The Protector's War (54 page)

Then they clasped hands, chanting:

They rose with the last words and set out, all but the pair watching the horses, filing into the shadows of the trees.

 

A figure came ghosting up the pathway behind the Rangers, where it wound below Table Rock. Eilir stepped into the shadows of the trees with the rest, but Astrid made the
Safe
gesture; it must be Kevin, their rear guard, the one who wielded brushwood to wipe out their tracks. He was panting a little, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

We're being followed.
The hands moved in starlight and moonlight; that washed his freckled face pale, or perhaps tension did.
They're a half mile behind me. Six of them.

And there were six Rangers in the nighted woods below the mountain. The Protector's men evidently did patrol this close to home. She watched Astrid bite her lip, then sign swiftly:
Upslope, then back along our tracks. Linear ambush. Quick and quiet, Dunedain!

They'd been moving north along an overgrown old dirt road, upslope from a creek brawling with snowmelt and about a mile east of Table Rock. The water would cover most noise. A lifetime among the hearing had taught her how to calculate such things; the vibration was perceptible beneath her feet, and it was only a few hundred feet to the water—the pitch was at least a foot of descent for every three or four laterally. The woods upslope were thicker than those towards the creek, but neither was thin, and it was a mile or better to the enemy lookout; as long as they stayed under the branches, at night they might have been ten miles away, or a hundred. Tattered wisps of mist trailed from the treetops above, drifting down the slope towards the water and half covering it as they thickened.

They eeled through the woods east of the road, racing back along the direction of their own travel and trying not to break the brushwood in their paths; it grew darker, and she drank in her surroundings through her fingertips and the movement of air on her face and arms. It was cold and damp now, dew beading on grasses and ferns and moss, dropping down her neck and wetting her kilt and legs. The scent of needles and leaves decaying under her feet was strong, though the fog gave a muffled feel to everything, as if her nose was stuffed with soft cloth.

Here,
Astrid signed.
We can't stop and swap arrows with them. Too much chance one might get away and warn the lookout station—it's only a mile upslope from here. Eilir and I will shoot at the leader, and so on down the line; everyone shoot twice at the same first target as your anamchara, move down one, then out blades and at them. No prisoners, no battle cries, and do it fast. We can't let any get away.

She disposed them along twenty yards of the road, each in a position with a clear sight of the trackway. Each stood where they would shoot, drew four arrows from their quivers and stuck them lightly in the ground at their feet, then stepped back behind the chosen tree. It wasn't hard to find ones that offered complete concealment; they folded their shaggy twig-woven war cloaks around them and drew up the hoods, looking through the wide mesh of the gauze masks. From the moonlit road, the space beneath the trees would be caverns of blackness.

Eilir turned her eyes to Astrid, got a grin, and gave one in reply. It wasn't a fake, but not as easy as her soul sister's either.
That's the thing about playing a role all the time,
she thought, with tender exasperation.
After a while, you
are
what you
pretend.
And Astrid's been pretending to be utterly fearless so long she really
is.

Then they settled in with their backs to each other, ready to step around the tree in opposite directions. Calm was a little harder for Juniper Mackenzie's daughter. She controlled her breathing, drawing the chill wetness slowly in through her nose down into the bottom of her lungs, and sought through open eyes the image of a single star appearing on the horizon of morning. After a moment thought died down, and with it flashes of memory, of sights and smells and horrors. Instead the awareness of the night flowed into her, drops trickling on her skin, the bite of an insect. Time seemed to slow and lose the herky-jerky quality of tension. A moth went by heedless of her, less than hand's-breadth from her face. Then there was a flash of pointed leathery eight-inch wings behind a yellowish brown furry head, and the moth was gone save for head and wings tumbling towards the forest floor in the departing killer's wake.

Hoary bat,
she thought with mild detachment. Then:
Here they come.

Five men, walking in a long staggered line down the brush-grown dirt road below, with the gathering fog reaching to their knees in patches where it lay thick. Two had floppy-eared hounds on chain leads, and the animals pulled forward eagerly, noses to the ground. They wore uniforms of a sort—much like pre-Change camouflage hunting garb—and carried crossbows; they didn't seem to be wearing armor, though they might have light mail under the loose jackets. Besides that they wore small backpacks, with knives at their waists and machetes in place of swords—what the Protector insisted be called “falchions” in his domain.

In a way Arminger is Astrid's evil twin,
she thought with a distant corner of her mind.

The rest of her was focused on the…
targets. Just targets.

They walked fast, their eyes raking the sides of the road upslope and down. The man in the lead drew closer, clearer in the bright moonlight that washed the road at intervals. He walked gracefully, though he looked to be older than his followers; he had a pointed beard that was gray-streaked brown, and a silver badge pinned to the turned-up brow of his floppy hat. That was in the shape of a rampant lion holding a broad-bladed spear.

Lord Molalla's sigil. They must be his foresters. And that one, he was a soldier before the Change, or a hunter, or both. Probably both.

