The Elves of Cintra (Book 2 of The Genesis of Shannara)

He slumped back in the shadows, watching the approaches to the square from the compound, searching for movement in the rubble. Nothing appeared. He thought again about moving closer in an effort to find out what was happening. Panther was not good at waiting; waiting always made him feel vulnerable.

There was movement in the streets behind him, dark figures appearing from one of the ruined buildings. Panther saw them out of the corner of his eye and froze. Whether they were responding to all the noise and activity at the compound, he couldn’t tell. But something had brought them into the open.

He counted almost a dozen, far too many of anything to suit him.

Then, as he watched them move out from the shadow of the building, he realized what they were.

Croaks.

Even though he couldn’t make out their features in the darkness, there was no mistaking the odd, jerky movements they made as they walked. Flesh eaters, monsters, they were off on a hunt for food. He held himself very still and willed them to go another way.

But as they separated into smaller groups, a pair of them started to come directly toward him.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” the compound soldier asked Logan boldly, keeping his weapon pointed. “You know the rules. All able-bodied men are supposed to be with their units. You look pretty able-bodied to me.”

Logan had two choices. He could lie about his connection with the compound and hope the men confronting him believed him, or he could tell them the truth and hope they let him pass anyway. They were all looking at him by now, most of them with their weapons raised. It was a dangerous moment; everyone was on edge with the wailing horn and a heightened sense of something bad about to happen.

“I don’t have a unit,” he said. “I don’t live here. I’m only visiting. I was invited to watch the execution of the boy and the girl.”

“Invited to watch?” The speaker studied him. “By whom?”

Logan could not remember the name of the compound leader.

He shrugged. “

By the leadership.”

“Hey, weren’t you at the gates earlier, asking to see the boy?” one of the others asked.

Logan gritted his teeth. “I knew him a long time ago. I knew his family. I brought a message from them.”

No one was saying anything, but he could tell from the looks on their faces that they didn’t believe him. If anything, he was making things worse. Bathe didn’t have much choice. He couldn’t let them take him prisoner.

“I am a Knight of the Word,” he told them. “I came for the reasons I told you whether you believe me or not. In either case, I don’t belong in here; I belong out on the streets. Your compound is in danger.

There’s an invasion force in the harbor. Instead of standing around, we should be down on the docks trying to stop it.”

“Don’t be trying to tell us our job!” the first speaker snapped at him angrily. “We don’t answer to you!”

“Lower your weapon, please,” Logan told him calmly.

People were slowing down as they saw the confrontation that was taking place, sensing that something was wrong. In a moment, the passageways would be so clogged with people stopping to watch that there would be no place for Logan to run. And he already knew he was going to have to run if hews to escape.

“If you know something about the boy, you might know something about what happened up on the walls,” the speaker declared, his weapon still leveled at Logan’s midsection. “I think you’d better tell all this to our commander, and he can decide what to do with you.”

The black staff was hot in Logan’s clenched fist, held upright before him, a shield that nothing could penetrate. Already, its magic was coursing through him, as hot and fluid as his blood. The runes carved into the staff’s hard wooden surface were beginning to glow softly.

“I don’t have time for this,” he told the speaker. “Let me pass.”

The weapons stayed pointed at him, and he heard the click and snap of released safeties and cocked hammers. Stupid, he thought, thinking of both these men and himself.

His arm came up in a quick sweep, the magic already deflecting the bullets that were being fired at him, at the same time sending his attackers flying backward in sprawling heaps, the wind knocked out of them.

He turned and ran through a crowd that scattered at his approach, abandoning any idea of trying to leave through the front gates, heading instead for the tunnels that had brought him in. A few others tried to stop him, but he brushed them aside easily, barely slowing, gaining the shelter of the stairwell and scrambling down.