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Snap.
The string of her recurved bow slapped against the bracer on her left wrist. The arrow flashed out in a smooth, shallow curve, the razor edges of the broad-head twirling as the fletching spun the shaft. It struck with a wet smacking sound audible even fifty yards away; the man goggled at the feathers that bloomed against his breastbone and collapsed, kicking and coughing out blood and probably pieces of lung. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Alleyne stand and draw his longbow to the ear, sighting as calmly as if this was a day's practice at the butts; he was a swordsman rather than an archer by avocation, but he was still a better-than-average shot. On both slopes the Dunedain were up, and a shower of long cedarwood arrows rained down on the advance party of the enemy force, hissing as they flew, and another flight, and another.
Not all struck. The strangers looked like bandits, and they reacted with the feral swiftness needed to survive in that profession. All but the dead or wounded dove for cover, and a flurry of crossbow bolts and arrows came back at the ambushers; one bolt went by overhead with an unpleasant vvvvwhhppt sound of cloven air and hammered into a chinquapin to stand buzzing like an angry wasp. Astrid ignored it and shot again, again, then dropped her bow and reached up for the next rope as the remainder of the gang ran shouting around the curve and into sight. It wound tight around her left forearm, and a quick snatch and wrench of her right hand put the cord-wound hilt of her long sword in her grip.
"A Elbereth Gilthoniel!" she shouted, from the bottom of her lungs.
She took three steps forward and launched herself into the air. The weight wrenched at her left arm, and she felt the strong pull of the rope and the springy branch it was lashed to bending beneath her solid hundred and sixty pounds of body and gear. Momentum swept her forward with blurring speed, higher above the surface as she fell towards the trail, skimming in a great arch that left her barreling down the trail towards the enemy at head-height.
"A Elbereth Gilthoniel!" she shouted again, a great, high-soaring silver trumpet-call as she flew.
"Fuck me!" a snaggle-toothed man screamed, as much in astonishment as fear, just before her boot heels struck him in the face.
Crack.
The bandit was flung half a dozen feet backward at the collision, his face a red pulp of flesh and bone fragments. Something heavy and strong seemed to flow up from her feet through her body, cracking it like a whip and snapping her teeth together with a painful click, but she dropped to the ground and let the rope fall away, twitching her shoulder to slide the shield around to where she could run her forearms through the loop. Eilir dropped beside her, jack-knifing in the air, her sword and buckler flicking into her hands even as she landed. A spearman gaped at her, then thrust overarm. Eilir ducked under it in a smooth continuation of her fall, whirling as she crouched to snap her short-sword at the back of his knee in a hocking stroke. There was a grisly popping sound like a taut cable parting and he went over backward, screaming and clutching at the injury as if he could squeeze the hamstring back to wholeness.
Astrid brought targe and blade up as another bandit ran at her anamchara, stepped forward with a raking stride of her long legs. Her backsword came up and around and down with a looping cut as her right foot squelched into the mud, flashing down in a blurring arc with the weight and the flexing snap of her whole body behind it.
Crack! as the edge cut, and a billman was left staring at the ashwood stub of his weapon's haft as the business end pinwheeled away; she recovered and killed him with a snapping lunge to the neck, fast as a frog's tongue. He dropped with blood spraying from his severed carotids, the red unearthly bright against the dun colors of winter. The enemy were trying to rally, but their heads whipped about as Dunedain ran down the hills to either side, looking to be twice their actual numbers as they leapt and shouted, their blades out and bright. The outlaw gang froze for crucial seconds as the Dunedain war cry rang out from a dozen throats:
"Lacho calad! Dredo morn!"
Then the rest were beside the two leaders, Alleyne to her left with his heater-shaped shield blazoned with five roses up and his blade ready.
"St. George for England! A Loring! A Loring!" he called, handsome face set and grim.
Little John Hordle came thundering up beyond Eilir with his great sword gripped in the two-handed style.
"Sod this for a game of soldiers!" he shouted.
The great blade spun in a horizontal circle. It sliced through a wooden shield and gouged bone-deep into the arm beneath, and took off half the man's face on the upstroke, like a knife topping a boiled egg. A spray of droplets hung in the air for an instant, a red curve splaying out like a ripple in a pond.
"You bints are fucking mad!" he went on in a roar like a foghorn in a fit, as he kicked a spearman in the stomach and crushed his skull with the ball pommel of his heavy blade. "Who do you think you are, Errol sodding Fly
The enemy wavered, then as one man turned and ran. A dozen paces were enough to put them around the bend in the trail, and the ground to its left was near-vertical cliff. Astrid swung sword and shield up.
"Hold!" she shouted. "Rally, Dunedain! No pursuit, it could be a trick. Miniel, get back up the tree and tell me what's happening! Everyone else, get your bows and recover arrows."
Her head twisted back and forth, skimming, and she was suddenly conscious of the sweat ru
About what you'd expect from a good ambush, she thought with relief. Always a lot cheaper than a stand-up fight, and we caught them flat-footed. Not had for something improvised on the spot!
Eilir jerked her head, and red-headed Kevin sheathed his blade and ran to Sadb; he was their best medico. Astrid pulled a horn from a sling at her waist. It was ivory, cream-colored with age-originally part of a tusk at Larsdalen, brought back from a safari her great-grandfather had made with Teddy Roosevelt-and set with silver bands at the mouthpiece. She set it to her lips and blew, a long huuuuuu, then three shorter blasts. That would let the rest of the Dunedain force at the lodge know what was going on; it meant enemy and come quickly; an answering call came echoing down the canyon walls almost immediately. That would give them enough blades to run the bandit gang to earth and wipe them out.
The rest of her band went about the after-battle chores, retrieving arrows and giving the enemy wounded the mercy-stroke. Whimpers and screams died away to silence.
"Astrid!" a voice called. "Astrid!"
That was Crystal, back with the horses. She had her bow in her hand, though it shook like an aspen leaf.
"I: I: he came at me and then turned back, and I: " she said, lapsing into English.
A bandit was on the trackway not far in front of her, trying to pull himself off it with his hands; an arrow stood jerking in his spine, and his legs were limp.
"Well done, Crystal!" Astrid called, pleased. A memory of some satisfaction teased at her for a moment. "That's good work for your first fight! Algareb cu! Now finish him."
The girl stared at her, eyes wide, her mouth opening and closing.
"Don't let him suffer, Crystal," she said impatiently; the bandit collapsed and lay motionless save for the heaving of his chest, eyes blank as his fingers scrabbled feebly in the mud. "Everyone's busy. Put your dirk in under the breastbone and push up and a little to the left, that will do it clean."