Two armed bandits raced me to the camp entrance. The rest either followed them or were grabbing weapons. One man in the front was bare-chested. One in the rear fumbled with his boots and then threw them aside.
I reached the bridge just ahead of the shirtless bandit, who swung his club at my head while I skidded and ducked. Then I cut him deep across the thigh, and he shouted some fine profanity as he staggered aside and fell into the water. His friend roared at me, charged, and impaled his throat on my sword.
The next bandit was twenty feet away.
Halla yelled from behind me, “Move up! There’s no room!”
I laughed and shifted half a step, right in her way, and I lunged to stab the bare-chested man in the back as he knelt, panting in the water. I shifted over to face the next man, who looked older than me. Back in the camp behind him, a squatty bandit snatched up a bow, nocked an arrow in a flash, and fired. Then he stared straight at me and nocked another arrow.
The gray-haired bandit eased toward me, on guard with his sword. The bowman aimed at me, and I knelt low. The arrow whipped over me as the old fellow thrust at my face. I reached up for an awkward block, and he came back trying to cut my arm off at the shoulder. I almost fell to one knee as I dodged. I scrambled forward, grabbing the knife off my belt to stab him from inches away, but the knife slipped out of my numb fingers and sailed off into the water. Another arrow flew past, inches from my leg. I hadn’t even seen it fired. My mature opponent punched me in the stomach with his free hand.
This was what I had schemed to get—all of them to myself.
I laughed and slipped a leg behind the old bandit’s, threw him to the ground, and hopped past him. The man behind him wasn’t prepared for me just yet, probably hoping his friends would finish me. I stabbed him in the heart before he moved. The gray-haired man I’d thrown down squirmed on the ground just behind me, so I stomped his neck and heard bones crack.
The squatty archer now lay on the dirt with an arrow in his chest. A man and a woman still faced me, the man tall and trembling, and the woman powerful with long, auburn braids. The tall one cut at my head as if he didn’t really mean it. I slashed open his throat. The woman threw down her sword and backed up, her hands raised. I followed to kill her, but my collar yanked me back.
Halla dropped my collar, stepped around me, and knocked the woman down with the butt of her spear. “We might want to ask her questions.” Halla pointed at the dying older man and the shirtless bandit, now facedown in the water. “You did not need to kill those two.”
I grinned. “Oh, I needed to kill them, darling. I’d have killed this one here too, if you hadn’t interfered while I was contemplating it. Hell, I may kill her yet.”
I searched for Peck and Pil up the main path. Pil was kneeling over the hexer, who had an arrow in his forehead.
A great moan came from behind me. I swear it was as loud as a moose. I turned to see Whistler squirming in the mud with an arrow sticking out of both sides of his leg.
SIXTEEN
Pil ran, skidding all the way, to the spot where Whistler writhed on the muddy ground. When I got there, she was kneeling beside Whistler, so I leaned over her shoulder. She was feeling the flesh around his wound with such a determined touch that it probably hurt like hell. Halla was guarding and probably terrorizing the prisoners.
“I need help pulling it out,” Whistler said through gritted teeth. Sweat covered his colorless face. “It needs to come out right away. I imagine it’s covered in crud.” He shot a glance at Pil. “Bib, will you do it?”
I knelt over his leg. “You trust me with that task? I might wallow it around in there to make you cry.” I winked at him.
“I’ve watched you. You don’t like it when people are in pain. You like it when they’re dead, but not in pain.”
It was a fair observation, so I laughed at him.
Quick steps came from behind me, and Bea arrived while I was still laughing. She dropped to her knees beside Whistler. “What did you do?” She reached into the mud for his hand and grabbed his filthy fingers.
Pil was holding Whistler’s other hand. “Bib, I’ll do it if you won’t, but I know you can do it better. I don’t want to do it badly and kill him.” She glanced up, her jaw set. “I don’t know, I think my heart would break.”
It was a bald exaggeration to say Pil’s heart would break, or so I assessed, but Bea looked as if hers might. Her body had sagged over Whistler’s hand, and her face resembled a wet rag.
I sighed. “Fine. Bea, go beg some of that silk from Halla. Pil, you scoot back. Whistler, do you need a few seconds to prepare for this ordeal?”
Whistler shook his head, his face turning gray.
I broke off one end of the arrow and pulled the other side through, fast enough not to count as torture, but not so fast as to tear up his leg. Whistler shouted when I broke the arrow and called me a son of a bitch when I pulled the rest out. Then he lay on the ground, panting.
“Keep the wound
