Without slowing, he vaulted into a tree whose branches were sufficiently low hanging that he could swing himself quickly into the cover of the foliage. He climbed from there—a rapid ascent that took him well into the forest canopy—and then he leapt to a second tree and from there to a third, their branches all closely linked. When he reached the third tree, he settled back to wait.
The mutants charged past moments later, still following his scent. But in their efforts to overtake him quickly, they were past his hiding place before they realized they had lost him. By then, he was back on the ground and coming on them from behind, a pair of long knives drawn. He heard them thrashing about just ahead, then suddenly they went silent.
Instantly he froze in place. There was no sound from ahead—or from any other direction.
They were waiting on him, he thought. They had realized what he was about and set an ambush. He hesitated, undecided. Going forward risked becoming trapped between them. Waiting risked losing any advantage he had gained.
He was still debating when he heard fresh sounds at his back—a slow creeping approach by someone coming up from behind.
No longer certain what was happening, he eased backward into the heavy brush, squirmed into a shallow depression amid the grasses, and settled down to wait.
Stoon was almost into the clearing before he sensed the other’s presence. It wasn’t smell or sound or movement that alerted him; it was instinct. He could feel the other—a kind of tingling of his nerve ends, warning him that someone was lying in wait. He stopped where he was and dropped into a crouch, making himself as small as he could manage and going completely still, wondering if it was too late, if he had been seen, if he was already a dead man. In this cat-and-mouse game, had he become the mouse?
But moments passed and nothing happened. So he began the process of discovering where his adversary was hiding. There was no question as to who it was. It was one of those his creatures were hunting—probably the women’s protector, the one with all the hunting and tracking skills, who was hiding just ahead of him. He tried to imagine what sort of cover the other would choose, how he would go about concealing himself, and what he was attempting to accomplish. He wondered, as well, where the remaining two mutants had gone. Surely they weren’t dead. If they were, he should turn around and get out of there as swiftly and silently as he could manage.
He put his senses to work, trying to gain some scrap of information, some clue as to what was happening.
Nothing.
He stayed where he was. Moving ahead now was suicide. If his adversary didn’t already know he was there—something he highly doubted—he would certainly know the moment Stoon moved even a few paces toward the break in the trees. This hunt had become a waiting game, and no one was better at waiting than Stoon. The advantage would go his way so long as he kept still and didn’t panic. If the Elf tried to move at this juncture, Stoon would hear him and know where he was. And that would be the end of this standoff.
But everything remained quiet. Suddenly there was a change in the light just off to his left—a slight drift of darkness in the dim haze light that appeared and faded in less than a second. It might have been the mist, but Stoon didn’t think so. He tightened his grip on his knife, which he held down by his side, ready for use. He shifted his eyes ever so slightly toward the change, holding the rest of his body perfectly still as he did so. There it was again, that small darkening. Its source came from somewhere back in the trees—a slight shading that, once again, might have been nothing more than the movement of the mist.
Stoon tensed for the expected attack, knife ready to slash upward and then cut down, eviscerating whatever came at him. He would have to be quick. He would have to be …