Owlflight

That was all he ever said again; filled with fury at his words, Snowfire acted on impulse as he rarely did, rose out of the shadow of the trunk he hid behind, and fired. The arrow, fletched with owl feathers, flew as silently as Hweel, and as surely, burying itself in the soft tissue of the man’s throat.

Even as it was still in the air, Snowfire had pulled a second arrow from the quiver at his belt and was sighting it. The man made a gurgling sound, and reached frantically up, pawing at his throat with his free hand, as the second arrow sped to join the first.

A second arrow appeared beside the first one, and the enemy fighter lost all interest in Darian, letting him go to claw at his throat with both hands. Fortunately, when his captor dropped Darian and began staggering back a little, making hideous noises, Darian was still limp.

The boy made a “soft” fall on the hard slabs of rock and somehow his body acted for him again, and he quickly rolled out of the way of the toppling soldier.

Get up! he screamed at himself. Get up and run, while you have the chance!

As Darian scrambled to his feet, scraping himself on the rough surface of the rocks, he instinctively turned to look in the direction from which the arrows had come.

For just an instant, and no longer, he saw a strange-looking man in the shadows of the forest on the other side of the rock pile. He was dressed in mottled green-and-brown clothing, and although he didn’t look old, and certainly didn’t act old, his long, oddly-cut hair that was braided in a few places and dyed, had stark silver-white roots.

He had an arrow nocked at full draw on his bow, and he loosed it, just as Darian heard something whistle past his ear from somewhere behind him. He ducked to the side, instinctively. One of his tormentors had returned an attack to the bowman from the woods.

The stranger uttered a brief exclamation as a fighting knife buried itself to the hilt in his arm. He dropped out of sight; vanishing, so far as Darian saw, and behind him Darian heard a harsh cry, a startled snort, and the sound of something heavy falling.

He turned again to see that the second enemy fighter, who had still been mounted, had fallen off his horse, an arrow through one eye. The soldier lay on the ground twitching his hands. His head jerked once as he died, then the body was still. The horse shied, but moved only far enough to join the other dead fighter’s horse. Both of them paused a moment, then started cropping the thin grass, as if there was nothing whatsoever the matter.

What are you doing, standing in the open? Hide, stupid, hide!

Darian scuttled into hiding, behind a boulder, in shock at the sudden reversal of his fortunes. Where had this strange man come from? Who was he? And why was he helping him? This was all happening much too fast -

Never mind that, scolded that sensible voice in the back of his head. There were three, there’s still at least one alive. Where there were three of those brutes, there are probably more. Do something!

Prodded into action, Darian picked up his dropped bow - by some miracle it hadn’t been broken in all of the tumbling and rolling - and quickly strung it. Opening his quiver and getting an arrow of his own nocked, he peered cautiously around the boulder.

From where he was, he could see two more of the enemy coming cautiously on foot along the side of the rockpile. Where had the second one come from? He took a quick glance around the other side of his boulder toward the last place where he had seen the stranger, and making a quick estimate, figured that his rescuer could not see these two new foes from where he was now. Injured as he was, he might not be able to defend himself.

So I guess it’s up to me.

Suddenly, he felt strangely calm. His stomach stopped flipping about, his hands stopped trembling, and everything took on a crystalline clarity around him, the colors deep, the edges sharp and defined.

Taking a deep breath, he stepped around the side of the boulder, and pulled his arrow back as far as he could, sighting carefully on the head of the man in the lead.

Snowfire cursed aloud with sudden pain as a flat knife, thrown by one of the two still mounted, buried itself in his biceps. He dropped, glad he had already loosed the arrow.

The blade had penetrated deep, but by luck had gone in more or less with the grain of the muscle. As he pulled the knife from his arm and discarded it, he was rewarded by the sound of the man’s body hitting the ground.

So much for being able to pull my bow for a while. I’d better get the boy and myself out of here before it comes to hand-to-hand. My climbing stick is still with Sifyra, and a match between a war ax or sword and a hunting knife is usually a short one.

He pulled a pressure bandage from the emergency pouch at his belt and wrapped it tightly around his arm,