Shadow War Chapter Head Chapter 1 [https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/WhctKKWxdNWrhbxWmMMRzTnPBhrkRbJbvkDMnGkwmkdVVhjRtKnWmfCJsvDBCrdrkfJcTJb?projector=1&messagePartId=0.1]

The Shadow War

By

Miles Cameron

Chapter One -- The Day the Shadow Came

Finavir watched the back end of the mule ahead of her with the resignation of a veteran traveler.  The sun was setting on the Cuillin mountains all around her, the shadows stark against the orange-grey of the evening-coloured rocks that soared like the towers of Tallis.

Tallis was a long way away, and Finavir was in no hurry to return to her life there after the relative freedom of two years in the Cascades. She sighed, and her pony shifted, aware of her unease; its ears came up over its shaggy mane, and she patted it reassuringly and looked forward over the big mules, bread for heavy mountain packing, to where two women from one of the military orders that guarded pilgrims were pointing east, away from the setting sun.

Finavir stood a little in her stirrups, aware that her tired pony didn't need this kind of weight shift on a trail so narrow that sometimes Finavir wanted to close her eyes rather than watch, but a scent had reached her nostrils; something like the reek of a distant forest fire, but... darker.

Her pony smelled it too.

      #          #          #

Llachlan sat in the shade of an oak tree, weaving foliage.  He had already cut both branches and vines, and now he was building a sturdy frame of maple sticks. He trimmed them with a very small axe, his motions economical; he notched the ends, fitted them with a small knife, and lashed them with the vines. A huge dog watched him with evident interest, following every motion.

'You could help,' he said to Eithne, a heavyset woman who lay with a crossbow across her legs.

'You're having too much fun,' she said.  She looked over at Thorld, who had the prod off his crossbow and was cleaning every part of it, a ritual the former soldier did every day.

'You know, I never clean mine,' Eithne said.  'And it works, every time.'

Thorld glanced out from under his filthy knit cap.  'Huh,' he said.

Llachlan stripped an alder twig and split it.  And then another, and another, until he had covered the frame in them like the lattice on a town window, except all about two fingers apart.  Then he started to weave greenery through, while the great dog chewed the ends of a few, as if savouring the taste of the alder.  By that time, Eithne was bored enough to join them, and she built a second frame, sloppier than his but stout enough, and found time to pet the hound.

'What if they has guards?' she asked.

Llachlan shrugged. 'We rob them, too.'

Thorld glanced at them.  He'd put the bone nut that held the crossbow's heavy cord back in its socket and tied it in with gut.  'Huh,' he said.

'Look,' Lachlan said, with forced patience.  'They can't see us, right?  And they won't know where my voice is coming from.  You shoot one of the mules.  That's all.  If it all goes to Venom, we leave through the trees and none's the wiser.'

'Because you last plan worked so well.'

Llachlan shrugged.  'We're still here,' he said.

'Living on wild honey an' squirrels, living rough,' Eithne said.  'Winter's gonn'a come, and then we'll be dead. The little villages won't keep us, if we cost too much.'

Llachlan looked away.

'We're not a 'rebellion' anymore,' Eithne said.  'We're just bandits.'

'Fang and venom,' Llachlan spat. 'Leave it alone, if you please.'

'If you please,' Eithne said in a sing-song, mock-aristocratic accent.

'Shall we go our separate ways?' Llachlan asked slowly.

Eithne shook her head, and her mane of dirty-blonde hair shook like a tree in a high wind.  'Nay, nay, my fine captain. Pay me no heed, an' aa' that.' She laughed.  'Can we at least rob some wine?'

'Uh-huh,' Thorld said.

Eithne made a tiny fire and boiled water in a copper pot, and they had a weak tisane of herbs flavoured with honey, and then she picked up the flat rock on which she'd made her fire and threw it into the brown water of the Enthel.  The coals hissed.

They stood in the shadows, drinking the sweet, bitter tea.

'It's true,' Llachlan said.  'Fang and Venom, Eithne.  How did it get this bad?'

'Your da' was a good hater,' Eithne said.

Thorld looked away. And drank his tea. 

They all washed their horn cups in the river while the huge dog drank noisily, and then they swept the little clearing where they'd worked, leaving as little sign of their visit as possible.  The King's Rangers were master woodsmen and women, and they were very difficult to fool.

'Looks good,' Eithne said.

Thorld knelt, and rose holding Eithne's sewing kit, a tattered roll of deerskin holding threat and precious needles.

'Damn me,' she said. 'Fang.'

'A good ranger could track you for days off that,' Llachlan said.

