Disclaimer: I don't own the World of Two Moons. I do, however own a few of the characters in this story.

Chapter Two: Ineffective Escape Attempt

Dewshine was not dead, but she could not let the others in any more. She was so tired, and the rocking of the cart, eventually, lulled her to sleep.

Someone large was unfastening the chain on her right arm, but the one her left was still being held. Lying as though still unconscious, she waited for the right moment…

But it never came. She had to pretend, keeping her eyes closed, as the person put the other end of the chain back on the cuff around her wrist; both were swollen and ached fiercely. It was when the large human picked her up and started to bind her feet, muttering all the while, that she reacted.

Dewshine sat up in a blur of movement, pulling her legs back almost before she opened her eyes, and propelled them forward into something that felt and sounded like a nose and face. She rolled over swiftly, and stood up from the cart in which she had been laying.

The elf looked around franticly, and saw she was in a room with only a small, barred window set high in the wall, and bare of everything except a small bed- and a door.

She raced towards it, her hands still chained, and tried to open it, but it was locked. Dewshine heard someone groan, and spun around, to see her captor getting to his feet. She darted past him and to the window, but she was hampered by the chains, her own half-asleep state and the height and smallness of the window.

Dewshine whirled, backing away from the man trying to grab her chains, and reached for her small sword- which wasn't there at her side. With a horrified thought, she found herself helpless at the mercy of two very large humans, one of which had a broken nose, and the other who had just drawn a knife.

Both were advancing on her with hatred in their eyes.

Suddenly the door swung inwards, and another man came in, standing squarely between the prisoner and the men.

"Stop!" he cried.

000

Tyleet and the rest of the tribe sat at the roots of the Father Tree in a state of shock. The capture of Dewshine seemed to have taken their spirit. Finally, Aroree roused herself, and then Skywise. "Soon it will be the season of white cold. Are we to sit around and do nothing until the snow bites us?" the one-time Glider said, one hand on her little friend's shoulder, the other gesturing out at the immobile Wolfriders.

Leetah stood and nodded silently, then went back into the tree-cave she shared with Cutter, Skywise, Aroree and now sometimes Ember and Sunstream, though they were not here together this time. She remembered the times she had healed Dewshine, beginning with the zwoot-caused injury at Sorrow's End, now long abandoned, through the broken leg that Leetah had been beside herself with worry to keep the huntress still while the hurt mended slowly.

Slowly, Moonshade and Clearbrook stood up, and looked around. "She's right." the tribes' Tanner said. "It is my task to shield you all against the bite of winter, and I cannot without hides." Clearbrook leaned over and touched Treestump on the arm, bringing him out of the daze he had been in since his daughter's capture.

"Come. You yet have things to live for!" she counseled her lifmate. She unconsciously placed her hand on her belly, feeling the life of their child growing there and subtly reminding the other elder that he was not alone in his grief.

Treestump shook himself, then looked up into her eyes and nodded. "We must hunt," he acknowledged, though his voice was ragged with sorrow.

"I will hunt with you." added the silvery-haired she-elf.

"I will come to," put in Tyleet.

One by one, the hunt grew until Nightfall, Cutter, Treestump, Clearbrook, Tyleet, Scouter, Darkpool, Strongbow, Krim and her son Sust, Kimo and Dart, Skywise with Timmain in wolf form, Pike, Ember and young Songarrow, the daughter of Newstar and one of the former Sunfolk, an elf named Fao, and the whole party's wolves. The hunting group finally decided to split up into three sections.

To the stream to find game went Tyleet, Scouter, Darkpool, Clearbrook, Treestump and Songarrow, to whom the capture of Dewshine, who had taken charge of her as a young child after the death of her mother at the edge of the Vastdeep Water, was a blow beyond compare.

Krim and her lifemate Pike and son Sust, Dart and his father Strongbow decided that the deeper forest would perhaps hold some unwitting stag or doe.

Cutter went with his daughter Ember, now a cheiftess of her own right and to whom yielding the decision making was rather new now, Nightfall, who he had once been close to Recognizing but no longer after he had found Leetah and Nightfall had found Redlance, Skywise, his brother-in-all-but-blood whom with he shared soul names and who rode a shape-changed Firstcomer, Timmain the High One.

Each group set out, each elf heavy in heart but determined not to show it to the point of disrupting the hunt.

They left behind Moonshade, Aroree, gentle Redlance the Tree-shaper and Leetah.