F. Wilson - The Tery

If this didn’t work, he’d have to speak.

They were walking their mounts single-file through the dense undergrowth and grumbling about the heat and difficult traveling. As the last man passed below, the tery hurled the rock at his head and leaped from the tree. With a dull clank, the missile caromed off the trooper's steel cap and drove it into his scalp. His horse reared as the trooper sagged to the ground. The tery grabbed the helmet off the lolling head and dove into the brush.

Hopefully, the loss of a man — whether temporarily or permanently, the tery could not be sure — would throw the scouts into sufficient confusion to allow the psi-folk time enough to prepare a move against them.

Gripping the rim of the helmet between his teeth and running as fast as his four aching limbs would carry him, the tery burst upon the campsite and went directly to Komak. The sight of a steel cap with fresh blood around the rim was all the big man needed to set him into action. He shot to his feet and glanced around. In an instant the camp exploded into frenzied activity.

"What is it, father?" Adriel asked, aware that an order had been given.

"Troopers! Your pet's brought us a warning!"

"The tery?" She glanced his way with eyes full of wonder as her father guided her ahead of him toward their half-erected tent. "Good boy!"

"I never expected to see any of Kitru's men this far into the forests…but the tery was gone only a few minutes. They must be nearly upon us!"

She blanched. "What'll we do?"

"Only one thing we can do." He bundled the tent fabric into a careless wad and shoved it out of sight behind a bush. "We haven't got time to run — although Dennel seems to think that would be the best course."

He glared across the clearing at the youth who stood uncertainly amid the frustration.

"We can't fight them!" she cried.

"We have no choice! Finding a recently abandoned campsite is the next best thing to finding the group itself. They'll run to the keep and soon a whole company will be charging after us. This is probably just a scouting party. All we can do is set a trap and hope there aren't too many of them."

They struck the tents and sent the women and children from the clearing along with everything they could carry. Twenty men with strung bows concealed themselves in the surrounding bushes and trees.

"You come with me," Adriel said, gripping the fur at the nape of the tery's neck and tugging him along beside her. "It's going to be too dangerous here."

Reluctantly, the tery traveled with Adriel and the other noncombatants for a short distance, then pulled away. He doubled back to the campsite. He had to see what happened.

Komak's plan turned out to be fiendishly simple. As the tery watched from a nearby tree, the scouting party — one member rubbing a bare and bloodied head — entered the clearing in a cautious single file. They made a careful inspection of the half-dug central fire pit and conversed in low tones. The earth had been freshly turned and they were wary now.

The tery spied Komak watching from another tree. Why didn't he give the signal to shoot? What was he waiting for? They were all here.

Then the tery realized that Komak did not know that. He was no doubt waiting until he was certain the entire scouting party had revealed itself.

The tery wondered what he would do in a situation like this if he had command of twenty Talent archers. Probably he would assign each archer a target trooper until each of the invaders was assured of three arrows; he would hold the remaining two archers in reserve. Then he would give the mental command to –

Suddenly came the thrum of many longbows loosing their missiles in perfect unison. Five of the scouts cried out as each was pierced by three arrows from three different directions. They lurched, twisted, fell, and writhed on the ground. The sixth had stooped suddenly to examine the grass and received only a superficial wound in the fleshy part of his upper right arm. Seeing the fate of his companions, he turned and ran for the brush. Two shafts from the reserve archers stopped him before he covered six paces.

No word spoken during the entire episode, and no cheering at its close. If not for the cries of the dying, the rustle of the leaves, the noises of the birds and insects, the tery would have thought he had gone deaf. It dawned on him then that with greater numbers and a greater desire to fight, these psi-folk could rule the forests completely and pose a real threat to Kitru…and perhaps to Overlord Mekk himself.

Perhaps there was more than religion behind Overlord Mekk's inclusion of the Talents in the Extermination Decree.

The tery bounded out of his tree and scurried over to the dead troopers, hoping that these were the ones who had invaded his home and killed his parents. And even if they weren't, he wanted to gloat over them. After all, they were Kitru's men, and deserved the worst that fate could hold for them

But when he reached the bodies and looked into their dead faces, he felt no glee. He found he could not stare long at their frozen, agonized expressions. As vile and threatening as they no doubt had been in life, there was something pathetic about them now in death.

Feeling cold and empty, he moved slowly to the edge of the clearing and settled alone on the grass.

Before the women and children were brought back, the bodies of the troopers were carefully buried in the brush and their mounts added to the Talents'.

Adriel hurried ahead of the rest when she heard that all of the Talents had come through the skirmish unscathed and that it was safe to return to the campsite. The tery had run off again and she hoped he hadn't been accidentally caught in her father's trap.

She sighed with relief when she saw him sitting alone at the edge of the clearing. From his posture, he looked depressed. But that was silly. How could an animal be depressed?

As they all hastily went about setting up camp for the night, she looked around for Dennel but he was nowhere in sight. She asked around but no one had seen him since Komak's decision to ambush the scouts instead of flee them.

"Where's Dennel?" she asked her father. "Was he hurt?"

Komak grimaced through his beard. "Dennel? Hurt? Hardly. He ran off before our little encounter."

Adriel's heart sank. "I hope he'll be all right."

"He'll be back," Komak told her. "He can no more take care of himself than he can fight for himself. He needs us — we don't need him."

"He was always nice to me."

Komak put an arm around his daughter's shoulders and laughed. "For that reason alone, I'll welcome him back."

"But is he really such a coward? He says he's mostly concerned with preserving the Talent."

"I know what he says. But I also know that he's scared to death."

"So am I."

"I know. I'm scared, too."

"You are?" The idea shocked her. "You don't seem scared of anything."

"All an act, my dear. That's why I need all the help I can get. A short while ago when we set the ambush, I was supposed to have twenty-one archers. But one of them ran off. I know he's your friend, and I know you'd like to believe him about the possibility of the Talents coexisting with Mekk, but he's all wrong. Dangerously wrong. He has this idea that we'd be better off if we split up into smaller groups. That way, in the event of an all-out attempt to do away with us, we could be fairly sure that some would survive to carry on the Talent."

"That sounds reasonable."

"On the surface, it does. But I really don't think Dennel's all that interested in preserving the Talent. Preserving Dennel is his main concern."

That remark stung Adriel, but she said nothing.

Komak paused, then grinned pointedly. "Besides — today proves the advantages of moving with a large group of individuals who can communicate silently and instantaneously. I think the lad just wants to run and I wouldn't worry too much about him. I'm sure he's not worrying about us. Your tery is a better friend — worth three Dennels."