Jack Whyte - The Eagles' Brood

Safe at the bottom, I regained my breath while we waited for Curwin to slide down the last few yards to join us. He was not even panting. He threw me a look that was eloquent without words, sniffed audibly and turned to Orvic.

"Sent the boy back to camp wi' the horses. Told 'im to bring 'em on down with the others." He shrugged off the burden he had been carrying: two very large, densely packed quivers of arrows, one over each shoulder, with the straps crossed in front of him.

"Good." Orvic had already separated the two bows he had brought down the cliff and had shrugged off Curwin's quiver, placing it beside his bow on the ground. He and Curwin immediately began sharing the arrows from the extra quivers, cramming them into their own and handing a large double handful to me to stuff my own quiver until it was packed to capacity. As I set about the task, my curiosity was uncontainable.

"You had these on your horse, Curwin?"

"Aye."

I could not hide my amazement. "You always carry so many arrows?"

"Aye. Best get moving, Orvic."

"But why, Curwin?"

He did not even glance at me. We started moving downhill and I fell into place behind him.

"Ask my brother." His voice came back to me over his shoulder.

"What brother? I didn't know you had one." I was watching the ground at my feet, stepping carefully.

"I don't, not any longer. He ran out of arrows, hunting one day, arguing with some others over who had killed a deer. They had more arrows than him. Used them to kill him." He paused in mid step and looked back at me as though expecting me to be smiling. "I'd rather be laughed at and well armed than be shot at and not be able to shoot back."

That was the last word on the topic.

Orvic began leading us diagonally across the steep hillside, angling downward towards the promontory he had pointed out from the clifftop. As we went, Curwin rolled up the quiver that had been emptied and tucked it securely beneath his belt. The second, still a good two-thirds full, he slung over his shoulder again. Orvic pointed to the gully ahead of us that had been cut by the stream falling from the cliff above.

"Once we get down in there, we should be able to move all the way down without being seen." He began to trot and Curwin and I followed him, leaning into the hillside for balance, until we jumped down between the banks of the stream.

"Right," Orvic grunted. "Nobody saw us. Now, here's what I see. There's some bushes further down there along the bank, and they'll get thicker and bigger as we go downhill. By the time we get to where we're going, they'll be trees. The stream bed there falls east until it's close to the valley bottom, then veers away to the north, and that's where we climb out and head uphill—south. Another two, three hundred paces, but we'll be well hidden. There's a point there, ending in another cliff, but it's not as high as the one we just came down. Ground falls away on both sides. We'll still be 'bout half a mile, maybe a bit less, from the farm where the Romans are, but we'll be in easy bow shot of the Saxons. Should be able to shoot 'em like rabbits. They won't be able to get to us, not without running uphill towards us and trying to get around us to the sides. We've got enough arrows. By the time we run out of shafts, most of the whoresons should .be dead." He paused. "Course, if they come too thick and we let any of them around the sides to get behind us too soon, we'll be the dead ones. You ready?"

A short time later, the three of us stood side by side on the second clifftop, about ten paces above the ground that fell away again beneath us. The space where we had emerged from the clustered hawthorn trees was large enough to allow us all to stand and move comfortably. The Saxons were spread out beneath us, the closest of them less than a hundred paces distant, the mass of them closer to two hundred. Another two hundred paces or so beyond the furthest of them lay the ruined walls of the farm that sheltered the defenders. No one had seen us.

Curwin drew an arrow from his quiver and smoothed the flights between a spit-wet thumb and fingertip, watching Orvic from the corner of his eye. "Well?" he grunted, "You've got the best eye. Want to take the first one?"

Orvic nodded. He already had an arrow nocked, as did I.

"Range finder. Aye." He raised his bow slowly and took his time sighting, but Curwin interrupted him before he could loose his shot.

"Where're you aiming?"

"There!"

We watched as his arrow flew straight and true towards a cluster of half a score of men some hundred and fifty paces directly ahead of us, but the angle was deceiving from our height and the missile shot into the ground just short of the group and disappeared without being noticed.

"Shit! There's nonsense!"

He aimed more judiciously next time and his second arrow took one of the group in the side of the head, somewhere in the region of the point of the jaw, and jerked him clean off his feet, hurling him sideways away from his companions who scattered in confusion, looking around in vain for the source of the sudden death. None of them thought to look upward to where we stood on our cliff so far away. They had never met the Pendragon Longbow before.

"Lovely shot," said Curwin. "They don't know where to start lookin'. Now, watch this...The big whoreson over there on the left, with the red beard and the green tunic."

He raised his bow quickly, angling his arm in front of me so that the flight of his arrow bore no comparison to Orvic's line, and as my eyes sought and found the man he had described, so did Curwin's shaft. The Saxon had been standing upright behind a tree, his back to the bole, waving his arms wildly as he urged his companions to the attack. Curwin's arrow nailed him there, upright, piercing him completely and penetrating the tree behind him. Orvic fired again before I could launch my own first shot, and then we settled into a lethal routine, selecting our individual targets at random, but keeping each far removed from those that had directly preceded it, and bringing them down one after another until our combined efforts had slaughtered fourteen men. As I took down the fifteenth, someone detected our shooting platform high on the hillside above them, and once we had been seen, the Saxons came boiling towards us in a screaming tide of rage.

From that point on, all three of us drew and fired as quickly as we were able, and my arm and fingers had begun to ache by the time the charging men had halved the distance to us. From the edge of my vision I saw one bareheaded giant running in great strides, ahead of his companions, and I traversed my bow quickly, sighting on his huge chest, but then, as I released my arrow, he fell to his knees and disappeared. I thought at first that one of my companions had killed him, but their bows were bent, arrows unlaunched as their eyes widened. And all along the line of attack, the Saxons vanished, leaving only their large number of dead and wounded in sight.

Orvic cursed. "Gone to ground. There's a bank there that we can't see from up here. Now it gets nasty. They'll be looking for ways to come around us, so keep your eyes wide."

We waited. Somewhere out in front of us a man was screaming. Above us the song of birds filled the skies. The screaming man's voice rose to a shriek and then died away to a gurgling, agonized moaning, and then to silence. Nothing moved. My arm muscles were cramping with the tension of keeping my bow drawn. I released it slowly, keeping my arrow nocked.

"Orvic, should we be thinking of getting out of here?"

"Aye, but there's nowhere to go, boyo. 'Cept back up there where we came from. We try that, they'll run us down. How many did we get?"

I scanned the killing ground in front of us. "Thirty-four, by my count."

"Aye, that's what I see. Not bad for three men, eh?"