The only way we're going to trail these yrch is to get ahead of them, Mary said.
Ritva hesitated; that was risky. But it was important to know where the enemy had come from. She raised her head and whistled softly; a few moments later her Duelroch and Mary's Rochael came trotting up. They slid into the saddles and turned west, down into the river valley, over the road and into the abandoned fields. Those were tall with brush and weeds, and rows of trees beside long unused irrigation ditches, but the mounts were Arabs and agile as cats… thousand-pound cats with hooves, of course.
They signaled their mounts up to a slow canter, keep ing their eyes wide for threats to their legs-once they had to crow-hop over a big disk-harrow that had been sitting and rusting and growing a coating of vine and stalk since before they were born. A barn owl went by overhead, a flash of white in the darkness and a screech as it dove through the night to carry off something small and furry spooked into motion by the riders.
"That's enough," Ritva said softly, peering to see the black outline of the heights against the star-shot blackness of the sky.
Mary nodded; one of the advantages of being iden ticals was that they agreed on most things. This was far enough ahead that they could cut back into the hills eastward, given that they'd moved faster. At the edge of the broken ground they left their horses standing in a hollow with the reins looped up; that took really good training.
Hold, Ritva Signed.
It was the two Cutter scouts they'd seen. The twins stopped in the shadow of a stand of scrub pinyon pine, their war cloaks turning them into shadows within shad ows. The enemy were feeling more confident now, walk ing along leading their horses. The twins turned their heads slowly, slowly, keeping their eyes moving. Ritva still felt herself blink when four more stepped out from behind a steep fold of striped rock.
Uh oh, Ritva thought, clenching her teeth. We must be inside their screen.
Mary Signed: Might as well go forward as back. We need to get some hard information on this crew.
Which was true, but still unpleasant. They waited again, while the men they'd followed disappeared behind that tall fold. Their eyes found a course-from one boulder or patch of scrub to another, points that would screen them as much as possible from the lookouts they couldn't see but knew were there. Walk slowly, pause… then down on your belly and crawl like a snake…
And catch the damned war cloak on thorns. Careful, careful. Nothing caught the eye like a flutter.
As they moved they watched for the betraying movements and noises. Setting out a string of guards around your camp was all very well, but you had to check on them regularly-otherwise someone could sneak in, practice Sentry Removal and then get away again with out being detected. You had to make sure the sentries were just being quiet, not lying there cooling to the ambient temperature.
The officer who did the rounds was quiet enough, but they caught his motion-his helmet was glossy, not dull matte, and it showed in the moonlight. Ritva felt her own pulse and counted, drawing her breath in steadily and evenly as the sentries were checked.
He makes his rounds every fifteen minutes, she Signed. And the lookouts are there… there… there… and there.
Mary nodded agreement. Another ten minutes, and we'll go through below that boulder. Maybe we can get out past them that way later. In the meantime, let's go look at what all these sentries are guarding.
It was snake-crawling all the way now, imitating a clump of brush. From pool of darkness to darkness, halting five minutes for every one they moved. The wind was in their faces, what there was of it, so dogs wouldn't be able to scent them, if the Corwinites had any. At last they were in the darker blackness beneath the great rock. Ritva raised her head, fractional inch by fractional inch.
There.
A long narrow cleft in the rock, east-west mainly but with serpentine wriggles, stretching out of sight on her right, and probably opening up to the river on the west. Black cottonwood trees along the sandy bed of the ar royo, and an occasional thicker clump that was probably a spring; the moonlight turned everything to shades of gray and silver, but the thickness of leaves was still ap parent. And the low red dots of banked campfires scat tered down it, bright to their dark-adapted eyes. A slight smell of woodsmoke, too, and cooking, and the stamp and whicker of horses.
Let's see, Ritva thought. Eight men to a fire… that means somewhere around two hundred all up.
She got the binoculars out. The horse lines were well hidden, in along the sides of the canyon, but she could see men hauling buckets of water to them, and bags of cracked grain fodder.
Enough horses for every man and a fair number of remounts… that's a wagon, light two-wheeler. They're traveling without much baggage.
For most of an hour they lay on the lip of the gorge, carefully noting the details. The Cutter soldiers did the things soldiers usually did-sharpening blades, tend ing armor, sewing things and patching things and oiling things and putting new laces in things, eating stew or beans out of communal pots and flat wheat cakes cooked on griddles. They also seemed to do a lot of praying, in a manner which involved kneeling in ranks and making gestures in unison; presumably they were leaving out any chanting or singing.
Then…
A face sprang out at her in the binoculars for an in stant: a middle aged man, forty or more, not big, not small… but with a patch over his left eye, and a long white scar diagonally across it. Mary hissed very slightly beside her. Ritva memorized the face; part of her noted that the man certainly had luck, to have survived that. Someone had cut him across the face with a sword, and hard enough to nick the bone. He turned away and walked into the darkness; two other men followed him, with the indefinable air of someone listening to a superior.
One by one the fires were covered by earth and the men lay down, wrapped in blankets and pillowed on their saddles. They also set up their walking sentries, close in and by the picket lines where their horses were tethered, and relieved the outflung ones on the heights around.
Good, Mary Signed. There's one we missed, see?
Ritva nodded. And right on our way out.
That was the problem with making yourself invisible. If someone missed you, you could miss them. Particularly, you could miss them until they didn't miss you.
This was going to be awkward. Her hands moved again.
Can we get past them on the sneak?
I don't think so. Not going this way.
Ritva bared her teeth behind the gauze of her war cloak's mask. They weren't here to fight, and she didn't like to fight unless she had to anyway, and if they couldn't do it quick and quiet they were unpleasantly dead. Her eyes went along the path they'd have to take, past the big boulder, then over the ridge…
Yup, she Signed mournfully. Sentry Removal. No choice.
Dunedain training involved a lot of Sentry Removal, and they'd taken the Bearkiller version before they left Larsdalen for Mithrilwood.
It wasn't precisely like combat. Killing people was relatively easy-which went both ways, unfortunately-but doing it very suddenly with complete silence and nothing visible beyond a few feet was another matter. Human beings were surprisingly tough that way; just stabbing or hitting them rarely did the job fast enough and often involved a lot of shouting and screeching and clanging. It was even more difficult when they were wearing armor.
They turned and crawled, waited while the Cutter officer did his rounds of the sentries, then moved forward right afterwards to take advantage of the maximum time before he came back.
The Corwinite scouts were well placed, about ten yards apart and turned so each covered the other's back, each lying behind a convenient rock with a leg drawn up so that they presented a smaller target but could spring erect quickly. And each had his recurved bow ready with an arrow on the string.