“The bow-guards need to move in through the trees to the south. I’ll lead them in to take out the sentries and position them. If we don’t alert the main force, I’ll take them to the north side of the knoll, and once we’re there, they’ll start loosing shafts, as silently as possible. The moment that the Gallosians recognize they’re under attack, I’ll sound the horn, and you sweep up the trail. As soon as you cross into the encampment, we’ll come in from the trees.”
“What if they spot us first?” asked Murkassa.
“They probably won’t. If they do, we’ll move back to give the bow-guards chances at picking them off. Then we’ll withdraw and do it again…until they either catch up, and we take them on, or they retreat, and we just keep loosing shafts and picking them off until they turn to fight. Or until they’re all dead.” Saryn added, “Oh…just before you start the attack, you’ll have to find a hidden spot to put Adiara. Tell her not to move. We might need every guard.”
“Yes, ser.” The squad leader nodded. “That should work.”
From what she’d seen, Saryn knew it should, but more often than not, “shoulds” never happened. “Call up the bow-guards. I’ll take them and Chyanci. You and Abylea lead the rest of the squad after us. I’ll send Chyanci back to give you the word when to split off.”
Murkassa nodded. “Bow-guards forward!”
A quarter glass later, Saryn was leading the line of guards through the evergreen woods, mostly pine with some spruce and a handful of junipers. She concentrated on sensing a clear pathway to the wooded slopes of the knoll on which the Gallosians were encamped. The going was slow as she avoided two gullies and several low and bushy pines that blocked a direct route. When she could truly sense the first armsman, she nodded. She let a half smile of relief cross her lips when she sensed the second clearly, as well as vaguely feeling the larger numbers up the knoll to the west. The first sentry was stationed under a small pine growing from between the boulders at the top of a hillock that offered a view of the crossroads. The second sentry was on the other side of the trail, slightly farther downhill, and positioned to watch the western road to Lornth. Although the two were about a hundred yards apart, and within earshot of each other, neither could see the other.
“Quiet riding,” ordered Saryn.
After easing the chestnut through half a kay of pines, sometimes through snow close to half a yard deep, she reined up, then motioned for Zanlya, the lead bow-guard, to join her.
“The sentry is about a hundred yards ahead, at the same level on the slope as we are, but he’ll be to your right once we come up on him, under a pine looking down on the valley.” Saryn pointed through the pines in the direction of the northernmost Gallosian sentry. “I want him taken out without a sound. Let the others know, then have Chyanci pass the word to the squad leader to have her hold up until we head back this way.”
Zanlya nodded.
Once Zanlya had passed the word, Saryn eased her mount forward, slowly. Covering the last fifty yards or so seemed to take longer than had the previous half kay through the pines.
Finally, she reined up and gestured to Zanlya for the bow-guards to move into positions where all could loose shafts at once. The wind was light, but it was blowing from the northeast, and that wasn’t good. Not when there was the faintest snuffle or muted whinny from the sentry’s mount, tied to a smaller pine lower on the slope to his south, and between him and the short trail leading from the road to the encampment.
The Gallosian stood and eased forward from where he had been sitting on a boulder. From there he scanned the area to the northeast, where the three rough roads met. He was still looking when the first shaft took him in the back of the shoulder. Another took him lower in the back, and he staggered.
“Oh…”
Two more shafts struck him, one in the neck, and he slumped forward.
Saryn thought his muted cry had not carried, but she concentrated on sensing the second sentry, across the trail to the south. When the other sentry did not show any alarm, she urged the gelding forward, along the lower north side of the knoll, then through the trees just below the first sentry’s position until she and the bow-guards were almost at the edge of the trees bordering the trail, just a few yards higher than the second sentry.
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.