His training had emphasized focusing on the mission. And that aggression was a means, not an end. Those were the differences between an army and a neobarb mob.
At last she made a short chittering noise that would have passed as forest background if he hadn’t been watching her, and a man in the same gear appeared. Cole blinked; he hadn’t seen the second Mackenzie at all, and it made him very glad he hadn’t chanced a long-range shot at the first one while someone unseen was covering her. The man was slender and of medium height, looking wiry-strong, with a brown mustache and short chin-beard. The rest of his head was apparently shaven, except for a lock at the back that spilled down in a braid. His face was painted as well, though more lightly, and somehow looked astonishingly like a cat’s, and there was a tuft of gray-brown fur in the clasp of his. . Cole blinked. . Scots bonnet! That was what it was called!
These people are seriously strange. Those knights and castles and things they’ve got out west are bad enough, but this?
There was nothing eccentric about the way he quartered the ground, though, with the dogs trotting at his heel and his gaze scanning the pine-duff and old aspen leaves ahead of him. Occasionally he would go to a knee and peer more closely. Cole recognized that too-an experienced tracker looking for sign. He lay and sweated and thought he heard an almost entirely inaudible snigger from his prisoner.
I don’t suppose it matters what they do with the head after they kill me. . I should be able to take out whoever stumbles across me first, but that’s one bolt and I can’t reload as fast as an archer can shoot. . they’re too far apart to shoot one and rush the other with my sword before they get me and there are the dogs but maybe if I’m really fast and even more lucky. . and if this time there’s nobody in reserve I can’t see yet. .
They could just be not finding him; he was good at concealment. Or it could be a trap. At last the newcomer turned to the woman on the rock and shook his head. They gestured at each other-military sign language, he thought-and then she nodded. Cole forced himself not to blow out his breath in relief as she took an oxhorn slung at her waist and put the silver-mounted mouthpiece to her lips.
Huuuuu-huuuuu-huuurrrrr!
The sound was surprisingly deep, and it seemed to resonate in his chest for a moment, but it meant they thought nobody was around. It brought a dozen more kilted archers loping through the woods. He lost sight of some as they continued on past the coffin-tight hiding place and the rest shook out into a skirmish line. If they didn’t walk right into him and they assumed this area was clear afterwards, he had a good chance of staying hidden until they all went on about their business. And after they’d checked the area once they probably wouldn’t be back. There was a lot of forested mountain around here.
Go away, he thought, clenching his stomach muscles in an involuntary attempt to project the thought that was half a formless prayer. Nothing interesting here, you gave it a once-over, much more important stuff elsewhere, move along now. .
One halted, a dark-skinned woman with her hair in a multitude of tight braids tipped with little silver balls.
That’s not a bow she’s carrying, he realized as she came closer. That’s a staff.
A six-foot length of carved rowan-wood, topped by a circle flanked by two silver crescents.
What the hell is she doing? That’s not a weapon. Focus, Cole, focus, you’re missing something.
He narrowed his attention. Through the sight he could see the dark woman blink and frown, looking like someone trying to remember or catch a nagging thought at the edge of perception. She halted and drew a circle in the forest floor with the butt of the staff and inscribed lines within the figure in some complex pattern of angles and curves. Then she began to spin the staff, first over her head, then touching the end down with what looked like careful precision on the figures she’d drawn. The circle on its end was a disk of silver-rimmed crystal, and it caught the morning sun in a flickering glitter as she whirled the wood at arm’s length again. After a moment she began to walk outward in a spiral, still turning the staff wrist-over-wrist like a quarterstaff.
What the hell. .
It all made no sense that he could see, but there was something fascinating about the movement of the staff. The way it cast sun-blinks, the rhythmic intensity of it, the swooping grace, the humming song that went within it. Moments later he realized she actually was singing. A wandering tune, hauntingly strange, yet somehow reminding him of how his mother sang while she was working the churn or getting the harvest supper ready. .
“Sleep of the Earth of the land of Faerie
Deep is the lore of Cnuic na Sidhe;
Hail be to they of the Forest Gentry
Pale dark spirits help us see!”
So soothing, not scary at all. She took something from a pouch at her belt and held up her bunched fingers, blowing across them sharply like someone getting rid of flour or cat-hair. He sighed and let his head drift downward, onto the deep pine-duff, cool and damp and friendly, comfortable as his own bed in the attic up under the roof on the farm as the song went on. .
“White is the dust of the state of dreaming
Light is the mixture to make one still
Dark is the powder of Death’s redeeming;
Mark that but one pinch can kill-”
Something hard rapped him on the forehead, just under the hood of his battle-smock. He started awake with a strangled yell and an icy thrust of fear as the butt of the staff withdrew, reflex sending his hands snatching up his crossbow. .
. . and then freezing at the glitter on the honed edges of arrowheads pointing at him. Six arrows, drawn past the jaw, ready to nail him to the ground.
It had to be his imagination that he heard the thick yew staves of the longbows creaking, but the barred-fang growl of the dogs was like millstones turning as they crouched and stared at his throat with fixed intent. The dark woman was leaning on her staff and panting a little as if with hard effort. She blew out a breath and grinned down at him, her full lips curving away from white teeth.
“Who’s the naughty laddie, then?” she said, in an accent that held a strong pleasant burbling lilt. “So, would you be puttin’ your hands on your head the now, or would you rather be pierced, perforated and sent off to the Summerlands for a wee bit of a rest before you try life again?”
Shit, he thought. So much for my glorious military career and a general’s stars by forty. Shit twice and on toast.
“Your choice,” one of the archers added helpfully.
“I surrender,” he said, laying down the crossbow, coming up onto both knees and clasping his hands across the top of his head.
“Now that’s a sensible lad,” she said cheerfully, extending her hand so Alyssa could stand and move out of the line of fire. “Better not to kill without strong need, for aren’t we all alike children of the Mother? Merry meet, Lady Alyssa; who would this likely youngster you’re travelling with be?”
“I’m Cole Salander, Private First Class, United States Army, serial number A3F77032,” he said sourly, staring ahead.
“Toss the sword belt, number-on-a-list-man,” one of the archers said. “Undo it with your left hand, mind, and keep the other on your head.”