The Druid Queen - Douglas Niles [95]
"Stop the march!" he shouted to the humanoid monsters of his command. "We meet the humans here!"
* * * * *
Finellen tried to conceal her worry from the rest of her troops and from her human and elven companions. She wasn't entirely successful in either case.
"It's going to be tough to catch them, isn't it?" Hanrald asked softly, leading his war-horse along the trail beside the dwarven captain.
"Aye," she grunted sourly. "They move so damned fast. Even a whole night's forced march puts us two leagues behind them!"
The column of dwarves had unquestioningly followed their leader's command, tromping grimly through the night. Hanrald had ridden or walked along with them in silent amazement, for the doughty warriors stumped along at an exhausting rate hour after hour, and yet not one of them raised a voice in complaint or showed any sign of faltering. Brigit's scouting report had indicated that the monsters camped at dusk, and this news propelled all of them into a steady, draining pace.
Before sunrise, the dwarves paused for an hour's rest. Some tried to nap for a few minutes, while others simply stretched muscles battered and bruised from long days on the trail. Brigit rode forth on her fleet mare, ready as always to scout the enemy force. Shortly after her departure, however, the druid Danrak entered the camp with news that alarmed them all.
The monsters, he told them, broke camp even before the coming of daylight. Once again they marched away from the dwarves, increasing the distance between the two forces faster than Finellen and her warriors could close it.
"Still, are you sure it's as bad as all that?" questioned the earl as he and Finellen made their way along the trail. "After all, Brigit hasn't gotten back yet. She might have some good news."
Finellen shook her head in frustration and disappointment. "You heard what Danrak said. They were already on the march an hour before dawn!"
The courageous druid, Hanrald knew, had been observing the camp of the trollish army from nearby vantage points in the brush and trees, no doubt concealed in the body of some fleet forest creature, perhaps a rabbit or squirrel, or maybe even a sparrow or jay. Such disguises had enabled him to give them excellent reports on each of the monsters' camps and their subsequent lines of march.
"Same direction as yesterday, I assume?" the Earl of Fairheight queried.
"Yup. They're heading for the Gray Headlands!" Finellen said disgustedly. "It looks like they'd take the axe all the way to the Sword Coast if they could swim!"
The day after the ravage of the town, the raiders had marched northeast, staying near the shore of Gwynneth. Though the beasts had looted a few small fishing villages-isolated huts and cottages, for the most part-there were no sizable villages in their immediate path. Still, the eastern shore of the island was populated far more heavily than was the north, so it wouldn't take long before the giant humanoids would begin to encounter victims aplenty.
Hanrald knew, too, that even the hardy dwarves couldn't handle another night of marching. It seemed that, by acting upon his advice, Finellen might have missed her chance for the fight that she so desperately wanted. The long-legged troops of the enemy were just too fast for the dwarves.
Something moved in the trees before them, and then, as she always did, Brigit and her mare materialized. Hanrald's heart jumped with relief as she shrugged away his helping hand to dismount on her own.
"How far ahead are they?" Finellen inquired grumpily. Then something on the sister's knight's face gave the dwarf-woman pause. "What is it? Do you have news?"
"I do, at that," the Llewyrr woman reported. She shook her head in amazement, as if she didn't believe what she was going to say.
"I saw them on the march. They kept on for several hours, into the midmorning. Then, for some reason that I can't figure out, they just stopped. They're waiting near the coast, barely a league and a half away."