The sun was setting over the tops of the trees, to the west, as Maritha and her companions reached the Yuntai forest. They had left the narrow dirt road far behind them, but despite that, the guardswomen had little trouble following the elf's tracks. In fact, they became easier to spot the closer the amazons got to the forest's edge, as if the thief was taunting her pursuers, sure that they wouldn't be able to follow her into the depths of Yuntai forest. Maritha frowned. She intended to prove the thief wrong on that account.

The amazon warrior reined her horse in thirty yards short of the tree line, near a small stream. Ahead of her loomed the bulk of the forest, tall, gnarled old oaks, growing together in a dense tangle. It was impossible to see more than twenty paces into the woods through the thick underbrush. It would be impossible to take their mounts into those trees, better to go on foot.

"Amilla!" Maritha called out to her second-in-command. "Take Aisha and Tvirin; see if you can pick up the thief's tracks. Report back here in two hours." The three nodded. Like Maritha, Amilla had experience fighting in the woods, where it was impossible to form up ranks and fight face to face, but the skulking deadly game of bushwhacks and ambushes. Aisha and Tvirin were her most skilled warriors. With any luck the three of them would be more than a match for a single thief, even an elven thief. Assuming they could find her...

"Livia!" She turned to the mage. "See if you can contact the palace or any other guard patrols. Tell them where we are and order them to hurry here. If we can't find the thief, we'll need more women to do a proper search of the forest and ensure she doesn't slip away. "Hestia and I will make camp and watch the horses." There was a chorus of acknowledgements from the amazons and they hurried to obey. The three searchers dismounted, drawing their weapons as they entered the forest. Within moments, they were out of sight.

Meanwhile, Hestia grabbed the reins of the horses and held them, loosely. From the saddlebags, Maritha unloaded the squad's camp gear. While Hestia watered the horses from the nearby stream and let them graze, Maritha went to work, setting up two small canvas tents and building a fire from wood gathered at the edge of the forest. Meanwhile, Livia sat down, cross-legged, in one of the tents and began to hum the words to a spell quietly. Her eyes opened. They were clouded an opaque white. Maritha knew her mind was far away, trying to magically contact the other mages of the court who were coordinating the search for the thief.

Maritha sighed... "Wizards..." she said softly to herself, turning back to her own task. She made a small pile of twigs, mixed with dry leaves and grass gathered from the forest floor. Reaching into a pouch at her belt, she took out a flint and drew her dagger. Striking the flint against the steel blade of the knife set a cascade of sparks over the kindling. A few began smoldering among the dry vegetation. Maritha bent over and began to blow on the small flame, until it took hold. Slowly, she fed more twigs into the fire, building it up, until she had a crackling campfire going.

Hestia had tethered the horses a short distance from the camp, giving them enough slack to move and graze. From the squad's supplies, the two guards took out a small bronze kettle, a cloth sack and three iron stakes. Maritha hammered two of the stakes into the ground on opposite sides of the fire and hung the third across them. Meanwhile, the younger woman ran over to the stream with the kettle and filled it with water. From inside the sack, the two took out several cuts of dried meat, a small bag of rice, and a pair of onions. Drawing their daggers, the two cut the meat and onions up, dropping the ingredients into the kettle.

"You take the first watch." Maritha ordered. "Make sure the horses don't wander off and let me know when the others get back." As Hestia nodded and walked off to keep a lookout, a short distance from the campfire so her night vision wouldn't be ruined, Maritha idly stirred the makeshift stew as it heated up.

"Is that dinner I smell?" Maritha glanced over her shoulder as Livia stepped out. Maritha was relieved to see her eyes had returned to their usual blue-grey color. The young mage looked a little worn from her projection. Her skin was pale, or paler rather, and clammy with sweat. She shivered in the cool night air.

"Did you reach anyone?" Maritha asked. She didn't know much about the sorceress' craft, only it was a complex and difficult business. One she knew better then to dabble in...      

Livia nodded, sitting down beside the fire. "I was able to make contact with two other squads' mages. Two were heading down the Queen's Road. One was at Korath, the other was south of Harwen." Maritha suppressed a sigh of disappointment. Both of those towns were leagues away. "The third squad was nearer. They were searching some village called Bolladan, I think..." The guardswoman went over a mental map of the Queendom. The village with that name was a few miles north of them, in the foothills. Half a dozen amazons, on horseback, traveling along poorly maintained dirt paths through the hills at night...

"We can't expect anyone until at least tomorrow morning then." Maritha said. "Best get some sleep then. Tomorrow we'll have a difficult job flushing our thief out of her forest hideout..."

"Maybe I can work out a spell..." Livia suggested. "One that would allow us to detect her, through the trees."

