I am the bow and the arrow, the hunter and the prey…
The bow came up as she drew to the ear in a single smooth motion, and the cloak fell away from her arms. A slight creaking came from it as her arms and shoulders and gut levered against the force of the recurve's stave, stretching the sinew on the back, compressing the laminated horn on the belly and bending the slice of yew between them. The string lifted from the final curve at the tips, the bow bent into a deep C, and the arrow slid back through the cutout in the riser. The deer began its stiff-legged leap even as the string rolled off her fingertips.
Snap. The string lashed the hard leather bracer on her forearm, and there was a quarter second's blurring streak through the air. Thunk.
That was the distinctive wet sound of a broadhead striking flesh. The quick-release toggle of the war cloak snapped under her fist and she cleared the viburnum in a single raking stride, ready to chase or shoot again. Starlings rose in a chittering flock from the trees around her as she moved, hundreds wheeling in perfect unison and coasting downward to new perches. She reached for a new arrow; an injured animal had to be run down and given the mercy stroke or a hunter would lose all luck, and you couldn't always count on a quick kill. This time the deer took three staggering steps and collapsed, its limbs kicking for a moment; then it stretched out its neck and went limp.
"Good!" Ritva said, wiping off her bow and sliding it into the case against the wet.
She stopped and gathered up her cloak, slid her sword through the buckled frog on her belt and slipped her buckler onto the spring-loaded clip on the sheath. The deer's eyes were blank by the time she arrived, beaded with drops of the rain that pooled like tears. Her arrow had sunk to the fletching behind the ribs on the left side, angling sharply forward and either striking the heart or severing the big veins next to it as the razor-sharp triangular head punched in. The death had been very quick; a single moment of surprise and pain, and then the dark.
"I'm sorry, brother," she murmured, glad of that.
She bent and passed a hand over the deer's eyes, and then her own; touched a finger to the blood and then to her forehead.
"Thank you for your gift of life. Speak well of me to the Guardians. Go now and play beneath the forever trees on the mountainsides of the Undying Land, where no evil comes, until you are reborn."
To the forest: "Thank you, Horned Lord, Master of the Beasts! Bring this my brother's spirit home to Her who is Mother-of-All. Witness that I take from Your bounty in need, not wantonness, knowing that for me also the Hour of the Hunter shall come, soon or late. Earth must be fed."
Then she bent and caught the deer above the hocks, heaving backwards and pumping her legs to keep it moving, and wheezing a little too; the carcass weighed as much as she did, and she wasn't a small woman. You needed a tree to gralloch a deer properly. Hanging it up by the hind legs made it drain thoroughly and it also made it easier to gut and quarter.
Also she wanted to get out of the open meadow; they hadn't seen any sign of pursuit for a while, but these alien mountains weren't the friendly confines of Mithrilwood, or even the further Cascades, where you could kindle a little fire and eat the liver fresh as was ancient hunter's right. Spit ran into her mouth at the thought; there was nothing like liver or kidneys right out of the beast, grilled on a hot twig fire with no relish but a little salt.
"If you could get a fire going in this misery," she muttered to herself.
A trickle of skin-rippling cold rain ran down inside her collar. The rest of her clothes were just damp, but they'd be wet soon if this went on. You got used to that if you spent a lot of time outdoors, but that didn't make it any fun. And it leached the heat out of your body, which meant you had to eat more.
Then her head came up beneath the shadow of the lodgepole she'd selected, and she frowned as she blew on her fingers to keep them supple; you didn't want your grip to slip when you were using a skinning knife.
What's the matter? she thought. Is it the weather?
The low clouds hid the peaks eastward, and even the glacier-polished granite upper slopes of this broad valley. And yes, it smelled like it was going to get a lot colder; maybe snow, maybe heavy snow. They were well above five thousand feet here, and it could be dangerous, even though she wasn't all that far from camp. But it wasn't that which made the skin between her shoulder blades itch.
As if absently, she whistled softly as she cut a branch for a spacer, trimmed it to points on both sides, ran those between hock and tendon, tied a rope to it and hoisted it up. There was no reply from Mary…
Uh-oh. Something is wrong!
Her senses flared out, but the rain was stronger now, a white curtain of noise, blurring sight and drowning scent. Four trees big enough to hide a man stood close by.
It was the smell that warned her, even in the damp; a sudden shift in the wind brought the scent of woodsmoke soaked into fur and leather, and the distinctive taint of wool cloth full of old dried sweat wet again with the rain. She'd just started her whirl and lunge when arms long and cable strong clamped around her from behind. The man whipped her sideways, and her wrist struck the tree trunk painfully. The knife skittered off, pinwheeling into the mass of dead leaves and fallen needles.
Ritva hunched her shoulders and threw her weight downward, but the arms gripped harder and lifted her off the ground-the man was strong as a bear, and tall as one too, and knew what he was doing. A half-dozen thin red braids wound with eagle feathers and bits of turquoise on the ends swirled around her face as they struggled. She whipped her heel backwards, and heard a grunt as the boot connected with a knee.
"Keep still, woman!" a voice grunted in her ear, harshly accented and smelling of stale breath and unscrubbed teeth. "I win badges for wrestling!"
Ritva did keep still for an instant-and then whipped her right foot back up over her own shoulder as she felt him adjust his grip. You had to be very limber to do that, but it took him a little by surprise. The toe of the boot didn't crack into his face; he'd pulled his head aside. But it did graze along his jaw, and that made the arms slacken a bit. Not enough to wrench free; they were so bear tight she was having trouble breathing, but enough so that she could get her left hand down along her sword sheath.
No point in trying to draw it, she thought. But…
Her fingers closed on the grip of her buckler. She stripped it out of the clip, swayed her hips to one side, and did her best to smash the hard, hard edge into her unknown assailant's groin. Again he was too fast, but the edge hit his hip bone instead, and even without much leverage the thump was enough to paralyze him with pain for an instant. In that instant she stamped down on the instep of one foot, and felt something yield. She was wearing laced boots, and he apparently had some sort of soft moccasin on instead.
A grunt of pain and bad breath by her face, and she wrenched herself free. The motion turned into a whirling circle-in-place, but as she turned her hand snapped down on the hilt of her sword and swept it out. The steel swung in a blurring arch of silver in the gray rain as she turned, but the man suddenly wasn't there; he'd flung himself back and pivoted in the air above the waist-high swing of the longsword, then backflipped again, hands down and then snapping upright. His tomahawk and long knife flicked into his hands.
"Ieston esgerad gweth lin!" she snarled in baffled fury that tasted like vinegar at the back of her mouth. "And then I'll stuff them down your throat!"
Nobody had a right to be that fast, except her and her sister. Well, perhaps Aunt Astrid, and Rudi, and by reputation Grand Constable d'Ath. And nobody whatsoever had any right to be able to sneak up on her that way. Nobody had, not for years.