'We're better than any rangers,' Eithne said.  'Your da' made sure o' that.'

Thorld looked unbelieving.  'Huh,' he said.

'My thought exactly,' Lachlan said.  'Let's move.'

The three moved through the old-growth woods without following any of the trails they crossed, moving, in fact, across the grain of the landscape, climbing steep gulleys only to move along the crest and drop down into the next, splashing across streams of stepping rock to rock across the low ground. The Eastern border of Alladore had always been debated land even since before the Lorenthian Wars, and the north-east corner of Alladore was a web of rocky-ridges, dark spruce, deep valleys and hidden lakes.

Late in the afternoon, as the shadows crept across the infrequent glades and the air grew cooler, they climbed a long ridge.  Sometimes there were stone stairs cut in the living rock, and sometimes they had to scramble, handing bows up to the next, and once, Lachlan scrambled ahead while the other three waited, and threw down a rope.

They were more than halfway up the great hill.

Suddenly they heard the sudden call of a great raven.  All four of them froze, the dog lay flat, his creamy hide mixing well-enough with the late-summer beech and maple leaves on the forest floor.

'Cawww!' shouted the raven with shattering intensity. The great black bird whirled and flew off, headed east.  Then, a bowshot away, it turned and landed heavily in a tall spruce.  'Caww!' it insisted.

Lachlan stepped up on a rock, looking east.  'Something is wrong,' he said.

Eithne looked under her hand.  'Fangin' dark out east, mates,' she said.

'Smells bad,' Thorld said.

Eithne looked at him.

He shrugged.

'Fang,' she muttered.

Lachlan was looking at his father's war dog. The dog was pressing itself into the forest loam, but it's whole attention was east.  Its alert eyes were not on the raven, and but rather on the distant tree line and the strip of darkness. North and east, an even higher hill rose above the dark tree canopy, and atop it stood the jagged shape of a ruined tower.

'What's that?' Eithne asked.

'Dun Cruachan that was, when this was the kingdom of Rialta,' Llachlan said bitterly. 'The Sais call it Tor Hammel.'

'That's Dun Cruachan?' Eithne asked.  'We're farther East than I ever wanted to be.  We're in Lorenthia, near enough.'

'Look south,' Llachlan said.  'Here,' he said, and gave her his hand and hauled her up on the great granite boulder.  'There's the kerag of the next tower; Tor Varden, the Sais call her.  Dun Dervaig, That's the border.  We're well to the west, my friend.'

'And merchants come this way?' she asked.

'Some other bastard has attacked the mines in the Cuillins,' Llachlan said with his annoying, know-it-all smile.  'The ore convoys and the gold and silver come this way now.'

'You know this,' Eithne said.

She looked at him hard in the failing light, and she saw him squirm. 'Venom,' she said.  'Is this another of your fangin' plans?'

Llachlan shrugged, and adjusted the strap on his bedroll. 'Gold,' he said.

'Huh,' Thorld muttered.

Their camp was cold, three tall spruce trees at the top of a spire of rock with a clear view in every direction.  They were good at cold camps, but no one liked them, and they sat without a fire as the sun slipped away beneath the edge of the world, off to the west. Luadhas, the great war-hound, put his head on his master's chest and slobbered silently. Llachlan scratched the huge dog.

'Last of a noble breed,' Llachlan muttered.

'Is that you or yon dog?' Eithne asked.  'Venom, I'm that cold.'

'Cuddle the dog, then,' Llachlan said.  'He's warm.'

Eithne unrolled her blankets.  'Too much slobber,' she said.

Thorld put his back against a huge tree, pulled his knit cap around his eyes, and went to sleep.

They woke when the dog moved.  Despite her protests, Eithne had moved close to the dog and his master, and so had Thorld, so that the dog sitting up was a better alarm than a banging pot.

'Venom, it's cold,' Eithne spat.

The dog growled very, very softly.

'Bad smell,' Thorld said.

Llachlan put a hand out, found his bow and long knife in the darkness, and ran a hand along the wood for reassurance.

'What is it, boy?' he asked very softly, in the old tongue.

The dog leaned forward, to the east.

Down below them, there was the sound of a big animal moving in thick brush. The dog's tail thrashed and then was still.

The four of them lay awake, for as long as it took the Lady Star to rise in the night sky.  Off east there was an odd dark line, like a veil of rain.

The sounds of heavy movement in the dark vale beneath them were repeated several times.

'Bears?' Llachlan asked.

'Fangin' bears in the middle of the night?' Eithne asked with scorn.  'Moving together?  What, a clan of bears?  A Venomous pack o' bears?'

Llachlan said nothing.

