One after another now, her Night People drifted in. None spoke, not even to greet each other. Kerian took the count of them. There were now thirteen in the glade. Bayel went among them, clasping a hand, slapping a back, wordless greetings. She saw him lean close to a young woman, listening to whispered words. He nodded once, curtly, and came to sit beside Jeratt. He ripped a chunk off the loaf of coarse brown bread the half-elf offered.
“He’s dead.” He looked from Jeratt to Kerian. “Wael at the Waycross saw him die.”
“How?” Kerian asked, heart plummeting at the news.
“Skull Knight killed him.” Bayel looked away, then back. “Felan delivered the word, however, just like we planned. The Skull Knight took it, and Wael says he swallowed the bait grinning.”
“How?” Kerian said again. Her voice grew colder, harder.
Bayel shook his head, sad and sorry. “The Knight went in for a look, eh? Went into Felan’s mind to see if all he said was true. Wael says Felan held out, showed the bastard nothing to make him suspect we’re diverting his Knights into a trap while the most of us hit the wagons up the Qualinost Road. He let Thagol see nothing but what we wanted him to see.”
That broke him, body and mind.
Kerian looked around the glade. More warriors had arrived. She counted again. Twenty-five-no, twenty-eight. “How many Knights are coming?” she asked, distracted.
“Wael says just the usual detachment that hangs around the Waycross, no more than six. Maybe a draconian or two. Easy pickings. Maybe the Lord Knight himself if he thinks he’s going to cut off the head of us easy, eh?”
Maybe. Kerian hadn’t counted on it, but she had considered it and would have gotten great pleasure to find Thagol himself in her trap. She sat in silence for a while, thinking sadly of Felan’s sacrifice. There would be thirty-five of her warriors here before long. She looked hard at Bayel. “Tell me again-do you think the Skull Knight suspects nothing?”
“Kerian,” he said, gently. “You know Felan. He was a stout heart. He held out, for us, for his child, for the future of the kingdom. Six Knights, maybe a few draconians. They’re going to hit here in the dark hour before dawn. They think they’re going to take four heads back to Way-cross and start there what they’ve been doing in the capital. They’re ordering our heads piked so everyone around will know there is no point in resisting.”
Even so silent, twenty-eight warriors made the glade whisper with their breathing, their small motions. Kerian listened as she cast a glance at the sky. The moon had set, the stars shone brightly, but so thick was the canopy of trees that their light did little to illuminate the world far below. The forest would be deadly dark tonight. She sat forward, feeling Jeratt and Bayel draw closer. Bayel’s eyes shone in the firelight. Jeratt sat still as stone, a seasoned warrior preparing to do battle.
“Felan’s dead, something’s changed. I don’t know how, I just know it. I smell it.”
Bayel frowned, not understanding. Jeratt nodded, knowing well what she meant. You feel the danger, you heed the instinct, and you wonder what triggered it later. He winked at her and slapped her knee.
She said, “ThagoFs not going to send a hunting party after us tonight. He’ll send more.”
She pointed to the earth before them, the smooth place where they had drawn their plans. Marks still remained, lines and circles and deep marks where Jeratt had stabbed a stick to emphasize some point.
“We’d planned two hits tonight-one here where Thagol and his men are set to walk into our trap and one here where Jeratt and Bayel plan to hit the wagons camped on the Qualinost Road from north and south.” With one sweep of her foot, Kerian erased the sketches. “Let the bastard Knight come. Let him bring as many Knights as he likes. Hell find the place empty, no one here but the ghosts of our fires.”
“What are you gonna do, Kerian?” Jeratt asked.
She told him, and he said this would mean she’d not be able to stay long in this forest now.
“We didn’t plan to stay forever, you know that Ander’s waiting at the falls. The others are waiting.”
He knew this, and his approving grin flashed cold and bright. Bayel nodded, and he said he thought the idea was good. Kerian looked past them to the darkness where her Night People stood or sat, checking their weapons.
“It’s time,” she said. “Jeratt, take your warriors. Bayel, you and yours come with me. We’ll meet back here when it’s done.” She looked keenly at one, then the other. “Any questions?”
These two, who with her and Felan had been the heart of the Night People, had no questions.
“Then go,” Kerian said. “Remember who we do this for.”
Once they were four. Now they were three. This was for Felan.
They owned the forest, Kerian and her Night People. They knew every trail, each game path. They knew where the streams ran, where the deer gathered at dawn. They had run here as children, as youths hunting. They flowed through the forest this night like silent dreams, men and women with soot-black faces, warriors dressed in leathers like hunters, hung with the weapons of war. Jeratt divided his force, sending ten into hiding west and east of their camp. Seven went south with him, slipping between the trees, and they went so silently that the nine Knights riding by in the opposite direction never saw them. These were not the six Wael had predicted, but Jeratt considered them no threat. The elves knew the air as wolves do, and they kept downwind so the horses picking their way through the night forest didn’t catch their scent. Jeratt watched them go.
Since the Knights rode by night, they did not go with visors down. They did not go armored, only mailed, for it seemed they wanted to be as quiet as possible. They had dismounted at the head of the trail, where the ground rose and grew stony. They’d led their horses then, with the beasts’ noses wrapped in cloth or covered with a hand to muffle the sound of their snorting. They did not go by with a ringing of bridles and bits tonight. Those had been quieted, too, with slim leather casings on every metal piece that might chime.
Jeratt noted, too, that these were only human Knights. No draconians were with them, for those creatures had no skill at running quiet. The beast-men were gone to the highway or were perhaps still at the tavern.
When the Knights came closest, Jeratt marked the first rider and knew him by his white face and his dead eyes. The Knights went up the trail, and the forest settled back to its usual sounds, the rustle of small things in the brush, the sudden flight of an owl, the sound of something caught in sharp talons and dying. Jeratt looked south toward the crossroad and the little village where Lord Thagol had lately come to rule. He was a half-elf, and that meant he shared in much of the heritage of his elf parent As could any elf, he was able to see the outline of a creature walking in darkness, the red glow of the heat of its body. Its life force, some said. In the full darkness of a forest night, Jeratt looked and smiled in satisfaction when he saw the distant flicker-only here and there-of a thin red glow, the outline of other elves. There was Kerian, and with her, her warriors, slipping silently, a force the size of his own running south to the crossroad. As he looked, he saw half their number break away, the light of their bodies gliding around to the west in such a way that the two groups would find themselves in position to attack their prey from front and behind.