He had an arrow nocked at full draw on his bow, and he loosed it, just as Darian heard something whistle past his ear from somewhere behind him. He ducked to the side, instinctively. One of his tormentors had returned an attack to the bowman from the woods.
The stranger uttered a brief exclamation as a fighting knife buried itself to the hilt in his arm. He dropped out of sight; vanishing, so far as Darian saw, and behind him Darian heard a harsh cry, a startled snort, and the sound of something heavy falling.
He turned again to see that the second enemy fighter, who had still been mounted, had fallen off his horse, an arrow through one eye. The soldier lay on the ground twitching his hands. His head jerked once as he died, then the body was still. The horse shied, but moved only far enough to join the other dead fighter’s horse. Both of them paused a moment, then started cropping the thin grass, as if there was nothing whatsoever the matter.
What are you doing, standing in the open? Hide, stupid, hide!
Darian scuttled into hiding, behind a boulder, in shock at the sudden reversal of his fortunes. Where had this strange man come from? Who was he? And why was he helping him? This was all happening much too fast -
Never mind that, scolded that sensible voice in the back of his head. There were three, there’s still at least one alive. Where there were three of those brutes, there are probably more. Do something!
Prodded into action, Darian picked up his dropped bow - by some miracle it hadn’t been broken in all of the tumbling and rolling - and quickly strung it. Opening his quiver and getting an arrow of his own nocked, he peered cautiously around the boulder.
From where he was, he could see two more of the enemy coming cautiously on foot along the side of the rockpile. Where had the second one come from? He took a quick glance around the other side of his boulder toward the last place where he had seen the stranger, and making a quick estimate, figured that his rescuer could not see these two new foes from where he was now. Injured as he was, he might not be able to defend himself.
So I guess it’s up to me.
Suddenly, he felt strangely calm. His stomach stopped flipping about, his hands stopped trembling, and everything took on a crystalline clarity around him, the colors deep, the edges sharp and defined.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped around the side of the boulder, and pulled his arrow back as far as he could, sighting carefully on the head of the man in the lead.
Snowfire cursed aloud with sudden pain as a flat knife, thrown by one of the two still mounted, buried itself in his biceps. He dropped, glad he had already loosed the arrow.
The blade had penetrated deep, but by luck had gone in more or less with the grain of the muscle. As he pulled the knife from his arm and discarded it, he was rewarded by the sound of the man’s body hitting the ground.
So much for being able to pull my bow for a while. I’d better get the boy and myself out of here before it comes to hand-to-hand. My climbing stick is still with Sifyra, and a match between a war ax or sword and a hunting knife is usually a short one.
He pulled a pressure bandage from the emergency pouch at his belt and wrapped it tightly around his arm, temporarily sealing the injury. A brief caress of power melded the end of the bandage into the wrap; the large magics were difficult these days, but the very smallest still worked reliably, making him often glad that he was of no higher power than a Master. He had always depended on the use of small magics, not large, and the loss of the ley-lines and the nodes was of no great import to him.
But he didn’t have much time. There was at least one fighter still alert and active out there, perhaps more, and he himself was now wounded and not capable of drawing a bow without breaking the wound open and making it more serious than it already was. And, also to the point, he had just dispatched two of the enemy with arrows that shouted Tayledras, as clear to read as if he had branded the corpses with the sigil of k’Vala.
So he had three things to do now. Rescue the boy, take care of the betraying arrows, and get both himself and the boy out of there before any more enemies appeared.
:Two come,: Hweel said, showing him where and how fast they were moving. Both had abandoned their horses, and were creeping toward him, afoot, and separated. :Two more, but from farther. They heard the pursuit of the boy, maybe. They do not hurry, but will come soon.:
:Can you protect me while I move toward the boy?: Snowfire asked in return.
The reply was not so much in words as in feelings, a sense of contempt that he had asked so simple a thing. Content in knowing that Hweel would stoop on anyone who got within striking distance of his bondmate, while he in turn worked his way toward the boy, Snowfire began easing his way to the other side of the rockpile. His wounded arm kept sending lances of fire up his shoulder, but he had hunted and fought with worse, and since it wasn’t bleeding badly now, he knew he could afford to ignore it until he was in a safer position.
He kept himself as much under cover as he could, but through Hweel’s eyes he saw that the boy had gotten himself under the concealment of a boulder and was in the process of stringing and readying his own bow.
Good, he thought with some satisfaction. So he’s not helpless, and he’s no coward - and he can think and plan for himself. He isn’t counting on me to come to his rescue beyond what I’ve already done.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t be allowed to take a shot. At the moment he was being ignored as insignificant while the fighters concentrated on Snowfire as the real enemy. That puny little small-game bow didn’t have enough power behind it to do much damage, unless the boy got a lucky eye shot. All that would happen was that the two fighters still within striking distance would stop ignoring him and count him as an enemy, and there was no doubt that they would not hesitate for a moment to kill him. While he was unarmed and only trying to flee, their customs counted him a noncombatant. The moment he raised an arm against them, he was a fighter, since their own boys entered a warrior-society when no older than this boy.
Snowfire got to the boy just as he stepped out of cover and prepared to fire. He reached out and grabbed the boy by the collar with his good hand and yanked him down into cover.
Again, poor lad - he must feel like a kitten being mauled by now.
Quick as a thought, before the boy could cry out, he muffled the boy’s mouth with his other hand for a moment, and put his finger to his lips, miming a message of “silence” the way Valdemarans did. The boy’s eyes were as wide and round as a pair of fat plums, and for a moment, as blank as mirrors with the shock of so rude an “introduction.” But he recovered quickly, obviously guessed at what Snowfire wanted, and nodded vigorously. Satisfied, Snowfire let him go, and he quickly got his feet and hands beneath him, and backed into hiding beside the Tayledras.