The Jewel of Turmish - Mel Odom [19]
"What are you doing?" she demanded, drawing back into an automatic defensive posture.
"Don't put your hands on me," Haarn said.
Anger and embarrassment colored the woman's face. "What the hell is wrong with you? I offered you no insult or injury."
"Nothing is wrong with me," Haarn replied. "I don't like to be touched."
The woman's voice bared steel. "I don't like to be ignored."
"I haven't been ignoring you," Haarn replied. "If I had wanted to ignore you, I would have left you in the forest a long time before this. I have allowed you to accompany me as you wished."
"You have allowed me?"
Haarn considered his words and found he'd said nothing incorrect. "Yes."
She started to say something but words failed her. Perhaps the woman had a problem with the harsh truth of the matter. He didn't care. What he'd said was true, even if it had been stated in a way that wasn't agreeable with her. He gazed into her eyes until she looked away.
Less than forty feet distant, Haarn heard Broadfoot shifting restively in the brush. The brown bear weighed at least a dozen times as much as the young woman but made even less noise. Still, despite his own feelings about her woodcraft, Druz passed more quietly than the other group making their way through the dark forest no more than a hundred paces away.
A cry of pain echoed through the night.
Druz's head snapped up. "That was a woman's voice."
Haarn made no response. He'd recognized the sound as being from a woman as well.
Without another word, Druz crept through the forest toward the noise of the woman's pained scream as it was repeated. She slid her sword free of its sheath.
Gracefully, more silent than a stirring leaf, Haarn fell into step beside Druz. However, he made certain to give her the personal space she'd dared take from him.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"I'm going to see what's wrong with that woman."
"There are others with her," Haarn stated.
"I know, but why is she crying out?"
The woman moaned again.
"Because she's in pain," Haarn said.
"That doesn't make you curious?" Druz pushed through saplings and low tree branches.
Haarn gently stilled the quivering saplings and branches as he followed the woman. Where Druz left ripples in the forest, he quieted the wood, making sure, out of habit, that there was little sign of their passage. The woman cried out again.
"If she's with friends," Druz said, "she wouldn't be moaning like that."
"I've found that city people don't always treat each other well," Haarn said.
"How do you know they're from the city?"
Druz knelt at the edge of the forest. They stood on a small promontory overlooking a shallow valley basin.
Haarn favored this valley and often watched the sun come up over the crest of the high hills around it. The trail worn by hunters and regular traffic cut through the trees. There were some, the druid knew, who would see the trail as a road, a place of civilization and refinement. Haarn saw it as a scar, a place where those who would conquer it rather than learn to live with it had sundered nature.
A tight knot of lanterns wavered in the dark distance. The combined illumination created a hollow space beneath the canopy of the trees and the walls of brush..The nocturnal forest animals watched from discreet distances, all of them giving way to the invaders.
Druz reached into her backpack and took out a device.
Judging from the construction of the backpack and the time that had gone into the making of it, Haarn felt certain that sure-handed gnomes had crafted it. Their talent in the creation of things sometimes put discouraging thoughts into the druid's head. If only the gnomes had learned to live with nature rather than create ways to challenge it. Besides a generous storage space and comfort, the backpack provided a number of pockets