“That he does.”
“Go back to the fire. I’ll shout if evil Otto and his boys come up the path. It smells like the food will be ready soon, and you need to eat.”
“So do you?”
“I’ll eat later. We do the watches in rotation.”
Kormak shrugged and made his way back to the fire.
“Interesting conversation?” Boreas asked. His voice was flat and there was no real curiosity in it.
“We talked about setting up watches. Sasha reckons one man can hold the path.”
“She’s right, if the people coming up it don’t take a bow or a slingshot to him.”
“If they can do it on that path in the dark, they’ll be miraculously good shots.”
“Or fortunate ones. I’ve seen some very good warriors go down to a lucky blow.”
“It must have seemed anything but lucky to them,” Kormak said. Boreas’s teeth gleamed whitely in the darkness.
“What do you think about this place?” he asked. Now they were on the road he seemed less touchy, more a professional doing a job and confident about it.
“It is defensible and we are hidden from the road, but it would be as easy to bottle us up in here as it would be for us to hold an attacker off.”
“I was thinking the same myself.”
“Still it’s probably better than the alternatives.”
“You think our friends from back in town will come looking for us?”
“You saw them. What do you think?”
“I think they think we have money and that they want some of it.”
Sasha returned and made a shushing sound. When she spoke her voice was pitched low. “If you want to see where Otto is,” she said, “come take a look.”
Shadows moved on the road below. Kormak could see a number of warriors and a number of mules. The men were armed and some of them held crossbows. They did not stop at the place where Sasha had taken them off the road. Either they did not know it was there or they had missed seeing it in the gloom. After a few minutes they disappeared round a bend in the road.
Sasha smiled triumphantly. “Old Otto does not know these mountains as well as he thinks.”
“Let’s hope so,” said Kormak. “And let’s hope some of his boys are not sneaking up on us even now.”
“Why don’t you go down the path and take a look,” she said.
“I’ll do just that thing,” Kormak replied. He padded down the trail, silent as a great cat. He kept his hand near the hilt of blade but no shadowy figures sprang on him from the darkness. When he reached the road, the only sign that anyone had been this way were some mule droppings on the interlocked flagstones of the old dwarf path. It looked like they had indeed been missed.
He wondered how long things would stay that way.
Kormak sat down by the fire, eyes narrowed and focused away from the glare to preserve his nightsight. An eerie howl echoed through the night. It was answered by another. Kormak had heard howls like that before, far to the east in the great Elfwood.
“Dire wolves,” said Sasha. “Packs of them haunt these mountains.”
“What’s the difference between a dire wolf and a normal wolf?” Boreas asked. His voice came from further back on the path, where he stood on watch.
“What’s the difference between a domesticated terrier and a hungry wolf?” Sasha replied. “Dire wolves come up to my chest and they can chop through a man’s leg with one bite”
They fell silent for a moment. All of them were imagining what meeting a pack of such creatures would be like.
“They run with the goblins,” Sasha added, apparently determined to lower the mood even more. “Little bastards use them as steeds.”
“I would have thought they would just be snacks for the wolves,” said Boreas. He was attempting to make a joke of it.
“Don’t kid yourself, they are about as vicious as the wolves and they are a lot more cunning. Both like manflesh to eat.”
Karnea ladled out some of the stew. “I love cooking,” she said. “I am not so sure about camping.”
Kormak tasted the stew. It was very, very good. “You could make a career as prince’s chef,” he said.
“Cooking is a hobby. I’m afraid most of my life has been spent studying the Art and the ways of the Khazduri.”
Sasha spluttered food at the mention of the Art.
“You are a witch,” Sasha said. There was an undercurrent of fear in her voice that was not there when she had talked to Kormak about the possibility of being killed.
“I would not exactly say that,” said Karnea. “Although I do know some herb lore and I have the gift for healing and warding.”