Between tree trunks he saw the caravan and its attackers. A horse was down with an arrow in its neck, another kicked from a rump shot. A trader lay dead, shot through the back. More had hands in the air, one bleeding from a shoulder wound. A bodyguard rolled in agony while another lay dead. But for the moment there was silence and stillness. Dorlas held his warhammer ready; Greenwillow and the other bodyguards had swords out. The dwarf negotiated, at a distance, with the bandits' leader. There were a dozen or more, with two dead, a scruffy lot of men and women in rags and skins and hacked-off hair. But their swords and pikes were top-notch weapons, as were the crossbows some held leveled on the fighters. Four held captives from behind with knives to their throats.
Sunbright had the advantage of surprise and knew he'd best use it. Below the ravine's lip he tugged out four arrows, all he had, for it took hours to make one properly. He laid them on the leaves before him, then placed his great hooked sword Harvester beside them. Judging whom to shoot, he braced his toes lest they slip, nocked an arrow, and rose.
The first arrow caught the leader smack in his yapping mouth. He was knocked flying, grabbing the shaft in both hands even while dying.
Scanning, Sunbright ignored the bandits holding the hostages, who instinctively ducked behind the captives. He next killed a stout fellow with ritual scars down his arms, for he looked dangerous. He felled a woman scanning the woods with a crossbow, aimed for another man drawing a bead on him…
Something hissed by his face like a long black hornet. His bowstring snapped, and the longbow flicked open like a flapping fish. Dropping the useless weapon, the warrior grabbed his sword in two hands and charged down the slight slope. "Attack! Battle-leaf, Sealkiller, Manslayer!"
Bandits started at the running fiend, scanned for more of the madmen. Many of them scattered for the willows on the other side of the road. Two robbers pushed their hostages away for running room; two strangled theirs by dragging them backward by their collars. Dorlas hollered, and Greenwillow shrilled and flashed into action. Fleet as a deer, she chased down a bandit and thrust a sword through her back. The woman fell screaming. Dorlas jumped to a halt and hurled his warhammer by the leather strap. It bowled a running man over, and the dwarf charged, caught up the weapon, and crushed the man's skull.
Sunbright rushed, screaming and slashing the air, but there were no bandits left by the time he arrived. Greenwillow, he saw, had run into trouble unknowingly, for she'd actually outrun some of the fleeing felons. Hunting a pair amidst the willows, she was unaware of two more coming up behind her. Sunbright's shouts went unheard in the uproar, so he put on a burst of speed and pelted after her.
Driving through willows that snagged on his face and arms and topknot, he bellowed just as a running bandit aimed a sword point at the half-elf's green lizard armor. Startled, the bandit half turned. The barbarian's sword chopped through his cheek, sheared off his jaw, and knocked him sprawling. Before he hit the ground, his face pouring red, a back-swing punched the sword's hook through his throat.
Sunbright craned around, but saw no more enemies, only Greenwillow staring at her dead assailant. The barbarian wiped leaf flecks off his sweaty face and panted, "Well?"
Cool gray-green eyes rose to his. "Thank you."
"Doesn't hurt, does it?" He grinned and shouldered his sword. "You're welcome."
The traders, of course, were not properly grateful for their rescue. Of the four hostages who'd had knives at their throats, two were unharmed and one had been sliced across the cheek. The fourth had had his throat cut as the bandit shoved him away.
"I'm sorry," Dorlas told them, "but the boy did well." Sunbright had no idea how old the dwarf was, but Dorlas always referred to him as "the boy." "Bartering their lives would have yielded naught. They stalled only to make us lay down arms. More would have died in time, probably all of us, for these bandits would not let us go to warn others. It was the only way. You should reward the boy for his quick wits, good eye, and fast arm."
But the merchants groused among themselves, threatening to extract blood money from the bodyguards' eventual pay.
Sunbright basked in the fighters' compliments, until he went to pick up his fallen longbow from the ravine slope. He knew he'd kissed Death, for as he'd drawn the arrow to his cheek, a black crossbow bolt had severed the bowstring and almost split his face.
"I'll need my hair cut to braid a new string," he laughed in relief
Then he stopped, recalling the raven's dark prophecy: that he'd "lose hair." And more. For the damned bird had flown right over the bandits' attack, but kept going. With no effort, it could have circled back to warn Sunbright, but hadn't.
The barbarian struck an imaginary chalk mark on the raven's slate: not to be trusted.
It was coming on autumn, almost a year since Sunbright had been banished and begun his adventures, when they came to the head of a vast valley. Far down, through miles of trees like giant steps, they saw open farmland, and in the distance along a broad river was their destination, the city of Dalekeva. Even the gloomy traders, the ones who'd survived, cheered when they saw the high walls of yellow stone, the onion-topped towers, and the colorful town that sprawled around the city and meandered along the many roads into yellow-grained farmland and beyond. Even the horses picked up their feet and plodded faster toward the last stretch of forest road, now that their destination was in sight.
But scouting ahead with Sunbright, Greenwillow lifted her nose, swiveling her head like a stork. Pointed black brows knit as she asked Sunbright, "Where is everyone?"
"Eh?" The warrior shifted his quiver and longbow at her tone. "Where should they be?"
"Look!" With her arm she swept the whole valley, the sky. "It's the harvest season, half the fields sport grain, the sun is high, there's no threat of rain, yet there's not a soul out working. No peasant would pass up this kind of day to get his crops in, not with the weather so changeable."
Stringing his bow, Sunbright squinted. He'd been staring at a long set of old gashes marring a red oak, gray-white gouges in red-gray bark. The gashes were as wide as his finger and as long as his bow, and occurred a dozen feet high on the tree. He tried to remember where he'd seen them before. Distracted, he mused, "Perhaps they're all inside those walls. A festival, perhaps, or-"
Greenwillow's answer was a shrill in the elven tongue. She, too, grabbed her bow while nodding back toward the woods behind them. "The Hunt! They come! The Hunt!"
Sunbright whirled around to see. From over the treetops, like dragons of silver and gold, soared a party of flying folk. Some skimmed on huge disks of metal; others rode clockwork wyverns. All were armored and armed and masked, with long lances whose points glinted in the afternoon sun.
With the shrill "halloo" of foxhunters, the flying folk swooped toward Sunbright's party.
Chapter 6
"Traders to the city!" roared Dorlas like a lion. "Guards to me!"
"What are they?" yelled Sunbright. He and Greenwillow drew long arrows to their cheeks. Hers were slender, black, polished, fletched with exotic red and yellow feathers, while his were of plain ash and fletched with dark turkey.
"A Neth hunt!" she cried. "They hunt humans! Loose!"
Their arrows flashed from bowstrings. They'd automatically chosen foes at opposite sides of the attackers, squat men on flying disks, but the arrows spanked off armor or shattered. Sunbright was not surprised, but he cursed nonetheless.