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"Who?" Alleyne Loring said quietly as he do
Six heads were close together as they bent to lift the end of the long timber into the clamp and fasten the chain across it. Astrid spoke smiling, as if chatting casually among friends out to find a Yule Log.
"Yrch," she said; to the Dunedain that meant enemies. "Could be bandits, could be servants of the Lidless Eye. I saw only two that I'm sure of, so they've got some woodcraft."
Eilir Mackenzie nodded and casually stretched with her arms above her head, which gave her an excuse to look about.
I spotted him – the fir over from the boulder with the point, snow knocked off the branch, she signed. The other's behind the boulder?
Astrid nodded as she mentally tallied their strength here. Herself and Eilir, her anamchara. Alleyne Loring and John Hordle; first-class warriors, though not exactly Dunedain themselves, not quite. Young Crystal, but she didn't really count for a fight. Only sixteen, and not fully trained; brave, but the weak link, the more so as she was slight-built. Another ten Dunedain, in their late teens or early twenties, six of them Mackenzies and the other four Bearkillers. Everyone had bow and quiver, sword and knife and targe or buckler; you didn't go outdoors without, any more than you'd walk out naked. The two Englishmen had light mail shirts under their jackets; under her own she wore a black leather tunic lined with mesh-mail and nylon; Eilir had on a Clan-style brigandine, a double-ply canvas affair with small metal plates riveted between the layers. Most of the others had something similar, but none was wearing a helmet.
"We don't know how many or why," Astrid said. "So we'll all just walk around the corner of the trail up ahead, and then wait for them-double linear ambush upslope. That way we can shoot without hitting each other. They won't follow close."
Send Crystal on to the Lodge with the horses from there? Eilir signed.
Crystal's face was a little pale, but she glared at Eilir; besides being offended at the implication that she couldn't hold her own with the rest, she also had a furious crush on Astrid at the moment: which was so embarrassing. Though she was begi
Astrid signed back: No. Too risky – they might have an ambush along the trail already. We'll go around the corner, drop the log, and : wait a minute!
The word drop triggered something in her mind. "Here's what we'll do," she began. "Remember that trick we practiced? Like the old story about how the little furry Halfling men fought the wicked Emperor's troopers?"
Eilir's eyes went from the log to the coils of rope draped around it. Her smile grew, and the faces of her companions went from grave to gri
We'll have to hurry, she signed.
Twenty minutes later Astrid waited behind a tree, wishing for a war cloak, what Sam Aylward called a ghillie suit, of camouflage cloth sewn all over with loops for twigs and leaves. The wool of her jacket would do, it was woven from natural beige fiber; she breathed shallowly and slowly, lest the puff of vapor give her away, and ignored the drip of melting snow from the branches of the big hemlock. She couldn't see any of her Dunedain, though, except for Alleyne, and that was from the rear where he crouched behind a big basalt rock.
If I can't see them, when I know where they are, the yrch certainly won't. Raven, totem of my sept, watch over us! Queen of Battles, Lady of the Crows, be with us now! To you, Dread lord, we dedicate the harvest of this field!
The canyon widened out a little here, the slopes not quite so steep until they ran into cliff-faces north and south. The old park trail was down fifteen yards below her hiding place, visible between the wide-spaced trunks of the great trees in a twisting line of trodden mud; the horses waited patiently a hundred yards further east, nearer the waterfall-you could see the mist lifting above the icy curve of it from here. The noise would be good cover:
There was an arrow on the shelf of her bow, cord to the knock, the whole held in her left hand, and forty-four more in her quiver. Her sword was leaned up against the deep-fissured trunk, a single-edged weapon with a basket hilt of brass and a yard-long blade, and her two-foot circular shield was slung over her back on its carrying strap. Everything ready:
A flight of birds rose from the eastward, spooked by movement: the yellow undersides showed clearly as they flitted overhead in long, swooping curves, and the buff-brown-black markings as they sped away. Meadowlarks, she thought; they were just getting to be common again. Which was why -
The distinctive fluting trill of the birds sounded from above her, close enough to the genuine article to fool most.
"-which is why we picked that call for signaling," she murmured to herself.
It was modulated, though, with stuttering intervals that the living bird wouldn't have used. They spoke to her: they're coming, and thirty of them.
"Thirty. Ouch. Still, nothing for it."
The first came into view, close enough for her to see the snarl of tension on his thin face. He was dressed in rags and patches, but he carried a good crossbow, and there was a sword worn slantwise across his back with the hilt jutting above his left shoulder, a heavy, single-edged chopping blade. The lone figure stood tense, looking about, then turned and beckoned the unseen band behind him.
Astrid's throat grew tight. She forced a deep breath down into her diaphragm, then let it out, with the tension following it, repeating until her body felt loose and ready. She hated bandits with a passion, even more than she loathed the Protector's men; outlaws had killed her mother, right after the Change, and she'd had to watch. The memory was like meat gone off on a hot summer's day.
Soon now. Don't be too eager. Love not the arrow for its swiftness, or the sword for its bright blade, but the things that these guard.
More men followed, until a dozen stood behind the scout, adding their eyes to his. They weren't in any hurry; they must mean to follow the Dunedain back to the lodge and ring it in, probably for an attack under cover of darkness. More and more, until there were over a score of ragged-gaudy figures. She waited until one looked in precisely the right direction, and until the puzzled cock of his head showed that he'd seen something u
"Now!" she shouted, snatching up her sword in her right hand.
In the same instant she cut upward, where the stay-rope was secured around the stub of a thick branch. The keen steel went through the hemp and into the tree trunk with a solid thunk; she left the blade embedded in the living wood as she stepped around the trunk for a clear shot. The long arrow came back as she flung the strength of arms and shoulders and gut and hips against the tension of yew and horn and sinew. The double curve of the saddle-bow turned into a pure C as the kiss-ring clamped on the string touched the corner of her mouth.
Eye on the target, not the arrow. There!
Even in the diamond focus of concentration, she saw the mouths below gaping as the log swung down towards them, tumbling free of the loops halfway through its trajectory. The five-hundred-pound balk of maple did a slow spin around its own center before it struck. In a piece of cosmic injustice an end came down right on top of one of the few who'd had the presence of mind to drop to the earth, like a maul in the hands of an angry god or a hammer on a soft-boiled egg. Then the log bounced up and bowled over several more. She could hear the crackle of bone beneath the screams and the heavy, thick boo
Pick a target, track along until an uninjured man stood gaping with his spear wavering in his hand: