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"Sloppy-looking lot," Alleyne went on thoughtfully as she turned back.
Astrid nodded agreement. The dead men were mostly ski
The bandits were clad in a patchwork of pre-Change scraps, badly ta
Banditry wasn't a very well-paying profession for most practitioners, particularly in winter.
"Well armed, though," she said thoughtfully.
Their crossbows were good, smoothly finished with rifle-style wood stocks and leaf-spring steel bows, and spa
"Yes, suspiciously well armed," Alleyne agreed. "And the weapons are far too uniform."
"Now that you mention it-" Astrid began, and then whirled at a sound of distress.
Crystal was kneeling beside the dead bandit, being noisily sick into a growing pool of blood. Eilir made a tsk sound with her lips.
Sometimes, soul-sister, you are sort of insensitive, she signed, and went over to put an arm around the girls shoulders and urge her away from the body.
Astrid blinked. Well, I said she'd done well, she thought, then dismissed it.
The horses were restive, tossing their heads; then they pricked their ears and snorted. More hooves pounded on the trail, and then another dozen mounted Dunedain came up, as many again ru
"-now that you mention it, yes, they are well armed," she said. "Normally bandits just have odds and ends, no two alike. The ones we ran out of the lodge here a couple of years back, they were using it for a base, they were certainly like that: and these all have shoes, see? Fairly new shoes, too."
The robbers' footwear was modern, ta
"Now, if I was trying to make a gang of bandits more effective, what would I give them?" she mused aloud.
Eilir was back. She and John Hordle began to speak simultaneously, in Sign and aloud, then looked at each other and gri
"Weapons, and in this season, shoes. A man with chilblains can't fight very well."
The lookout she'd posted called down from his perch high in a Douglas fir. "They're coming back! More of them!" Then, after an instant: "I think someone's after them. They look like they're ru
"Positions!" Astrid said. "Kevin, you stay with Sadb."
She joined Alleyne behind his boulder this time; there weren't as many good positions, with their numbers more than doubled. He was chuckling as she settled in. At her arched brow, he leaned his head towards the trail.
"Eilir is reusing the rope," he said. "I like that girl's spirit, damn me if I don't."
Astrid chuckled herself as she saw the trip-rope deployed; covered in mud, it would be nearly invisible while lying slack. There wasn't time for anything fancy, just a knot around one tree and a half hitch around another.
"Eilir's lawar," she agreed happily.
The first of the bandits came around the bend again, ru
The rest of the Dunedain stood as she did, and the outlaws screamed in despair at the sight of better than thirty bows drawn to the ear. A few tried to run on the Dunedain bows snapped, and nearly every one of the slashing volley struck.
"Surrender!" Astrid called, carefully not adding any promise of quarter. "Throw down and kneel!"
Most of the survivors threw down their weapons and knelt in the mud, hands clasped on top of their heads, silent amid the moans and screams of the wounded.
The man in the knight's hauberk didn't; he just shouted wordlessly and charged, blade up and shield covering his body from knees to nose. Hordle's bow snapped; the bodkin point slammed into the shield and the shaft punched through the metal and wood, stripping its feathers to flutter to the ground as it did. The man pivoted as if he'd been hit in the shoulder with a sledgehammer, and it must have felt much like that. At close range, a heavy bow could smash a bodkin point right through even the best armor. This went through shield and arm and hauberk, snapping the links of the riveted mail like cloth, then through the shoulder bone and out the other side of the hauberk as well. He pitched over backwards and lay writhing.
The pursuers behind them came into view, and stumbled to a halt at the sight. There were two dozen of them, armed with broad-bladed spears and crossbows or pre-Change compound hunting bows, shortswords and daggers and bucklers. All were clad with rough practicality for a foray in the winter woods, but the leader drew her eye. He was a stocky man in a black robe over mail-and-lamellar armor, with a poleax in his hands and a heavy broadsword belted at his waist. He wore a helmet with a neck flare and an eyeslit visor, now pushed up; on the brow of it was a black cross in a white disk, and the face below it was covered in a close-cropped brown beard. When he handed the long-hafted ax-spear-warhammer to a follower and pulled off the helm, it showed bowl-cut hair and a tonsure in the center of it, the artificial bald spot gleaming with sweat. He passed a gauntleted hand over it.
"Bind them," he snapped to his followers, and then waved at the Dunedain as the arrows were returned to their quivers.
"Hello, Lady Astrid," he went on genially, climbing towards her, puffing like someone who'd come hard and fast for miles with fifty pounds of steel strapped to his body.