Sunrise Lands

Her hands moved in minimal gestures. Mary's war cloak moved slightly as she worked underneath it, but no more than the slow cool breeze might ripple a bush. Then she crawled away, with the same stop-and-start rhythm as before, while Ritva waited, filling her mind with the image of a leaf drifting downward. Calm…

They were close enough now to see the sentries turn their heads, and Mary stopped whenever their eyes started to swing around in her direction. If you timed it right that made you the next thing to invisible; when it was this dark, a good war cloak just couldn't be told from a natural lump of dirt and vegetation. Ritva's right hand went to her waist. Not to draw a blade; instead she slid out a weapon made of two lengths of ashwood, each two feet long, joined by a short length of fine alloy-steel chain.

With deer, the stop and-start tactic could let you get close enough to touch them, or slit their throats, as long as they didn't scent you. Human senses were less keen but they could make up for it with wits. A good lookout memorized all the bushes and outcrops near his post. When one turned up where it shouldn't…

Her sister was out beyond the two Cutter sentries now. One of them-the one farthest from Ritva's motionless position-stopped his steady back-and-forth sca

Mary came to her feet in a smooth twisting arc that spun her like a discus thrower. Her buckler was in her hand, gripped by the rim; she'd stripped the rubber gasket from around the rim a few moments ago and slipped the hand grip out of the hollow side.

That left her with a shallowly concave steel disk a foot across, very much like what the old-timers called a Fris bee, two pounds of it with a knife-sharp edge all 'round. It flew from her hand in a long smooth arc that bisected the Cutter's face below the brim of his helmet with an audible but not-too-loud crunch.

You could cut through a two-inch sapling that way, or chop a horse's leg out from under it. There were old practice stumps in Mithrilwood with a lot of crescent-shaped slots in their surfaces.

As the man dropped, limp as a puppet with cut strings, some very distant part of Ritva's mind knew she'd wince over that sound for a long time to come. The rest of her reacted automatically, hitting the quick release toggle of her war cloak and charging on soft-soled elf boots with a tigress precision that hardly rattled a rock. The other Cutter had whipped around to see his comrade die. He drew and shot with lightning speed; the arrow might even have hit Mary if she hadn't thrown herself flat again the instant the buckler left her hand.

He didn't waste any time when he saw or heard or felt or sensed Ritva coming up behind him, either; he dropped the bow and turned the reach for an arrow to a snatch at the long hilt of his shete. That brought his hand down across his body to his left hip, which was convenient.

Once you'd snuck up on a sentry, you had to do some thing with him. If he was stronger than you-which a man would be more often than not-it required something more than brute force to remove him. The weapon she carried gave her a five-foot reach; the quick flick of her right wrist and arm swung it in a blurring circle to wards his neck. The chain link struck flesh and the other handle swung around to go smack into her left palm. Her wrists crossed and wrenched apart with a savage economy of motion and all her shoulders and gut be hind the explosive power. The handles and chain multi plied it like a giant nutcracker… and back home they practiced this move by swatting flies out of the air on summer afternoons.

There was a crackling, popping, yielding sound like stiff wet things giving way-which was exactly what it was, and which echoed up her hands and arms in a way that made her bare her teeth in distaste. The man's eyes bulged for an instant, and then he col lapsed, not quite as limp as his companion but not doing more than kicking and gurgling a little before he went quiet.

Aunt Astrid called it "using leverage."

Ritva frowned as she crouched beside the corpse and its heels drummed on the hard earth one last time. There were times… there were times when she wondered if there was something wrong with Aunt Astrid.

She passed a hand over her eyes and over the dead Cutter's, and touched a finger to the earth and to her lips. To take life was to understand your own death-that the Hour of the Huntsman also came for you; the sign ac knowledged that, and that they would all lay their bones in the Mother's earth and be reborn through Her.

Of course, there's Uncle John, she thought, as she joined her sister in a quick silent dash downhill towards where they'd left the horses. He doesn't use leverage, much.

Little John Hordle's idea of Sentry Removal was to sneak up-he was astonishingly quiet for such a big man-grab the sentry's chin in one huge red-furred hand and the back of his head with the other and give a sharp twist so that the unfortunate was looking back between his own shoulder blades.

Aunt Astrid called that "crude, just crude."

Two days later Ritva hid behind a hillside rock a hun dred and fifteen miles farther south and west, struggling to control the impulse to shoot.

Why do they keep following us? she thought. It's not reasonable!

She could see six of the Cutters below them, trying to track the twins over an expanse of bare rock. It was ninety yards' distance, and she could kill at least a couple of them…

The problem was that then they'd know they were on the right track; also they'd start shooting too, of course. She and Mary had doubled back on their own trail to see if they were still being tailed, and here the irritating pursuers were.

Don't be angry, she thought. Anger is first cousin to fear. If you make decisions because you're scared, you'll fuck up.

Under her breath, a movement of lips rather than air, she recited one of Little John's training mantras to herself:

I must not lose my temper.

Temper temper temper is the bum killer.

Temper is the little mistake which leads to you lying

On the ground wondering Oi! What's with all this spreading pool of blood, then?

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past the other bugger

Will be the one bleeding.

Only I will remain, wiping off me knife.

Calm returned. One of the Cutters was on foot, quar tering back and forth over the gravel and sandstone, trying to find a place where hooves had scored it. He wouldn't have much luck; they'd led their horses over this bit, then come back barefoot and wiped out every sign of their passage that they could detect-even sweeping up a lump of horse dung.

The dart of her will beat on the men; she hoped they could feel it as she murmured a binding spell. At last one of them straightened up and looked around at the rocky hillsides. Then he threw his helmet down and kicked it, shouted an order at another Cutter, who went and fetched it; and then they turned back on their own trail.

She slumped behind the rock, breathing deeply, feeling her heart slowing down from its pounding roil.

I was not scared, she told herself. I was just… peeved.

And it's weary by the Ullswater

And the misty break fern way;

Till through the crutch of the Kirkstane pass

The winding water lay The song seemed to soothe the little clump of horses, or at least make them less determined to browse among the thin scatter of green brush in the tumbled rocks at the base of the hill, where water collected beneath the dry gritty soil. Rudi waved his lariat and got them mov ing back towards the main herd, keeping an eye out for their wild kin-they'd had problems with mustang stallions trying to cut the mares out.