Eventually, they slept.

#    #          #

Finavir liked being out in the mountains.   She liked the clear air and she had a passion for eagles, who were venerated by her people.

They made camp just below the tree line, as the crags of the Cuillins dwindled into the rolling hills and deep woods of the Lorinthian border.  They were still up high, with a long and dangerous descent down Dragonback pass facing them in the morning, but she enjoyed the calm, disciplined conversation of the two fighting Sisters and the miners, subdued in the presence of both religion and heavy armour. The younger of the miners, Cadwok, spoke to her every time he could make an excuse, which amused her; she was three years older and that seemed like a lifetime of experience.  But as she'd been taught at the Cascades, she was kind, if cautious, and the evening, one of her last before returning to the confines of life in Tallis, was delightful.

In the morning, the Sister-knights were subdued.  Off to the east, a long line of darkness flirted with the hilly horizon, baffling the eye. 

'Big storm,' Cadwok said, with the confidence of adolescence.

She sniffed the air and again misliked the tang she sensed there; a burning smell, yet with the faintest sweet scent of rotting meat.

Finavir was a healer.  That smell shouted 'infection' to her, the breath of corruption, the deadly poison arrows of the Dark Powers. She made the sign of the Eagle and looked at the sky, and there, out to the south, a speck rose in the sky and turned, lazy and untouchable, and she breathed and sighed with pleasure.  An Eagle-Sign. 

The older miners gathered by the Sister Knights. They were knights of the Order of the Lion, the kingdom's elite, dedicated warriors of the Goddess and her avatar Saint Doneera who lived in their own castles.

The elder sister-knight gave orders, and the mule packers put the loads on the working animals.  Finavir saddled her own ponies.  She had two, a pack animal and her beloved riding pony, Kwiv.

The stain in the Eastern sky grew a hair wider, and the sun rose through it, the ball of the sun a perfect sphere as it crossed the dark line.

'Bright sky in the morning, Rangers take warning,' Cadwok said. 'The sky looks like that because the sun is shining through the storm's edge.  You'll see.'

'Never seen a storm that smelled like yon,' said the oldest miner.  He was a big, tough man with scars all over his hands and arms.  He had a hood of good ring-maille and a broad belt, as well as an axe with a long blade and a point, the kind that the Glaich carried in the old songs. 'Best see to your animal, yonker.'

Cadwok rolled his eyes. But he did as he was told, and not long after the sun cleared the ban of distant cloud, the whole train was moving down Dragonback Pass.

'Thirty-one turns,' Cadwok said. He noted this as they passed the first switchback.  They looked down into the borderlands now, and Finavir could see at least a dozen of the switchbacks.  A long morning, and a hard one for her beasts.

At midmorning, they'd come down eighteen of the switchbacks, with Cadwok calling them out.  He was beginning to grate on her, but she remained cheerful, watching the land, looking for birds, enjoying the stands of birch and spruce that sprang up along the road.  The dense forest was still below them, but they were well beneath the tree line.

At lunch, as the wood was so plentiful, the miners started a small fire. There was a brief confrontation, as it was obvious the Sisters didn't want a fire and the men wanted tea.

'Damage is done,' Sister Fritha said with a dry smile.  'Visible for a hundred miles.'

'By Fang and Venom,' the older miner said.  'Who's to see us here? Nearest village is away down there, and Hawkshead is another three days.  I imagine there's folk in Lorenthia closer to us than any hamlet in Alladore.

Sister Fritha drew her long sword a few fingers-width from her red-leather scabbard and then pushed it back home.  'As you say,' she said.

The old miner nodded to Finavir.  'I'm Two-Cut Mark.'

'I'll just call you Mark,' she said.

'That's fine, demoiselle,' he said.

After sausage and tea, they rode down the last six switchbacks and then down a long, steep knife-edge ridge that fell steeply away on both sides so that it seemed as if they were riding above the trees.  The day grew colder, and clouds rolled in, first with more of the foul smell and then with rain. The rain lashed them off the last of the ridge and then they came down into a valley and crossed Mad Tom, the first of seven streams across their path.

Thunder crashed ot the east.

'Lorenthia is really getting it,' Mark said.  He had a nice hood, decorated with embroidered flowers, and he pulled it on over his maille.

They halted on the banks of the Mad Tom, but only for a moment.  Sister Fritha shook her head. 'Let's get over before she rises,' the knight said.

Finavir had time to be cold and wet and afraid, but Kwiv was sure footed and got her across despite the cold, dark water swirling around her feet. On the far side the two knights rallied them and gave them a marching order.  No one objected.  Sister Fritha led the way on her tall war-horse, followed by two armed miners on ponies and then all the ore-mules.  Finavir rode in the middle of the column with a miner on either side, and then there were more ore mules and at the very back, six miners, two of whom had bows, and the other knight.

