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‘If you shout a little louder,’ hissed Mori, prying the cat from his scalp, ‘perhaps you can tip the creature to the fact we know he’s following us.’ Stamo took the protesting Tevildo from his companion’s hands and placed it on the ground.
Crouching down, the two men spoke quietly with Tevildo and with Owl. ‘We know he is hungry for us,’ Mori began. ‘He has turned his attention on us for some time now. We can feel his need; the rapacious desire for our fëar. And it is better that he follow and find us than those two unarmed women.’
‘It would be most helpful to us,’ Stamo continued, ‘if somehow news of what is happening could be gotten to Mistress Mara and to Mistress Wenda. Though at the moment, I am at a loss as to how to accomplish that.’ He looked to Mori. ‘It would be best I think if we two did not separate, but met the creature in tandem.’
Mori nodded his head at this. His gaze slid to where Owl sat on a downed tree trunk. ‘We are unfamiliar with this place and this forest, is there something you can think of that might be of help to alert the women?’
Tevildo sat on the fir needled floor of the little clearing where they had stopped, his ears twitched and his keen nose took in the scents carried by the breezes. ‘And you, Tevildo,’ Stamo asked, ‘what do you wish to do. Stay with us or follow along after Owl?’ He looked in the direction from which they’d come. ‘We mean to keep ourselves between him and his other prey.’
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