"If you can do that, I would be one very happy woman..." Maritha told her. Livia returned to the tent. The amazon commander could hear her, muttering the words to a spell under her breath. Just then, she heard the sounds of footsteps on the heather, coming towards them. Maritha was halfway to her feet; hand on the hilt of her sword, when she saw it was Hestia.

"Mistress!" Hestia cried, pointing towards the forest. "Someone's coming!" Maritha leapt to her feet, following the other amazon. She blinked in the sudden darkness, away from the firelight, but her eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness. The night sky was clear, both moons were full. Between them and the light of the stars, Maritha had little trouble following Hestia's pointing finger. Sure enough, a figure had emerged from the forest...no, two figures. As they approached the campsite, Maritha could see they were two of her warriors. One was helping the other limp along slowly.

"What happened in there?" Maritha called out. "Are you two alright!?!" She and Hestia stood aside as the two figures slowly moved towards the campfire's circle of light...

***

"Goddess above, I hate this!" Tvirin grumbled loudly. "Skulking through the trees, looking for some thief hiding in the brush instead of coming out and fighting like a woman!" The short young woman swung her axe in frustration, the heavy steel blade cutting through several stout branches that blocked her way as if she swung through grass.

"I'm sure she's just frightened silly, knowing a fierce warrior like you is out looking for her..." Aisha replied, following behind her friend and companion. The sea-maiden's bow was drawn, an arrow knocked. Like her companion, she was more than a little uncomfortable, the mass of forest pressing in on her all around, not least because, standing a head taller than her friend, she had to constantly duck down, underneath the branches of the trees. "Give me the deck of an Amazon War Galley to fight from, the open sea stretching out, far as the eye could see in every direction..." Aisha thought to herself.

"Quiet!" Amilla ordered. "She could be close by." The veteran soldier was peering through the undergrowth, looking for the tale-tell tracks in the forest floor that marked the path their quarry had taken. The thief still hadn't taken any pains to hide her footprints, assuming the guards would never follow her into the woods. With any luck, she was probably sleeping in the underbrush, confident she hadn't been tracked, until it was too late for her...

"Hold up!" she called out. "Looks like she paused here for some time..." the tracks were rather confusing. They looped and doubled back on each other, as if she was trying to decide where to go next, or preparing something...

*snap!*

A short distance away, Amilla heard a branch snap. Something heavy tumbled from the trees. At the same moment, a rope was jerked from underneath the leaves covering it. The loop closed tight around the amazon's ankles, bringing her legs together suddenly. "Whoa!" She cried out in surprise as her legs were pulled out from under her by the rope. The heavy counterweight on the other end pulled the amazon up, into the air. In seconds, she found herself hanging upside down from her feet.

"Amilla!" Aisha called out, rushing forward, drawing the arrow back and looking around for their attacker. In the underbrush, Amilla heard rustling, as whoever had set off the trap ran off. The archer loosed her arrow in the direction of the sound, but the arrow missed, vanishing into the forest.

"Tvirin!" Aisha called. "Stay here! We need to stick together!" Her cries fell on deaf ears. With a fierce battle cry, the north-woman drew her battle axe and charged off; in the direction the thief had fled. The sounds of her crashing through the underbrush faded into silence.

"Hang on, Amilla!" Aisha said; shouldering her bow and drawing her short sword. "I'll get you down!" She followed the rope-snare through the tree branches, until she found the counterweight holding the captive Amazon in the air. "Ready! Now!" With Aisha's warning, Amilla was ready for the sudden drop, twisting her body so she landed on her side instead of her head. She groaned, picking herself up from the forest floor.

"Thanks." She said, standing, drawing her own sword. "Come on. Let's go find Tvirin before she gets herself into trouble." The two amazons hurried off in the direction their comrade had charged after the thief. Tvirin's path was not hard to follow. The amazon warrior had charged through the forest, in single-minded pursuit of her quarry, snapping branches and scattering leaves along her path. Amilla and Aisha hurried down the path of destruction, weapons drawn, as it twisted and turned, following fleeting glimpses of the thief through the trees.

Then, about a hundred yards along, the path suddenly came to a halt. The two women paused, looking around. Tvirin's footsteps were easy enough to see, in the soft, muddy forest floor, up until here, where they abruptly stopped. They looked around, but couldn't see any direction she might have gone from here. Off to the west, the sun had begun to sink towards the horizon. The reddish-orange rays filtered through the trees, scattering shadows all around. An oppressive silence seemed to fill the forest, muffling every sound. Neither woman could hear anything of Tvirin, or the elf. It was as if they had both vanished.

"Tvirin!" Aisha called out, as loud as she dared. The two waited in tense silence, but not reply came back...

