this was one of them, when he wanted to throttle her. Hers was the sort of traditionally elven thinking that, in Elaith's opinion, had led to the decline of the race, and would undoubtedly lead to her death and his.

It was time for new tactics.

Elaith's sharp eyes scanned the forest. Downstream, a doe dipped her muzzle into the dark water.

A slow, cunning smile curved the elf's lips. "To the stream, then, and quickly," he agreed. "The hunt will begin in earnest with the coming of moonrise."

The howling intensified, filling the forest around them with eerie music. Grimlish rose and gathered up his horned helm and his gear. The others followed suit. The moon would soon rise: the wolf song heralded its coming as surely as a rooster's call foretold the dawn.

Suddenly Badger froze. He swore softly and with great delight as he reached for his longest knife. Drom followed his gaze. There, in the shadows of a young pine, was a large silver wolf. Its amber eyes regarded them with keen interest.

Forgetting his order in this particular pack, Drom reached out and stayed the old hunter's hand. "It will not attack."

Even as he spoke, Drom's conviction wavered. Wolves were unpredictable, and their ways were too complex and mysterious for most people to fathom. To farmfolk, timid sheep that they were, the wolf was a ravening monster. Rangers, druids, and other like-minded fools took an extreme view: they romanticized the wolf as a noble soul, uncorrupted by the greed and whim that plagued humankind, unselfishly strengthening the bloodline of its prey by culling the weak, the old, the infirm. Drom scorned both of these views, not because they were false-there was some truth to both of them-but because neither captured the true spirit of the wolf, or the Wolf People who took inspiration from the Singing Death. In the year just four winters past, the caribou calves had simply disappeared, though the cows had been heavy in the spring and there was no late, killing snow. The spore of the wolves told the tale: for weeks they ate caribou and little else. Yet even so, surely they had killed more calves than they could possibly eat. Though Drom and his village had suffered that following winter for lack of food, this told the young half-orc that even the grimly practical tundra wolves were not immune to the pure glory of the hunt, the joy of the kill.

In short, who could know what mysterious purpose lurked behind this wolf's amber eyes?

Badger threw off the half-orc's restraining hand. "Attack? Of course it won't attack. Wolves are too smart. It is one, and we are three. It will run. But if we could catch it, it would be a fine kill."

"We have other prey," Grimlish pointed out. "Let us be off."

The two hunters fell into pace behind the big orc. The trail was almost ridiculously easy to follow, for the female left a trickle of blood spoor. Drom envisioned the elf with a mixture of anticipation and awe. Now that would be a fine kill!

She was tall, with a wild tangle of black hair and eyes that blazed blue fire. Many of the Talons of Malar had fallen to her sword. Even when it must have been clear that all was lost, that death was certain, she had stood her ground. She might be fighting still, had not a male elf with silver hair and a hawk's wild eyes intervened. The male had cast a spell-a cloud of light and stinging dust that had sent the Talons reeling back. It had given the two elves time to escape, but it had not obscured their trail.

The trail of blood dwindled, but still the Talons followed. A smear of blood on a newly-leafed branch, an occasional deep indentation in the moss when the male's boots had trod. Usually, elves left little sign of their passing, but the male was still carrying the wounded female.

As the hunters walked, the large wolf followed, its silver-tipped fur reflecting the moonlight. Badger grew increasingly restive, but Grimlish would not permit the man to attack.

"The wolf is an omen," the big orc insisted. "Perhaps even a spirit guide."

Badger spat. "The wolf is a wolf. Who's to say it's not testing us?"

There was some wisdom in the human's words. Wolves often tested their prey, tracking them for long hours and making experimental forays, withdrawing if they deemed the task too dangerous. For a wolf, perhaps one of every fifty hunts begun ended in a kill.

"We are three, the wolf is one. Perhaps it is you who wishes to die an old man," Grimlish said coldly. The look of disdain he sent the human settled the matter, and reduced Badger to sullen silence.

They followed the trail deeper into the forest, to a fallen tree not far from a swift-running stream. The elves had stopped here, probably to staunch the tell-tale flow. There were no footprints leading away, which meant that the male was once against walking lightly. But the female was weakened now, and staggering. There were smears of blood on branches and vines, the marks a wounded elf might leave if pain made her careless.

She had not gone far. A hundred paces, no more, and she had fallen heavily into the underbrush-small, broken twigs shouted the story. There was more blood.

"Her wound opened," Drom murmured.

But Badger was not so sure. "Alone, the male might survive. To stay with the female means certain death. But is he cunning enough to know this, and ruthless enough to act upon this knowledge?"

"It would seem not," Grimlish said. The orc knelt nearby, brushing away some of the half-decayed autumn leaves to get to the spring-soft mud beneath. Pressed into it was a print of an elven boot. The male had shouldered his burden once again.

The trail led to a stream-a simple-minded ploy, one that had even inexperienced Drom snorting in derision. A few paces downstream, they found the trail's end. Beside the stream bed stood an ancient oak, its roots partially exposed by the eroding flow. Some of the soil had been hastily dug, then pressed back in.