They know how to weave patterns that confuse the eye, and as you see, they are swift, agile. Alone, we do not consider them a great problem, but together in a pack, they are formidable.'
'Great,' Skif replied, after a moment. 'So what do we do about them?'
'We kill them,' the Hawkbrother said calmly, and loosed his arrow.
This time, although the beast he aimed at evaded the shaft, the one that was behind it could not get out of the way, and took the arrow straight in the chest.
In any other beast, the wound might not have been fatal. There was no blood, and Skif honestly thought the creature was going to shake the strike off, even though it had looked like a heart-shot. But it stood stock still for a moment, jaws opening soundlessly, then toppled over onto its side. The light died from its eyes, and a moment later, the light faded from its hide, until it was a dull gray shape lying on the darker ground, revealed only by the moonlight.
The entire pack surged to one side, leaving the dead one alone. For a moment they froze in place, unmoving and silent.
He thought for a moment that they might prove Wintermoon wrong, that after the death of one of the pack, they might give up and leave their quarry to go its own way.
But then they all turned burning, hate-filled eyes on Wintermoon then pointed their noses to the sky and howled again.
The sound was much worse at close range; it not only raised the hair on Skif's head, it rang in his ears in a way that made him dizzy and nauseous. The pack of wyrsa wavered before his blurring eyes, and he loosed the arrow he had nocked without even aiming it.
Luck, however, was with him. Two of the wyrsa dodged aside, accidentally shoving a third into the arrow's path. A second wyrsa dropped to the ground, fading as the first had done the moment it dropped. The pack stopped their howling, and tumbled, hastily, out of the way.
They stood near the bushes at the head of the path, this time staring at the cornered quarry. Skif got the feeling that there were cunning minds behind those glowing eyes; minds that were even now assessing all five of them. Two down-how many to go? I can't make out how many there are of them, they keep blurring together.
They advanced again, as a body, but with a little more separation between each of the beasts, so that they could dodge out of the way without sending another into the line of fire. He and Wintermoon loosed another five or six arrows each without hitting any more of the beasts.
At least they had stopped their howling; Skif didn't think he could have handled much more of that. After the last fruitless volley, Wintermoon nocked his arrow but did not bother to draw it. Instead, he looked out of the corner of his eye at Skif and said, 'And have you any notions?' Skif had been trying to think of something, anything that could be done about the beasts, shook his head, wordlessly. Wintermoon grimaced.
One of the wyrsa separated from the pack, when they held their fire, and slunk, belly-down to the ground, to stand just in front of the crevice, as if testing them. When they didn't fire on it, another joined it, and another, until all of them had gathered directly before the entrance to their shelter. While they were moving one at a time, Skif got a chance to count them. There were eight in all, not counting the two dead.
He'd gone against worse numeric odds, but never against anything with reactions like these creatures had. We're rather outnumbered.
If this were a tale,' he offered, 'our rescue would come out of the woods at this point. A herd of dyheli, perhaps, something that would come charging up and flatten everything in sight. Or a mage that could kill them with lightning.'
'Would that it were a tale,' Wintermoon muttered, his eyes following every move the beasts made. 'The things move too swiftly to shoot.' If we had a way to distract them, it might be possible to get at some of them before they figured out what we were doing. 'Are K'Tathi and Corwith fast enough to avoid those things?' he asked. 'Could they-oh, fly down and make strikes at their heads and eyes, keep them busy while we tried shooting?' Wintermoon shook his head, emphatically. u'No,' he replied. 'Owls are agile flyers, and silent, not swift. If they were to dive at the wyrsa, the beasts would have them. I will not ask them to do that.' Well, so much for that idea. Unless-well, they don't have to dive at them to distract them.
'All right, what about this,' he said, thinking aloud. 'Can they fly just out of reach, and hiss at them, get them worked up into forgetting about keeping an eye on us, maybe tease them into trying to make strikes even though they're out of reach?'
'Not for long.' Wintermoon frowned. 'Not long enough for us to pick off all the wyrsa with arrows.'
'But what if we used the last of the arrows, waited, got the owls to tease them again, then charged them, all of us? Cymry and the dyheli, too?' Skif had a good idea that the hooved ones might account for as many as one wyrsa apiece-that would leave less for him and Wintermoon.' We can always retreat back here if we have to.'
'It is worth a try.' Wintermoon left his arrow nocked, but did not sight it. Even as Skif did the same, two ghostly white shapes swooped down out of the dark treetops, hissing and hooting. The wyrsa looked up, startled, as the owls made another swoop. At the third pass, even though they were plainly out of reach, the nearness of the owls, and the taunting sounds they made, broke through their control. They turned their attention from their trapped quarry and began lunging upward at the birds.
Wintermoon gave the wyrsa a few moments more to fix their attention on the 'new' targets-then pulled up his bow and fired his last three arrows, just as fast as he could get them off. Skif did the same.
The wyrsa quickly turned their attention away from the owls, but it was already too late. Each arrow had found a mark; two more wyrsa lay dead, and four were wounded. It seemed that only a heart-shot was effective in killing them; the wounded wyrsa limped, but did not bleed and in fact took a moment to gnaw off the shafts of the arrows piercing w-useless bow and drew his sword, he though reand.owasthheeypuwteruepehviesnnomore angry; Skif felt the heat of their gaze as he read satisfaction in those eyes as well.
Wintermoon drew his sword as well, and K'Tathi and Corwith swooped down again, harrying the wyrsa from above, carefully gauging their flights to keep them just barely out of range. Skif would have thought that the ploy wouldn't work the second time, but either the wyrsa had not made the connection between the Owls and the attack, or now that the last of the arrows was spent, they had reasoned as a human would that the quarry would not be able to use the owls as the cover for an attack.
They grew frustrated by their inability to do anything about the flying pests, and, sooner than Skifwould have