They passed under the trees, and the rain was lighter, but it was very dark.  Stinging insects began to afflict them all, and the men beside her cursed. Finavir had gone two years without hearing the sort of darkness imagery that the two men used, and she winced.

Her pony shoed at something in the road and stumbled, and she realized how tired Kwiv must be and she considered summoning power to help the poor beast.  But the magisters of the Cascades had been very firm about when to heal and when not to heal, and she pursed her lips.

'Yer pony'll be fine, miss,' the miner on her left said.  'They're tough as fewkin...'

'Watch yer mouth, Lark.' The other man grinned and showed a mouth missing half its teeth.  'Don't mind us, ma'am.  We're not used to being daisies, is all.'

She laughed.  'I'm not such a priss,' she said.  'My da swears like a soldier.'

'Like a miner, y' mean,' the toothless one said.  'He's Lark an' I'm Noyshu.'

Lark slapped a tiny insect and winced. 'Most pleased,' he said in an affected accent.

'Do you know any songs, miss?' Noyshu asked.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

'I do,' she admitted.  'But this doesn't seem the place.'

'Well, we can hardly sing about how drunk we'll be tonight,' Lark said.

'Whoa,' Noyshu said.  He reined in.  'Sisters are stopping for somewhat.'

      #          #          #

'I still think the other spot was better,' Eithne said.

Llachlan shook his head.

'The trail was narrower and...'

'Too many rocks, and too damned many downed trees,' Llachlan said.  'If we have to run, we want to run. An ambush isn't just the doin'.  It's the getting away.'

'Your da' teach you that?' Eithne asked.

Llachlan took the screen of foliage he'd woven the day before.  He chosen his tree while debating with Eithne.  'Yes,' he said.

She nodded, as if that made it better. Then she crossed the road very carefully, and vanished into the brush on the other side.  A few minutes later he heard her climbing a tree.

The midges settled on them just before it started to rain; hundreds of tiny insects that came in clouds and left something like a rash on exposed skin.

Llachlan tried to be the Rialtan ranger that his father had wanted him to be, a warrior of the old folk before the Sais came with their roads and mines and their 'kingdom.' The old Rialtans, at least in his father's eyes, had never flinched, never shown pain, never admitted, probably, that midges were a nuisance. Of course, the Rialtans had lived so long ago that men used bronze weapons. Erenthal had come and crushed them eight centuries before.

Da had not forgotten.

He lasted perhaps half an hour.  Then he began to swat at the tiny things, and curse them.  He was angry; even afraid. Afraid that he was wrong about the miners, angry that Eithne would not accept his authority, annoyed by the midges, wet-through by the steady rain.

He hung his threadbare cloak over the tip of his war-bow to keep his string dry, and then he touched it up with wax, just to keep his mind off his worries. He dropped one of his two pieces of beeswax and it vanished under the tree.  Luadhas, the war-hound, got up and sniffed it and looked up, as if remonstrating, before turning a full circle and lying down again.

The midges were like a wind of fire.

Anger and annoyance and beeswax distracted him, and he was jolted to full awareness by a loud noise from the east; the crack of a big branch, and a guttural shout. Or perhaps a grunt.

Llachlan was sitting in the crook of an enormous oak, forty feet off the damp forest floor, with a rope running from the branch behind him to the ground. His foliage screen covered his position so that a man at the base of the tree would see nothing.  He had a clear view of the road.

He hadn't thought about having a clear view behind him.  And the noises were cursedly regular, like a column of men on foot picking their way along a badly marked trail.  They weren't woods people, though; they made a good deal of noise.

His heart rate began to slow.  They weren't coming to his tree; this wasn't a counter-ambush by some of the wily Royal Rangers that he dreaded and had never seen.  In fact, the silence of the woods seemed to magnify their noise, and when he finally saw a glint of metal and a branch waving, he realized that whoever they were, they were passing more than a hundred paces to the south.

The dank smell from yesterday was back.  Llachlan didn't like it, and he didn't like that he was up a tree, separated from his comrades.

Time passed.  Was it possible that the people who'd passed him were the miners?

 He knew perfectly well that a column of miners with ore-mules would make a racket and moved only on roads, but he hadn't set enough ambushes to be used to the waiting.

More time passed. 

And then, suddenly....

Off to the south, he heard crashing, like a deer clearing a bramble thicket.  And a snarl, like a big dog. He looked down, and at the foot of the tree, Luadhas was aquiver with excitement.

