He felt an odd calm settle over him; everything became slow and easy. Nothing was beyond him now.
Odd, he thought suddenly, that he had abandoned so readily his intention of killing Arik Siq to avenge Sider. Arik’s death had been the driving force behind his choosing to take the black staff, enraged and bitter beyond words. But now all that was gone, bled out of him during his pursuit, left behind in the wake of his determination that the man would not escape him and replaced by his need to save Prue. Sider would not mind, he thought. Sider would not only understand, but also approve. It was the right thing to do.
He studied the dead men where they lay before the defensive wall, the positioning of the single ladder that remained upright against the ramparts and the way the uneven terrain rolled and shifted beneath all of it. Finally, he walked over to where Trow Ravenlock lay sprawled in death, propped him upright so that he was facing back the way Arik Siq would come, calculated the way things would work when the Drouj made his cautious way toward freedom, and nodded in satisfaction when he was certain of what would happen.
Then he took up a position at the base of the wall, stretching out on the ground close by where he had left Trow, his body partially obscured by that of a dead Troll, and began his vigil.
It was a short wait. He had arrived ahead of Arik Siq by no more than thirty minutes, the latter traveling almost as fast as he had in an attempt to get there ahead of any pursuit. He probably still worried it was Sider Ament who was coming after him, an inexorable force of nature somehow able to fight off the killing effects of the poison.
That he was wrong made the moment that much sweeter. Pan saw his quarry out of the corner of one eye, watched him appear out of the trees, silhouetted against the horizon as he approached with slow, careful steps.
When he was perhaps twenty feet from Trow’s body, Arik Siq drew up short, troubled by the dead man’s strange position. After hesitating a moment, he came forward, dropping into a crouch, a long knife in one hand, his blowgun in the other. From his posture, it was clear he suspected a trap of some sort, which was exactly what Pan wanted. The Drouj stopped not six feet on the other side of the Troll corpse behind which Panterra lay, studied the dead leader of the Trackers, looked around for trip wires, and then started cautiously for the wall.
Pan came to his feet soundlessly, right behind the other, gripping his black staff in
both hands. Arik Siq sensed something at the last minute, his own instincts sharp enough to warn him, and turned. But Pan was already swinging the staff with as much force as he could muster, striking the other on his raised forearms with numbing force. Both weapons went flying. The Drouj screamed in pain and stumbled backward, trying desperately to flee the unexpected attack. But he had no chance; Panterra was on top of him instantly. The black staff made a strange whistling noise as he swung it a second time, catching Arik Siq on the side of his head.
The Drouj dropped like a stone.
BY THE TIME his prisoner began to stir, Panterra had built a fire, made himself a meal from food scrounged from the remains of the dead men’s supplies, and eaten and drunk his fill. He had dragged Arik Siq down the mountainside far enough that they were in the shelter of a clump of rocks surrounded by alpines and scrub, well away from the pass at Declan Reach and its dead.
Pan sat with his back against the flat side of a large boulder, facing uphill toward the dark entrance to the pass so he could see if anyone appeared from that direction. At his feet, the fire had burned down to red embers and ash. Arik Siq was propped up across from him, slumped forward and leaning sideways against a stack of blankets Pan had retrieved.
The Drouj woke with a start, wincing at pain that Pan could only imagine, but in which he took quiet satisfaction. His prisoner tried to stretch and then paused as he discovered that his hands and upper arms were bound tightly with cord and his ankles chained to a heavy set of roots.
“Don’t bother trying to move,” Pan offered when the other looked over at him. “Just sit still.”
The Drouj lowered his eyes to his shackles and gave them a cursory appraisal. There was a deep bruise and some blood along the side of his head where he had been struck by the staff. He looked ragged and dirty, a fugitive not only from the people in the valley but from anything resembling soap and water. Yet his eyes were sharp and calculating, and there was no sign of defeat mirrored there.
“You should have let me go when you had the chance,” he said finally. He lifted his head, his blunt features wrinkling unpleasantly. “It was the only way you’d ever see your little friend alive again.”