Foresters were huntsmen—of runaway peons and serfs not least—and border guardians; the town of Molalla was down in the center of the barony, although the river it stood on had its source in these mountains. Their leader was scanning the ground, not entirely trusting to his dogs but following the Rangers' tracks; that was no easy feat, at night and after a skillful attempt to disguise them, and through the rampant brush and grass that had hidden most of the bare ground. Occasionally he would stop and toe aside some vegetation to get a better look at the damp earth.

At last he came level with them. Eilir felt a nudge from Astrid behind her, and each hit the quick-release toggle on their war cloaks, letting them fall as they took a stride forward, pivoting and bringing up their bows in the same motion.

Loose.
A sharp quick rap as the bowstring slapped against her bracer, and the hum of recoil in her bow hand.

The arrow had only a hundred feet to go, but it was downhill, and the man with the pointed beard was already diving forward towards the Rangers' side of the road, going under the trajectory of the shafts. The dogs went down, and several of the huntsmen; a spatter of crossbow bolts came back from the rest. Eilir's hand went down for one of the arrows she'd stuck in a moss-grown root and the lead huntsman popped back up again;
he
hadn't wasted the one quarrel of his slow-loading weapon on a reflexive shot at an invisible target. He aimed with careful speed and then fired, dodging back behind the roadside growth at once. The bolt didn't come anywhere near the two young women; instead another figure toppled down the slope towards the track, clawing at stems and branches.

No time to think which of her friends it had been. The bearded huntsman was out of sight even as the two return arrows hissed down and thumped into the place he'd been. Another was fleeing down the road but he dropped with limp sack-of-grain finality and two lona arrows in his back.

Astrid dropped her bow and swept out the long Bearkiller sword she wore slung with the hilt jutting beyond her left shoulder. Eilir drew her short sword; in the same motion her left hand snatched the buckler from its hook on the weapon's sheath. Then they leapt down the steep rocky mountainside, their boots kicking up black basalt gravel and clods of dark wet earth. Steel glimmered under the moon, almost matching the sheen of the fog…

And Astrid's probably busting a gut not shouting
A Elbereth Gilthoniel!
as loud as she can,
Eilir knew.

Since Juniper's daughter couldn't talk without using her hands she contented herself with a wide carnivore smile; opponents often found her silence disconcerting.

Come on, soul sister, you may be a goof but you're a
swordswoman
goof!

They both jinked and dodged as they came down the slope, the rest of the Rangers on their heels; not too difficult, when you were running at speed down an unfamiliar steep slope in darkness, caroming off trees and trying as hard as you could not to trip on the things that snatched at your feet and wanted to throw you helpless at the feet of men with hungry swords. By unspoken agreement they were both headed for the leader with the pointed beard; he was far too deadly skilled to be granted even a few seconds to draw his band together or take thought, and there were no points for fighting fair.

Both thought he might be waiting as they burst through the brush with a quarrel in the groove. Instead he'd done something even smarter, realizing that this fight was lost; they caught the sway of weeds and saplings on the other side of the road, as he headed quick-foot for the stream below. There he could break his trail, get around them and warn the lookout station on Table Rock.

A buckler was useful for running through a forest at night. You could hold it up to protect your eyes from things that would otherwise poke them out. Their legs were long and they were young; the man was only halfway across the brawling snow-swollen creek when they crashed onto the gravel on its bank. Fog came to his waist over the water, ripped aside now and then for an instant as the current pulled eddies through the air.

Mustn't let him out of sight. He'd disappear too well.

None of the three had a distance weapon. Or at least, none had a bow—the man stooped instantly, came up with a fist-sized rock and threw with a motion that said he'd played baseball once, whatever his other lifeways. Astrid ducked in her headlong charge, but not quite quickly enough; the rock slammed into the front of her helmet instead of her face, and ricocheted up into the darkness. The young woman's head slapped backward and her heels shot out from under her as she pitched flat on her back, disappearing in the ground mist.

Uh-oh,
Eilir thought.
Wild Huntress, help!

She didn't pause, even though she knew exactly what the man wanted—to get her into the water where the knee-deep flow and bad footing would soak away her agility. If she waited until he got to the other bank chances were he'd escape altogether. The stream was sickeningly cold as she jumped in, and the smooth rounded rocks shifted under the soles of her boots. She knew an instant's fleeting gladness she was in a kilt rather than trousers—that much less sodden cloth to cling to her legs.

His mouth moved, but between moonlight and intentness of purpose she couldn't read the words. They didn't matter, compared to the way his hands went crossways down to his waist and came up with two blades, the heavy machete chopper and long bowie. They moved in small precise circles as he crouched and grinned at her, backing away slightly towards the eastern bank…

He's not frightened. He just wants to get away before anyone else gets here, so he can report us. I have to kill him
fast.

Closer. Blue eyes that turned pale in the cold light, and a golden earring. Three inches taller than her five-eight, and long arms—enough lines around his eyes that he was probably over forty, but strong as well and likely still quick enough. Scars on his hands and under the beard showed fights survived and opponents who'd died.

It's not my first time either.