'Fang,' he said softly.

And to the north, he heard hooves. For a moment he doubted himself, and then he could hear them all; the jingle of harness, the clip-clop of a dozen heavy animals on the hard-packed dirt and flint of the old roadbed.

A big stag, a twelve pointer or more, burst from the ferns to the south, leapt a fallen tree, raced onto the road and was gone in a flash of wet fur.

Luadhas, true to his training, remained silent, but the hound was straining forward as if he was on a leash.

To the north, a tall knight on an enormous horse appeared on the road.

'Oh, Fang,' Llachlan cursed. 'Ash and Thorn!'

The Sais knights were their best fighters, and the men and women of the fighting orders were the hardest, the toughest, and the best armoured.

Llachlan glanced back south at the sound of moving brush...

A small dark figure ran low to the ground, almost like a wolf.  And then another, and another... a skirmish line of a dozen.

Bows came up.  Half a dozen arrows flew even as Llachlan tried to sort out what he was seeing. 

He turned his head and the knight was down, her horse hit, a shaft lodged in her chest.

He looked back.  The wolf-men were loping forward, fitting arrows to their bows.  More arrows flew, and a man began to scream.

Suddenly the woods were full of the dark shapes, and Llachlan considered for a moment just staying in his tree. 

But Luadhas was down on the ground, and the great hound was all he had left of his past. He had a shaft on his bow.

He used his head, as his Da' would have wanted.  He looked down the line of the dark men, and picked the closest one, the one at the end of the line.  He waited for the bent thing to pause to knock and arrow, and then he shot, scarcely moving from his cover.

His shaft went in about two fingers lower than Llachlan had wanted, but otherwise it was well placed, and the thing dropped like a heart-shot deer.

And none of its mates saw it fall.

Llachlan rolled the next shaft off his fingers and nocked it.

      #          #          #

Head down and cloak up against the rain and the midges, Finavir missed the arrow that killed her pony.  The first she knew, the brave beast was sinking to its knees.  She dismounted, assuming Kwiv was tired, or exhausted, and she saw the black-fletched arrow in her neck, and the crimson blood.

For ten long heartbeats, nothing made sense.

Lark looked down at her, and then Lark was clutching at something that struck him with a sound like an axe going into rotten wood, and he was gone. The ore mules were panicking, and one ran right over her, knocking her flat on the rocky trail.

Flat on her back, she understood that they were under attack. From the ground by her dying pony, she could see Lark bleeding out, his fingers clutching feebly at the arrow in his throat, and she could see the legs of the mules scattering into the woods.

And she could see other legs; black tufts of hair, three toes.

Goddess Goddess Goddess goddessgoddessgoddessgoddess

She wasn't in control of her mind.  It wasn't just fear, or horror.  It was the legs, and what they supported.  It shouldn't be possible.  It couldn't be happening.

Next to her, for all her carefully learned healing skills, Lark died.

One of the dark, snouted creatures leaned down and opened its hideous mouth to take a massive bite of the rump of her pony.

Her terror peaked.

So did something else.  'NOOOOO!' she screamed and rolled forward over her feet as she'd been taught. She snatched her dirk, the leaf-bladed long knife of her people, from her belt, and slashed at the thing's snout as it's fangs ripped at the soft skin of her beloved Kwiv.

The blade severed the thing's jaw.

She was as shocked as her victim, who tried to scream.  Both taloned hands went to staunch the explosion of blood.

Face wounds bleed a great deal.  Even on Gnolls.

Gnolls.

Those are gnolls.

She thrust in under its hands, almost surgically precise, and it fell back.

'Ware!' Sister Fritha shouted, her voice high and clear as a trumpet.

She turned, and a gnoll's talons caught in her cloak and dragged at her.

      #          #          #

Llachlan loosed, and loosed again; five carefully sharpened arrowheads, each worth a day's pay for a trained craftsman. He didn't count the cost; he didn't consider how unlikely it was that he was ever going to get the gold.

The things moving in the woods were gnolls.  He'd never seen one, but Da was, among other things, a lore master.  He had to be, of course, just to keep the dream alive.

Gnolls.

They still didn't know he was there.  He was forty feet above them, in a purpose made cover, and he killed them from back to front, working his way up their line as it passed almost directly under his feet. His fifth arrow missed entirely; a poor release; and the shaft went over his target's head and the thing never noticed.

Llachlan never kept more than five shafts in his bow hand; the war bow shafts were just too thick.

He pulled a shaft from his belt and shot almost straight down, just as the lead gnoll spotted Luadhas. The monster never saw the arrow, and fell like a puppet with its strings cut. 

