A stone turned under her foot, she slipped wildly, and her chin glanced off her knee, cutting short her speech and coming within a painful instant of biting off her own tongue. She winced, spat blood, and ran on, saying no more.
A thunderous rumbling-a coach or wagon, moving in dangerous haste-rose ahead, moving to the left and dying away into distance, only to end in a thunderous crash, and more screams, this time of horses in pain.
Panting, Narantha reached the crest of the ridge in time to see Florin, almost at the lip of the second and last ridge before the sunlight, fling himself flat on his face to avoid eating a war-quarrel.
Almost before the bolt passed over him to hum harmlessly off into the trees, he was up again in a sprinting charge, the crossbowman cursing and snatching out the longest dagger Narantha had ever seen-a knife as long as her own forearm. Two other crossbowmen in dark and tattered leathers were clustered at the ridge-lip with the one who’d just fired. The tallest was grimly advancing on Florin with one of those overlong daggers in each hand and his crossbow lying in the leaves behind him, and the last was working his windlass like a madman, glancing betimes over his shoulder at Florin but keeping most of his attention on the unseen road beyond.
Unseen crossbows snapped, farther away-probably across the hollow-and there were more shouts.
Narantha started to sprint in earnest, sobbing for breath, as the forester reached the three outlaws. His sword rang off the long knife of the one who’d fired at him, driving the man back on his heels-and Florin sprang aside from him to confront the man with two fangs, leaping high.
The man stabbed with one, raising the other as a guard-but gutted only air as Florin came down into a froglike crouch and launched himself like a hurled hammer at the man’s ankles.
The outlaw toppled helplessly face-first into the leaves, burying one of his blades almost hilt-deep in forest loam. On the far side of him Florin rolled over and up and slashed at the third man, taking him in the back of the neck as he was still crouched over his bow.
The bowman fell sideways, head jerking loosely as blood spurted, but Florin had no time to even look at what his blade had done; he was whirling to slash the outlaw he’d toppled, moving almost as frantically as that man rolled and twisted around to face him.
One-Knife was hurrying around his fallen comrade to get at Florin. Running hard, Narantha shrieked, “In the name of the king! ”
Her cry brought One-Knife’s head snapping around to look at her, as Florin slashed the downed outlaw across the chest. His sword skirled across unseen armor there, and its owner hacked viciously at Florin’s swordarm with his remaining knife. Florin let go his sword to avoid losing his arm at the elbow-and crashed down on that knife arm with both knees, driving his own dagger into the man’s throat.
Narantha threw her dagger at One-Knife’s face. It whipped past his cheek harmlessly, but kept him staring at her long enough to give Florin time to roll aside and out of reach.
Giving Narantha a sneer, the last outlaw turned and raced after the forester, stumbling across the bodies of his comrades as Florin wisely gave up trying to scoop up his sword and kept on rolling, hard and fast, to find his feet among the roots of a duskwood.
The outlaw’s charge came with lightning-swift back and forth slashes of his knife at the fore, and Florin ducked behind the tree to use its trunk as a shield.
The outlaw stumbled on roots in his haste and Florin raced around the tree and tackled him from behind, the pair of them crashing and bouncing in wet leaves as Florin drove his dagger home again and again.
Into unyielding mail. Narantha was almost upon them now, winded and panting, but she started the raw, strangled beginnings of a scream as she saw One-Knife twist around and drive his long knife backhand at Florin’s shoulder The young forester flung himself away, off the outlaw, who rolled over with a triumphant snarl and scrambled to get up. Whereupon Florin arched, shoulders on the ground, and lashed out at the man with both boots, catching him just at that crouching moment when the forester’s feet were gathered under him and his balance was shifting. The man flew backward and sat on roots, bouncing and cursing-as Narantha ran up, scooped up a fallen knife, and stabbed clumsily at the nearest part of him she could reach, his shin, right above his boot.
The dagger spun out of her hand, not seeming to do much harm, but One-Knife roared in pain-and Florin landed on him hard, stabbing ruthlessly. The outlaw’s cry sank into a long groan that trailed into silence.
Florin whirled around, letting the dying man slump against the tree. “I gave you a command! ” he snarled at Narantha, eyes ablaze and bloody dagger in hand.
“I don’t take orders from you!” she hissed back just as fiercely.
They glared at each other, breathing hard. Then Florin whirled away from her, jaw set, and ran to retrieve his sword.
Without another word he plucked it up and raced over the ridge, down into the sunlight beyond.
Leaving Narantha standing over three very dead men, sprawled on the leaves in their blood. She could see bright new mail through the slashes Florin’s steel had cut in their leathers; where would outlaws get such?
A matter for later. If, when “later” came, they were still alive to ponder outlaws who were not outlaws…
The fair flower of the Crownsilvers snatched up the only long knife she could see that wasn’t spattered with blood and ran after Florin, plunging down a tree-girt bank into the narrow vale beyond.
Hunter’s Hollow was a battlefield.
It was a pretty place where the forest rose in two tree-cloaked hills, and in the space between them curved the king’s road-a wide and high-crowned dirt way flanked by ditches. As Florin had said, a superb place for an ambush.
Two horses were lying dead in the road, and a man was lying in the dust where he’d been flung off the saddle of one of them, a heavy war-quarrel through his body and his face white and staring fixedly at nothing. There was astonishment on his frozen face-and it was an expression he’d worn often enough while Narantha was cursing Master Delbossan that she recognized him right away: the taller and quieter of the two guards Lord Hezom had sent to escort her to his home.
The other guard lay in a huddled heap in the road well off to the left, several crossbow quarrels standing up out of his body, and a dark lake of blood spreading around him.
More quarrels studded the road north of that corpse, to where a coach lay smashed and canted on its side in the ditch, two weakly thrashing horses tangled in a welter of harness and more quarrels-beasts that no longer screamed in agony, but coughed and bubbled blood from their muzzles, drooling out their lives. Narantha’s stomach heaved.
Off to Narantha’s right, along the road, Master Delbossan still seemed to live. He was crouching, a light crossbow bolt standing out of his shoulder above an arm that hung limp and useless, in the lee of a dead horse bristling with half a dozen bolts.
Florin was bounding down to Delbossan, sword held high-and a crossbow bolt came humming out of the trees on the far side of the hollow, flashing past his hip before he could even hope to dodge.
Narantha tried to scream, and succeeded only in choking on her own sickness. Spewing her guts out, she slipped and slid down the bank into the hollow, another quarrel thudding into the earth close beside her.
There came a sudden thunder of hooves from the north, then around the bend and down into the hollow came three riders-men dressed in new and clean flamboyant hunting leathers, astride magnificent horses.
“I thought I heard shouting,” the foremost called back to those behind, a silver hunting horn in hand. “Look ye: Here’s a coach down, and-”
A crossbow cracked, and the man with the horn gave a queer sort of sob as a crossbow bolt tore out his throat and hummed on its way. Swaying in his saddle, already starting to topple, he galloped on, dead or dying, until another crossbow fired, and his snorting mount took a bolt in the withers, squealed, and reared, lashing out at the sky in pain.