Abelle Harkin cracked his whip with an urgency wrought of terror. Orrin slumped next to him, a spear buried deep in his side, bright blood flowing freely, staining his brown woolen tunic a dark and ugly red black.

"Come on, run!" Harkin urged his team, and he cracked the whip hard again. He couldn't help but consider the terrible irony of it all. He had been transferred from the front lines of battle-in a war that had been raging since he was a young man-to the seemingly safe job of driving Prince Yeslnik about the growing lands of Greater Delaval. And now this-to be caught and killed on the road!

The horses dug in and pulled hard, but an undeniable drag slowed the coach. "Orrin, you hold on!" Harkin cried to his injured friend, and he shifted his hands just enough so that he could pull back the slumping man, who seemed as if he would tumble from his seat.

Harkin glanced all around frantically. He heard Prince Yeslnik shout, though the words were lost in the tumult. He heard Prince Yeslnik's wife, Olym, scream in fear. When the coach hit one straight, flat stretch of the tree-lined road in the southeastern reaches of Pryd Holding, Harkin dared to stand quickly and look back. The coach was dragging a tangle of logs. "Ah, you cunning beasts," he lamented, for the bloody-capped powries had hit the coach with some sort of grapnel, affixed by rope to the logs.

Harkin's mind tumbled through the possibilities. He knew that he had to do something; it was only a matter of time before those bouncing logs caught on a tree or some other obstacle at the side of the road and either stopped the coach or, more likely, tore it apart. He couldn't go back to free the grapnel while they were charging along, and he couldn't stop. He knew the truth. He had seen the bright red berets. He had heard the grating voices and the guttural shouts. These were powrie dwarves, and powries showed no mercy.