Luadhas could stand no more.  With more of a cough than a bark, the great hound leapt straight into the next foul creature as it turned, alarmed by the sound of its mate collapsing.  Its bark of alarm was cut off as the dogs full weight drove it to the ground, and before it could scream, Luadhas had ripped its throat out.

There were screams and battle sounds from the north, out of sight.

Llachlan took one last look, just to be sure, but there wasn't another living gnoll under the tree.  Luadhas agreed, standing alert by its fallen foe.

Llachlan swung out on the rope and crossed his legs over it and began to slide to the ground. He was half-way to the forest floor and beginning to feel heroic when the gnoll rose from behind the fallen log, aimed carefully...

Llachlan felt like a fool.  He had as long as it takes to draw a breath to regret all his foolish choices, and then Eithne's crossbow bolt blew the gnoll over its log and stretched it on the leaves.

She waived, the sarcasm of her gesture clear even in combat.

He managed to land on the ground without falling on his face, but the feeling that he was a fool stuck with him and made him cautious as he darted into the cover of the great oak.  His knees were weak.

From the ground, he could see the fight on the road that had been hidden by the foliage of the forest canopy above.  The gnolls had triggered the ambush about sixty paces earlier than he would have, and they were paying for it; from his vantage, it appeared that the convoys rearguard was fighting back strongly, and they were mounted.  One was a knight with a war horse. The knight was alone, surrounded by gnolls, but the war horse seemed to see this as more of a challenge than a peril, and the gnolls were having the worst of it, cringing back from the fight. A thrown spear made no impression on the knight, and her mace took another gnoll as neatly as a farmer would trim a hedge.

Llachlan saw the mules.  Most of them had gone the other way, across the road and down the long slope on that side, but a few were passing him, and one had already stopped and was cropping ferns, apparently unconcerned by the carnage on the road.

Llachlan was tempted.

He put a shaft to his string and moved forward.  It was twenty paces to the next big tree, and he used the standing mule for cover and then sprinted the rest of the way, and drew a black arrow in return.  It flacked into the big maple as he made it into cover.

He went to the other side of the tree, raised his bow....

There.

Missed.

'Venom,' he said, and got another arrow off his belt.  He had three more, head up and fletching down, in his belt. He'd never expected to loose this many shafts.  He'd never expected to be in a war.  With gnolls.

He leaned out.  The gnoll loosed. 

He ducked back.

The black shaft stuck in the ground, and he stepped out.

A second gnoll appeared on the road, bow up.

He turned and loosed.

He didn't miss this time.

The first archer drew.

Llachlan had nowhere to go.  He was a pace out from his tree and he wasn't making it back.

He screamed his father's war cry.  He'd never really screamed it before; he'd never really fought anything.

It burst from him.

The gnoll missed. At fifteen paces, its arrow vanished into the tree canopy.

Score one for Da.

He was running at the gnoll with no weapon but his bow.  He'd never fought anything hand to hand, either; not rangers, not men, and certainly not semi-mythological creatures from the dark past.  He had his father's sword; despite everything his father said, Llachlan knew it was neither old nor particularly good.

He drew it, cross his body, between the fourth and fifth strides of his charge.

The gnoll had a bow staff and a wicked, rusty knife as long as a man's arm. 

Llachlan closed, the power of the war cry still on his, and slammed the sword down on the gnoll with all the strength of his arm.

The gnoll met his descending blade with his rusty knife, blade to blade.

The sword snapped.

The rusty knife continued its rising cut, contacting nothing.

Llachlan grabbed the hideous thing's neck with his hand and pounded his forehead into the gnoll's fanged snout, crushing its mouth. It twisted under him, and he punched it, punched it again, his left hand already holding some part of it.

His knee slammed into its abdomen.

It fell back and he hit it with his bow staff, left-handed, and then dashed the hilt of his broken sword in its eyes, blinding it.

It fell, and he kicked it savagely, terror powering his kicks, and then it was gone.

He had two arrows.  The third had vanished in the fight and he put one on his bow and turned, watching the road.

The big knight was gone. Most of the mules had scattered, and the gnolls were gathering around...

He shot one.

Eithne shot another.  Her tree had to have a better field of fire than his had had, as her second bolt killed a gnoll standing on the road.

All of their heads came up, like wolves surprised on a kill.

That was it exactly; they had been about to feed.  They thought they were alone, and victorious.

Llachlan took his little axe off the strap of his side-bag and slipped the handle in his belt.

'What the Fang are they?' Eithne called out.

'Just kill 'em,' Llachlan said.

