mistake.
'Of course we'll leave, my lord,' he said with hollow good humor.
'And we're very sorry to have trespassed.' Darkwind said nothing. Speaker waited for a response, got none, and shrugged.
'Very well, then, gentlemen,' he said and gestured back down the path. 'Shall we?' They turned, as if to go- I've seen this before. They somehow know-or guess only one of me right now. They think they're going to catch me off-guard. Idiots. He alerted Vree with a touch, dropped, and rolled into the brush at the side of the trail They were making so much noise they didn't even hear him move.
They turned back, weapons in hand, and were very surprised to see that he wasn't where they expected him to be. Before they managed to locate him, he had popped up out of the brush, and the one Darkwind had mentally tagged as 'Speaker' was down with an arrow in his throat.
He dropped back into the cover of the bushes as Vree dove at the unprotected head of one of the men in the rear of the party, the one who had been making all the objections. The man shrieked with feminine shrillness and clapped both hands to his scalp as Vree rose into the branches with bloody talons.
That's one down and one hit. I think that takes out anyone who might be a mage.
It didn't look as if the rest of this was going to be that easy, though.
Leather Armor was barking orders in a language Darkwind didn't recognize, but as the rest of the men of the party took to cover and began flanking him, Darkwind had a fairly good idea what those orders were.
Do they want a live Hawkbrother, or a dead border guard? The question had very real significance. If the former, he could probably take them all himself; they would have to be careful, and he wouldn't. But if the latter, he was going to have his hands full.
His answer came a few moments later, as an arrow whistled past his ear, and no rebuke from Leather Armor followed. A dead border guard, then. Damn. My luck is simply not in today...There were at least two men with bows that he recalled, and he was not about to send Vree flying into an arrow. He told the forestgyre to stay up in the branches and worked himself farther back into the bushes.
That proved to be a definite tactical error. Within moments, he discovered that he had been flanked. just my luck to get a party with an experienced commander. Now he had the choice of trying to get to thicker cover, or taking on one of the men nearest him.
Thicker cover won't stop an arrow. That decided him. He put aside his bow, and slid his climbing-staff out of the sheath at his back.
He rose from cover with a bloodcurdling shriek not unlike Vree's, the staff a blur of motion in his hands. The man nearest him fell back with an oath, but it was too late. He had misjudged the length of the staff, and the wicked climbing-hook at the end of it, designed to catch and hold on tree bark, caved in half his face and lodged in his eye socket.
Darkwind jerked the hook free and dropped, as another man belatedly aimed an arrow at him. It went wild, and Darkwind took to cover again.
That leaves four.
'Brothers come,' Vree said. And, hopefully, added, 'Vree hunt...'No, dammit, featherhead, stay up there!'
'P: Vree replied.
Darkwind swore at himself Got too complicated for him again. He thought emphatically, 'Arrows!'
' replied Vree, just as rustling in the dry leaves told Darkwind that he was being stalked.
He Mindtouched cautiously, ready to pull back in an instant if it proved that the stalker had any mind- powers.
Ordinary, ungifted-but this one was Leather Armor. Darkwind knew he wasn't going to take him by surprise with a yell and a hooked stick.
He worked his way backward, wondering where the other two guards that Vree had called for him were. His Mindspeech wasn't strong enough to hear them unless they were very near, but Vree and the other bond birds of the scouts patrolling nearby were in constant contact. Vree was trained to serve as a relay point-if there was anything to relay.
The rustling stopped, and Darkwind froze so that he did not give himself away. They remained where they were, he and Leather Armor, for what seemed like hours. Finally, just when Darkwind's leg had started to cramp, Leather Armor moved again.