***

"MMMPPPHHH!!1" Tvirin screamed angrily, in frustration. The wad of cloth stuffed in the young woman's mouth did its job, muffling her cries, until they were little more than quiet whimpers. Another strip of thick, torn cloth was tied around her head, to keep her from spitting the gag out. She chewed angrily on the cloth muzzle, as if trying to bite through it.

The captive amazon struggled, thrashing around. Her wrists had been crossed behind her back and tied with rope. More coils of rope circled her chest and arms, lashing them together. Her legs had been tied together, tightly, at the knees and at the ankles. The rope from her ankle was hung from a branch, overhead, leaving the helpless captive hanging, upside down. As the short girl struggled, she swayed wildly, back and forth from the branch.

"Easy now, short-pint..." a voice said. Tvirin's captor crouched on a stout branch beside her irate prisoner. "Trust me; you don't want to work yourself loose right now. You might fall..." Tvirin was currently hanging from the stout branch of a tall oak. She could just barely make out the ground below her, thirty feet below her. Despite that, the elf's warning had no effect on the amazon's struggles. "Just relax, hang around for a while..."  

Tvirin groaned. When she'd been chasing the thief, through the woods, she should have realized the first snare trap had been a diversion, to divide her pursuers. The thief had been leading her on, drawing the northerner away from her allies and straight into another trap. She had, in fact, realized that, right around the time the second snare tightened around her feet and the hapless guardswoman found herself dragged up into the air. But of course, by then it was too late to do her any good. She'd lost her battle axe when she was jerked off her feet and her throwing axes had fallen from her belt while she was hanging upside down, landing somewhere in the thick brush. When the elf had appeared in the branches beside her, it was laughably easy for her to truss up her captive despite Tvirin's attempts to fight back.

Just then, the two heard footsteps, moving through the underbrush. A second later, Tvirin saw Amilla and Aisha appear through the trees, following her footsteps. The captive Amazon screamed wildly into her gag, but the cloth muzzle did its job; between it and the distance between her and her companions, the desperate woman's cries were softened and went unnoticed. Tvirin could only watch as the two looked around, wondering where their friend had gone. After a few minutes, the two turned, retracing their steps back the way they had come.

"MMMPPPHHH!!!" The young woman screamed, hoping they might, somehow hear her and turn back. She moaned in despair as they disappeared into the brush. She hung, limply, from the rope, realizing for the first time how helpless she was...

"Oh, did your friends miss you? Have they gone away and left you all alone?" The elf teased her prisoner. Tvirin closed her eyes, trying to ignore her captor’s words.

"They're just going back to get the others." She thought to herself. "They're going to come back and find me and make this bitch pay!" In spite of that, she could feel tears beginning to well up at the corners of her eyes.

"Oh, don't cry, little amazon." Tvirin's captor taunted. She folded another torn strip of cloth into a thick band. Spinning her prisoner around, she looped the blindfold over the girl’s eyes and tied it on, tightly, leaving the amazon in total darkness. She grunted into her gag, her sudden blindness magnifying the disorienting effect of hanging upside down, swaying to and fro at the slightest movement. From the nearby branch, she heard the elf continue speaking. “I’m sure your friends will be back. I'll make sure they'll be joining you soon enough..."

Tvirin whimpered in fear...

***


"What happened in there?" Maritha called out. "Are you two alright!?!" Slowly, the two guardswoman approached. Their armor was dented and dirty. Both had their helmets pulled low. The first woman had her sword drawn in her right hand. With her left, she was supporting the other amazon, who was limping forward, unarmed. "Where Tvirin? What happened to her?" Maritha asked, worried. It was obvious the short north-woman was missing. As they stepped into the firelight, Hestia stepped forward to help them.

"Tvirin?" The first woman replied, her voice oddly muffled by her helmet. "She's fine. In fact...she's currently my captive!" With speed that took the two amazons by surprise, the false guard pushed aside the other woman. She stumbled forward, into the firelight. As she fell to the ground, Maritha saw her arms were lashed to her sides with rope and her feet were hobbled. Her helmet came loose, revealing Aisha's frightened face. A strip of cloth was tied between her lips, muffling her cry of warning as she squirmed, helpless on the ground.

Hestia stared in shock at her fallen comrade, for a moment too long. Before she recovered her wits, the elf jumped forward, grabbing the startled amazon's arm. She cried out as it was wrenched behind her back. The elf's other hand held the blade of her stolen sword to the frightened girl's throat.

Maritha, meanwhile, had drawn her own sword. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Livia stepping out of one of the tents, her eyes wide with shock and fright as the scene that greeted her. "Livia! Get back!" Maritha ordered. The last thing she needed was for the scholar to blunder into the fight and get hurt. She turned to face their attacker who wrenched Hestia around, placing her between her and the amazon commander.  "Let her go!" Maritha growled...