At the back of the crowd on the road, a gnoll sat, suddenly, its hands cradling the crossbow bolt in its gut.

He picked one of the black arrows off the creature he'd broken in his terror-filled rage.  It was short, and ill made, and he loosed it anyway, keeping his last good arrow in reserve.  He missed, but the gnolls on the road scattered, balked of their feeding. 

Eithne shot another.

So did Thorld.  The other man had apparently been waiting to be told to shoot.

Llachlan would have laughed, if the world hadn't been so full of gnolls.

Gnolls.

He took all of the dying creature’s arrows, and cut its throat, at least in part because he couldn't just kneel next to it and listen to it die.

A gnoll stood, bow in hand.  It was aiming at either Eithne or Thorld.

Llachlan had all the time in the world, and the range was short.  Even the poorly made arrow was sufficient.

He didn't see the monster moving to his right.

Luadhas did.

And then there were no more of them.  Even then, even when Luadhas began to lick the blood of one of his kills with increasing relish, Llachlan was careful.

'I'm coming down,' Eithne called.

'Stay up there and watch my back,' Llachlan called. 'Here, boy.'

Luadhas was not particularly excited to be taken away from an endless and well-earned feast. But he was a good boy and he came.

'With me, boy.  Are there more? Who's a good boy?'  Llachlan moved toward the road, scratching his war hound between the ears with his arrow before he nocked it.

Someone on the road screamed.

Llachlan burst from his cover and ran onto the road. 

One of the knights had fallen early in the fight, her horse killed and atop her.  A gnoll had moved along the ground, crawling and now it was trying to finish her.  She only had one working arm and it was pushing its snout into her face...

Llachlan bragged about many skills he didn't really have.  But he was an archer.  He took a breath and loosed, and his arrow pinned the gnoll to the dead warhorse.

'There's more!' Eithne called.  'On the road!'

Llachlan moved forward to where the knight lay.  She'd never even laced on her helm.

He took his last good arrow from his belt.

She didn't look like the hated Sais. Just a tough woman in armour with heavy, dark eyebrows and a rondel dagger in her fist.

Brave.

For a moment, just a moment, he tasted the idea of putting an arrow in her.  Revenge.

His Da.

He knelt by her.  Met her eye.

'Ranger?' she asked.

Something was happening a dozen paces away.  There was blood and there were carcasses everywhere; carrion crows were gathering and mountain ravens.  He could see a dozen dead gnolls and at least three dead men. His hands were shaking, and he was having trouble breathing.

'Are you a ranger?' she asked.  'Who...are...you?'

A bolt flashed over his head and sparked off a chunk of flint in the road.  The bolt skipped away into the thick brush.

Llachlan noticed that the knight had a riding sword on her war saddle. 

'I need your sword,' he said in their language. He drew it, and an arrow skipped by.

He put it in his belt.

'There's dozen miners and a girl,' the knight said.  'I beg you, sir.'

He nodded.  He was...

Happy.  'I'll get them,' he said, in Sais.

Another bolt snapped by. Eithne was covering him, probably.

He rose.

A gnoll moved, perhaps five paces away. 

He shot it, and went forward, dropping his bow.

Luadhas barked, and he turned in time to get the borrowed sword up, so that the cut only got a piece of him, a cut that went over his guard and cut his right shoulder. He grunted, or screamed; he was never sure which.  Luadhas bore the thing to the ground and he had the presence of mind to stab it while it was down, and then he cut at the second one, but it just turned and ran, and his cut was so weak that all it did was raise dust off the thing's sparse coat.

'Come on boy,' he called.

His dog looked at him with big, reproachful eyes.

'Gnolls are delicious?' he managed.  'That's disgusting.'

He was bleeding. He'd never been cut so badly before and he didn't want to look at it.

He wanted to be a hero, though.  More than anything he'd ever wanted.

'Llachlan!' Eithne called.  'That looks bad.  Wait, I'm coming down.  Thorld, cover us.'

Llachlan kept going.  There were dead horses, mules, a dead pony, three dead gnolls. A man with an arrow in his neck.

A young miner with a red axe.  Sitting.  His left leg was all blood.

A girl crouched by the dead pony with a long dirk in her hand.  It dripped blood too.  Black blood. 

The young man turned and looked at Llachlan.  'Oh, Goddess,' the boy said.  'We're saved.'

Llachlan nodded.  'Yes,' he said, and fainted.

      #          #          #

'And if she weren't a healer, you'd be dead,' Eithne said.

Eithne was trying to tell him all of the things he'd done wrong. He was aware that he'd done almost everything wrong, but he was also aware, under the fear and the fatigue and the blood and the dirt, that they'd need food and rest and that a substantial number of their attackers had run off to the east.

