L. Modesitt - Arms-Commander

He was pacing back and forth along a narrow space above the lower bushes and trees that grew out of a charred area, possibly a campfire that had gotten out of hand years earlier.

Zanlya glanced to Saryn, raising her eyebrows, and gesturing.

Saryn understood. The sentry was some fifty yards away. Still, there was no way to get closer without breaking cover. “Go ahead.”

Zanlya waited until the sentry was pacing back in their direction before saying, “Fire.” Her words were just loud enough for the other four to hear, and the hiss of five shafts being released at once was softer than the rustle of wind through the needles of the pines.

Only one struck the sentry directly, but it slammed through him just below the breastbone. A second lodged in his arm. In the moments when he looked around, his mouth opening to call a warning, three more shafts struck. He staggered, then slowly sank from sight.

Saryn could sense his pain. While he was dying, and would not be able to warn the others, he would not die quickly. She pushed that thought aside. The women who had been abused had not died quickly, either.

“This way,” she ordered quietly.

The five bow-guards followed her back the way they had come, then westward along the side of the knoll. Murkassa rode out from between two massive pine trunks, then halted.

Saryn reined up for a moment just yards from the squad leader. “The sentries are down. We need to hurry. Take up a position on the trail. When you hear the horn, ride up and sweep through. We’ll stop firing before you enter the encampment.”

“Yes, ser.”

As Saryn flicked the reins to urge the gelding forward, she could feel her head throbbing from all the concentration on sensing where people and weapons were. After the long winter, she was definitely out of practice. Tracking game wasn’t the same thing, even through frigid snows. As almost an afterthought, she leaned back and slipped the small trumpet-like horn from the saddlebag and tucked it inside her riding jacket.

After riding another hundred yards, she could sense clearly the Gallosians scattered around the encampment ahead and to her right. Most were gathered to the south side, roughly in the middle, but they were not in any sort of formation.

She turned in the saddle again. “Zanlya…we’re getting close. When I stop, take positions in a line abreast right at the edge of the trees. The clearing will be on our right. Silent signal. Once I drop my arm, loose shafts. Make every shaft count, but use every one.”

The lead bow-guard nodded.

Saryn slowed the gelding to a slow walk through the thin layer of slushy snow, easing him closer and closer to the edge of the pines, but at an angle so that the six of them would not be close to being able to be seen until they were in position to loose shafts. She was also counting on the thickness of the overhead canopy to keep them in deep shadow.

The trees ended less than twenty yards from the northern edge of the encampment. Most of the armsmen were gathered near one of the fires, listening to a taller man. All the Gallosians were looking in his direction and away from the trees on the north side.

A few words drifted out to Saryn, words that only she could hear, and only because of the heightened senses that had come when she had found herself on the Roof of the World. Nylan had claimed that all the officers had gained various strange abilities because they had used the Winterlance ’s neuralnet. Saryn didn’t know the reasons, but at times like these she was glad enough for them.

“…take the northwest road in the morning…halfway to Middlevale…”

Saryn eased the gelding partly behind the trunk of one of the giant pines and positioned him so that she could ride directly into the camp when the time came. Then she waited.

Zanlya raised her arm.

Saryn raised hers, then dropped it.

Shafts hissed from out of the woods.

For several moments, nothing happened, even after shafts cut into and through several of the armsmen.

“The bitch-demons!”

“To arms! Every man to arms!”

“Mount up!”

Saryn lifted the trumpet and bugled out an off-key call. The only thing useful about it was that the sound was loud, loud enough to carry to the trail to the west of the encampment.

An armsman jumped from the fire and turned, then grabbed his blade and charged toward the trees and the bow-guards. A shaft took him right in the chest.

The bow-guards kept loosing shaft after shaft, enough that the Gallosians sprinted toward the southwestern edge of the encampment, where the horses were picketed on a tie-line. The clustering of men provided an even better target for the archers.

The rumbling of hoofs signaled the arrival of the rest of second squad.

“Cease fire!” snapped Saryn. “Stow bows. Blades out. With me.”

She urged the chestnut forward, one of her three short swords in her right hand.

One Gallosian had managed to mount and had his big blade out as he charged her.

Saryn flung her blade, sense-guiding it into his chest, then pulled her second blade into play, running down a lagging Gallosian and slicing down across the side of his neck.

For the next few moments, all she could do was hack and parry, before she wheeled clear of the handful of armsmen remaining on their feet.

From the corner of her eye, Saryn caught sight of a Gallosian riding along the south side of the clearing, spurring his mount in the direction of the northwestern trail. “Murkassa! Spare one for questioning!” Then she turned the gelding and gave him his head. She didn’t want anyone to escape. If Arthanos’s men vanished, he wouldn’t be able to say much in public, especially if Ryba sent him and the other local rulers a message noting that brigands who had murdered innocent travelers had been hunted down and killed.

After a few moments, the fleeing armsman glanced back over his shoulder. Saryn could sense the man’s apprehension, even before he jabbed his heels into his mount’s flanks, trying to force more speed from the flagging mount. That did not help him, because Saryn’s gelding was closing the gap with every stride.

Suddenly, the armsman urged his mount into a gap between the trees on the north side of the trail, well below where the bow-guards had attacked the sentry. Saryn followed, not without some trepidation, ducking immediately so that a low-hanging branch didn’t remove her head-or her-from the saddle.

After less than fifty yards the Gallosian turned, short of a wall of evergreens, and pulled out a hand-and-a-half blade from his shoulder harness. He grinned.

Saryn didn’t even give him time to bring the heavy blade into position before throwing her second short sword, using her senses to smooth its flight while drawing the third blade from the saddle sheath before her. The last blade wasn’t necessary. The thrown blade sliced into the Gallosian’s chest so quickly and cleanly that he didn’t have time to look surprised before he slumped forward in the saddle. After a moment, the heavy iron weapon dropped from his lifeless fingers. A slight clank followed as the metal hit a patch of rocky ground.

It took Saryn far more time to recover the weapon and corner the skittish mount than it had to chase and kill the false bandit, but before all that long she was leading the captured mount with the body of the armsman across it back toward the valley at a fast trot. She hadn’t dared take any more time to strip him, not until she was back with second squad.

She needn’t have worried. By the time she reached the top of the knoll where the Gallosians had been, the only figures on horse back were the Westwind guards, although two were having wounds dressed, and a third-the young Gerlya-lay unmoving on the sparse grass beside the trail leading down to the road.