The Jewel of Turmish - Mel Odom [36]
Haarn glanced up at the wolf.
Impatient, the wolf paced on silent pads along the promontory.
"Are you coming?"
Haarn glanced toward the mercenary and found her staring at him. Her accusation stood out from her body. Mud streaked her face and matted her hair. Her clothing was damp and hung heavy with sweat and soil.
Above them, on the promontory, the wolf shifted. He stepped backward, all but disappearing in the brush that topped the ledge.
Haarn didn't know if the wolf would run or try to stand his ground. It was evident that the wolf had understood that Druz wasn't alone. Remaining silent, Haarn stepped from concealment and crossed the ledge to join the mercenary.
"I thought you'd given up," Druz said.
"No," Haarn replied. He glanced up at the promontory, but the angle he was at denied him sight of the wolf.
"What are you looking at?"
Haarn shook his head. Though Druz seemed incapable of seeing most things that took place in the lands around her, she read people well. Perhaps she hadn't spotted the wolf above her, but she knew that his attitude about the night and the things in it had changed.
"What?" Druz stepped in front of him, preventing him from attempting the climb she'd tried to make.
"I'm going to climb up," Haarn said. Claws clicked against stone above, but the sound was too slight for Druz to notice.
Druz's eyes held his. "Something's up there." Haarn held an answer back from her for only a heartbeat. "Yes." "The wolf?" "Yes."
Druz's face tightened. "Why didn't you tell me?" "Because I wanted to watch the wolf as he watched you."
The hard look on Druz's face softened. "The wolf is watching me?"
"He was," Haarn said.
The mercenary looked up. "And now?"
"I don't know. We'll have to climb up and see."
"What if he's gone?"
Haarn surveyed the muddy mountainside, seeking small places, secure places, that his hands and feet could work with. Druz was good. If they could have waited till morning, when the light was better and she was more rested, she could have made the climb.
"If he's gone, we track him some more," the druid replied. "One of the bitches is heavy with pups. That's why they've been traveling so slowly."
"Slowly?" Druz shook her head. "The pack hasn't been traveling slowly. We've only now caught up with them."
Haarn reached up and flattened himself against the mountainside. His fingers traced the hold he'd spotted-a small piece of jutting rock-and he tested it. When the rock held his weight, he pulled himself up. Mud slid along the front of his clothes. He knew the wolf could hear them coming.
"I don't think he's planning to go any farther tonight," Haarn said.
"He's stopping?"
Haarn reached above and found another hold. Now that he had the rhythm, scaling the mountainside got easier. He eased himself up, fitting his fingers and moccasins into place.
"Yes," he said.
"Why?"
"Because they haven't eaten in the last two days." "How do you know that?"
"Because we've been trailing them," Haarn replied. The muscles in his arms, legs, and back warmed against the storm's chill. "If they'd eaten much, there would have been sign."
"They're planning to eat us?"
"Yes," Haarn said. "If they weren't interested in that, they'd have been gone as soon as they'd seen you."
"What are we going to do?" Druz asked. Haarn smiled and said, "Try to not get eaten." He kept climbing.
Cerril followed the flickering glow of the candle he'd taken from Hekkel down into the bowels of the secret crypt beneath the burial house. The spiral staircase had either been crooked when it had been installed, or it had shifted during the decades or perhaps hundreds of years it had been there. Cerril had to lean away from the central pole at times and against it at others.
Still, the spiral staircase was a short trip to the rooms below.
Once he gained the ground, Cerril discovered that the floor there had been hewn from bedrock then covered over with stone. Dank, bare earth walls drank down the candle's glow. In a half-dozen places, though,