The healer was a woman.  She was older than he, though not so much, and she was dressed very well in a long gray gown of plain wool and a white wimple that seemed untouched by the day, although there was a single dark spot of gnoll blood on it.

She's the one we'd have robbed,' he thought.

'Finavir,' she said.

'That's a Rialtan name,' he said.

'You make that sound like an accusation,' she said.  'My people are quite proud of our heritage.'

He looked at the ground.  'I'm sorry,' he said.  'My name is Llachlan.'

'Ahh!' she said.  'You are Rialtan.  I thought I heard you... call out.  In our tongue.'

'You speak it?'

'Never,' she said.

One of those.

He nodded brusquely.  'We need to move.'

'The knight is badly hurt.' Finavir sounded confident, assured.  In command.

'She'll be worse hurt if a dozen of those things catch us in the open.' Llachlan looked away.  'We need to move.'

'Where are the others?' the young miner asked.  He was lying on a makeshift bed.  His leg wounds were bad, but Finavir had spent her power on Llachlan and the knight, Fritha.

'Dead,' Llachlan said.

'One of 'em wasn't dead,' Eithne said.

Thorld coughed.

'Th'other knight.  They took her. Alive.'

'Eagle!' Finavir said.

Fritha, despite wounds and heavy double-maille, tried to sit up. 'What? Why wasn't I told this?'

'You ain't in charge, lady,' Eithne said.  'And I wasn'a certain-sure until I saw the marks around the horse.'

'We must follow her,' Lady Fritha said. 'And you must find her sword.'

'Yer fanged in the head,' Eithne said.

'Sir Ranger, I charge you on your oath to the king!' Lady Fritha's brown eyes locked with Llachlan's.

'Ye are truly fanged in the head if you think yon' s one o yer precious rangers.' Eithne spanned her crossbow with a vicious pull that made her arm-muscles stand out like cords.

'What?' Fritha asked.

Llachlan felt all the happiness of being a hero drain out of him. But the fight had simplified something. 

He thought of lying.

But he didn't.

'We're bandits,' he said.

'Oh, Gods,' Lady Fritha said. She took a deep breath; a breath that pained her, Llachlan could see. 'Alright, Outlaw.  Whoever you are.  As a King's officer, I offer you a full pardon for any crime you've committed.  Save my Sister. And find her sword.  It will be by her horse.' Her spoke in tones of command; she expected to be obeyed.

'Listen to yon,' Eithne said.  'We'll all be hanging from gibbets before the moon is full.'

Thorld raised his head and looked interested.

'We won't live long enough to be hanged,' Llachlan said. 'Three moving hurt? A dozen gnolls?'

'We kilt a dozen, easy,' Thorld said.

'Whose side are ye on, ye daft man?' Eithne asked.

Thorld seldom spoke.  It was easy to mistake him for slow, but he wasn't.  He was just shy. He shrugged.  'I'd like a pardon,' he said.

'I'd like a magic wand an' a golden cup,' Eithne said.

'Good,' Llachlan said.  'My lady, you're on.  Full pardon for all of us. Your word of honour.'

Lady Fritha took another deep breath.  'Give me my sword and I'll swear on the Eagle's Wings.'

She swore. 'Her sword is like mine, but--older.  Please look for it.'

Lachlan looked while Eithne pillaged the dead and the healer gathered her supplies from her dead pony.  He did a little searching of his own and tried not to look at her while she wept.

'No sword,' he said to the knight.

'The gnolls have it.  By the Goddess and Saint Doneera! My order will pay for its return.'

Lachlan bowed.  'We'll see. Can you walk?'

The sun was barely lower in the sky when they set out.

Eithne spat.  'Yer a fangin' idiot,' she said to Lachlan when they'd rounded up two mules and a miner's pony and started to move east..

Llachlan nodded.  'Hide this,' he said.

Eithne dropped the bag, it was so heavy.  'What the fang?'

She looked inside.  'It's all gold!' she breathed.

Llachlan smiled. 'All gold,' he said.  'See that mule over there?'

'The dead one?'

'Aye.  Lead, quicksilver, and gold.'

'Eagle's beak and talons,' Eithne breathed.  'Yer smarter than I thought.'

'You say the sweetest things,' Llachlan said.  'Alright, everyone.Look sharp.We need to move.'

Finavir looked at the avowed bandit and his band, and wondered if 'we' included her.  But she'd healed the man, and healing created a bond.

Am I a prisoner or an asset? She wondered.  But she gathered her things, ready to leave.