Troy Denning - The Sentinel

“Where’s she going?” he asked.

“Time to leave the river.”

Arietta pointed down the canyon, to where a blanket of dark shadow lay thick on the water. It seemed to be spreading, pushing slowly upriver and creeping along the canyon walls.

Kleef sat upright. “Tell me that’s just fog.”

“I wish I could,” Arietta said. “But we both know it’s not.”

Stomach knotting and eyes fixed on the remnants of the Shadowfell, Kleef rose. “Where’s Malik?”

“Have no fear.” Malik’s voice came from behind him. “I am here.”

Kleef breathed a sigh of relief, then turned to the little man. “We need to get you out of here.”

“That’s the idea,” Arietta said. “As soon as Joelle secures the rope, we’re climbing out.”

Kleef looked back up the slope and saw that Joelle had vanished into the interior of the ravine.

“We might not have that long.” Kleef drew Watcher, then slung the sword’s scabbard across his back. “I couldn’t do it. I let them in.”

“Who?” Malik asked.

“Who do you think?” Kleef replied. “Shar. Yder.”

Malik’s expression grew angry. “Do not snarl at me,” he said. “You are the one who cannot forgive his own god.”

“That’s enough,” Arietta said, crossing to the canyon wall. “The Shadovar were bound to find us sooner or later, and we were still on the river when Kleef went to sleep. If we’re lucky, we can be out of here and halfway to Grumbar’s Temple before they realize we’ve left the canyon.”

Kleef doubted they would be so lucky, but-at least if he remembered his dream correctly-the Shadovar had not been with him long before Arietta awakened him. Keeping a careful eye on the shadows around them, he followed Arietta and Malik up to the canyon wall.

They did not have to wait long before Joelle tossed the rope down. Arietta made the climb first, pausing twice to twine the line around her legs so she could rest her arms. Malik was not strong enough to make the climb on his own, so he tied the rope around his waist and spent several minutes complaining while the two women hauled him up. Kleef brought up the rear, hauling himself up hand over hand.

He was nearly at the top when the twang of a bowstring rang out inside the ravine. It was followed by a strangled gasp and the scuff of running boots, then another twang .

Malik’s head appeared above, peering down over the cliff. “What is taking you so long?” he demanded. “There are orcs!”

Kleef practically flew up the last ten feet, pulling so hard that the rope stretched and bounced each time he grabbed hold of it. By the time he reached the ravine mouth, his breath was coming hard and his arms were trembling with fatigue. Still, he clambered over the edge and rolled, then came up on a knee with Watcher in hand.

The hanging ravine narrowed almost immediately into a slot canyon, and Kleef found himself looking up a rocky, sheer-sided passage not much wider than he was tall. Malik was to his right, crouching behind a small boulder. Arietta stood ten paces ahead, peering around a sharp bend. She had an arrow nocked and her bow raised, but had not yet drawn the string back. Joelle was nowhere to be seen.

Kleef went to Arietta’s side. A short distance ahead, a pair of orc legs lay on a small boulder, the body above them concealed by another bend in the stony passage. Next to the legs, a second orc slumped against the canyon wall. He had an arrow in his throat and a look of surprise on his brutish face. Like the orcs that had been harassing Faroz’s caravan, he was broad-bodied and muscular, with stooped shoulders and long gangling arms. He also wore the same kind of armor-a boiled leather breastplate reinforced with bands of waxed wood.

“Where’s Joelle?” Kleef asked.

“Scouting ahead.” Arietta gestured at the orc with the arrow in his throat. “What do you think? The same tribe as before?”

“That would be my guess,” Kleef said. “It makes more sense than orcs living in the Chondalwood.”

“Then the Shadovar must have walked them through the Shadowfell,” Arietta said. “There’s no way they came through the Chondalwood-not this fast, and certainly not with the treants and satyrs against them.”

“I know,” Kleef said. “Yder’s found us again-and it’s my fault.”

“Because you had to sleep?” Arietta shook her head. “You stayed awake for five days. No one else could have done such a thing.”

“Not because I had to sleep-because Malik’s right.” Kleef glanced back. The only sign of the little man was the rope snaking across the rocky ground toward the boulder where he was hiding. “I’m bitter and resentful, and Yder is using that against us.”

Arietta reluctantly nodded. “You’ve certainly had reason to be resentful in the past.” She pointed at his sword. “But Helm is back now. Perhaps that will make it easier to let go of your anger.”

Kleef was still considering her words when Joelle raced around the bend, coming so fast she nearly ran into Kleef.

“Hurry!” she whispered. “We don’t have much time.”

“Before what?” Kleef asked.

“Orcs.” Joelle turned to start back up the narrow gorge. “Dozens, at least-maybe the whole horde.”

Arietta started after her, but Kleef remained where he was.

“Why are we going toward them?” he asked.

Joelle paused and craned her neck, looking up the rocky face of the wall beside them. It was as sheer as the cliff they had just ascended-and easily ten times higher.

“Because we can’t climb that,” she said. “And if we turn back, the only place to go is into the river.”

With that, she and Arietta disappeared up the narrow canyon. Kleef was still confused, but there was no remaining behind. He turned to summon Malik and found the little man already on the move, his short sword in hand and a worried look in his eyes.

“I am sure she has a plan,” he said. “Even if it is only to limit our suffering by seeing that we die sooner rather than later.”

Reluctant to leave Malik alone at the rear of the line, Kleef fell in behind the little man, then checked the agate on Watcher’s crossguard. It did not make him feel much safer to see the stone still dark. There could be no doubt now that Yder had found them, so if the Shadovar were not showing themselves yet, it could only mean they were preparing some more perilous trap.

Following the two women up the narrow passage was difficult and tiring. At first, the canyon floor was blanketed in so much soft sand that it was almost impossible to run. After a hundred steps, it became packed with boulders, and they had to clamber and crawl as though climbing through a cavern. Then it sprouted a dense thicket of willow that prevented them from seeing more than a few feet ahead.

The sound of clacking stones and jangling steel began to ring down the canyon. Joelle and Arietta started to hang back with Malik, at times taking him by the arms and dragging him along. Muffled grunts and angry snarls began to punctuate the approaching noise, and Kleef moved into the lead, certain they were about to run headlong into the front of the orc column.

He was just starting to make out individual voices when Joelle caught him by the arm and quietly pulled him toward the canyon wall. For a moment, he didn’t understand what she was doing. All he saw was another rocky face, slightly lighter than the stone around it.

Then she drew him toward the downhill side of the light area, where a curving black line marked the seam between the dark rock of the canyon wall and the lighter stone of a boulder. About twelve feet up, the seam widened into the shape of a wedge, and disappearing into this space was Malik’s boot.

Joelle quickly wedged her hands into the seam, then scrambled to the top of the boulder and reached down for Watcher. Kleef passed the sword to her and followed her example, and seconds later he found himself looking up a steep rocky chute choked with boulders, loose stones, and long-dead trees. Malik and Arietta were crouched behind a gray log just a few feet above, side by side with their weapons at the ready. A thousand paces beyond them, the chute ended in a small, circular cliff that looked no higher than the one they had climbed just a short time before.