If I can't see them, when I know where they are, the yrch certainly won't. Raven, totem of my sept, watch over us! Queen of Battles, Lady of the Crows, be with us now! To you, Dread lord, we dedicate the harvest of this field!
The canyon widened out a little here, the slopes not quite so steep until they ran into cliff-faces north and south. The old park trail was down fifteen yards below her hiding place, visible between the wide-spaced trunks of the great trees in a twisting line of trodden mud; the horses waited patiently a hundred yards further east, nearer the waterfall-you could see the mist lifting above the icy curve of it from here. The noise would be good cover:
There was an arrow on the shelf of her bow, cord to the knock, the whole held in her left hand, and forty-four more in her quiver. Her sword was leaned up against the deep-fissured trunk, a single-edged weapon with a basket hilt of brass and a yard-long blade, and her two-foot circular shield was slung over her back on its carrying strap. Everything ready:
A flight of birds rose from the eastward, spooked by movement: the yellow undersides showed clearly as they flitted overhead in long, swooping curves, and the buff-brown-black markings as they sped away. Meadowlarks, she thought; they were just getting to be common again. Which was why -
The distinctive fluting trill of the birds sounded from above her, close enough to the genuine article to fool most.
"-which is why we picked that call for signaling," she murmured to herself.
It was modulated, though, with stuttering intervals that the living bird wouldn't have used. They spoke to her: they're coming, and thirty of them.
"Thirty. Ouch. Still, nothing for it."
The first came into view, close enough for her to see the snarl of tension on his thin face. He was dressed in rags and patches, but he carried a good crossbow, and there was a sword worn slantwise across his back with the hilt jutting above his left shoulder, a heavy, single-edged chopping blade. The lone figure stood tense, looking about, then turned and beckoned the unseen band behind him.
Astrid's throat grew tight. She forced a deep breath down into her diaphragm, then let it out, with the tension following it, repeating until her body felt loose and ready. She hated bandits with a passion, even more than she loathed the Protector's men; outlaws had killed her mother, right after the Change, and she'd had to watch. The memory was like meat gone off on a hot summer's day.
Soon now. Don't be too eager. Love not the arrow for its swiftness, or the sword for its bright blade, but the things that these guard.
More men followed, until a dozen stood behind the scout, adding their eyes to his. They weren't in any hurry; they must mean to follow the Dunedain back to the lodge and ring it in, probably for an attack under cover of darkness. More and more, until there were over a score of ragged-gaudy figures. She waited until one looked in precisely the right direction, and until the puzzled cock of his head showed that he'd seen something unnatural.
"Now!" she shouted, snatching up her sword in her right hand.
In the same instant she cut upward, where the stay-rope was secured around the stub of a thick branch. The keen steel went through the hemp and into the tree trunk with a solid thunk; she left the blade embedded in the living wood as she stepped around the trunk for a clear shot. The long arrow came back as she flung the strength of arms and shoulders and gut and hips against the tension of yew and horn and sinew. The double curve of the saddle-bow turned into a pure C as the kiss-ring clamped on the string touched the corner of her mouth.
Eye on the target, not the arrow. There!
Even in the diamond focus of concentration, she saw the mouths below gaping as the log swung down towards them, tumbling free of the loops halfway through its trajectory. The five-hundred-pound balk of maple did a slow spin around its own center before it struck. In a piece of cosmic injustice an end came down right on top of one of the few who'd had the presence of mind to drop to the earth, like a maul in the hands of an angry god or a hammer on a soft-boiled egg. Then the log bounced up and bowled over several more. She could hear the crackle of bone beneath the screams and the heavy, thick boonnnnk-bonk-bonk as the log hammered itself to a stop on the rocky ground.
Pick a target, track along until an uninjured man stood gaping with his spear wavering in his hand:
Snap.
The string of her recurved bow slapped against the bracer on her left wrist. The arrow flashed out in a smooth, shallow curve, the razor edges of the broad-head twirling as the fletching spun the shaft. It struck with a wet smacking sound audible even fifty yards away; the man goggled at the feathers that bloomed against his breastbone and collapsed, kicking and coughing out blood and probably pieces of lung. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Alleyne stand and draw his longbow to the ear, sighting as calmly as if this was a day's practice at the butts; he was a swordsman rather than an archer by avocation, but he was still a better-than-average shot. On both slopes the Dunedain were up, and a shower of long cedarwood arrows rained down on the advance party of the enemy force, hissing as they flew, and another flight, and another.
Not all struck. The strangers looked like bandits, and they reacted with the feral swiftness needed to survive in that profession. All but the dead or wounded dove for cover, and a flurry of crossbow bolts and arrows came back at the ambushers; one bolt went by overhead with an unpleasant vvvvwhhppt sound of cloven air and hammered into a chinquapin to stand buzzing like an angry wasp. Astrid ignored it and shot again, again, then dropped her bow and reached up for the next rope as the remainder of the gang ran shouting around the curve and into sight. It wound tight around her left forearm, and a quick snatch and wrench of her right hand put the cord-wound hilt of her long sword in her grip.
"A Elbereth Gilthoniel!" she shouted, from the bottom of her lungs.
She took three steps forward and launched herself into the air. The weight wrenched at her left arm, and she felt the strong pull of the rope and the springy branch it was lashed to bending beneath her solid hundred and sixty pounds of body and gear. Momentum swept her forward with blurring speed, higher above the surface as she fell towards the trail, skimming in a great arch that left her barreling down the trail towards the enemy at head-height.
"A Elbereth Gilthoniel!" she shouted again, a great, high-soaring silver trumpet-call as she flew.
"Fuck me!" a snaggle-toothed man screamed, as much in astonishment as fear, just before her boot heels struck him in the face.
Crack.
The bandit was flung half a dozen feet backward at the collision, his face a red pulp of flesh and bone fragments. Something heavy and strong seemed to flow up from her feet through her body, cracking it like a whip and snapping her teeth together with a painful click, but she dropped to the ground and let the rope fall away, twitching her shoulder to slide the shield around to where she could run her forearms through the loop. Eilir dropped beside her, jack-knifing in the air, her sword and buckler flicking into her hands even as she landed. A spearman gaped at her, then thrust overarm. Eilir ducked under it in a smooth continuation of her fall, whirling as she crouched to snap her short-sword at the back of his knee in a hocking stroke. There was a grisly popping sound like a taut cable parting and he went over backward, screaming and clutching at the injury as if he could squeeze the hamstring back to wholeness.