As to why men were being used to pull the plows instead of oxen, well, the smell of roasting beef coming up the bluff certainly provided a reasonable explanation. There were no oxen now, and the horses had probably been confiscated to serve the army.
How many of the villagers had been recaptured? Enough, evidently, to provide field-slaves for their conquerors.
Darian found his hands clenched on his bow without any memory of reaching for it. He could sneak in closer, get a position up in one of the trees, and start picking off guards. They weren’t wearing armor; they’d be easy shots -
I could kill all the guards I see and they could escape, I could lead them to the Hawkbrothers -
Right. He could kill all the guards that he could see. How many more men were there that he couldn’t see? If they’d gotten to the point this quickly of killing and eating the oxen - tough meat at best -
Anger flooded him next, anger at the Hawkbrothers. Why hadn’t they told him the truth?
It faded as quickly as it came. They hadn’t told him, perhaps, because they didn’t know themselves. It was entirely possible that this was the first day the villagers had been put to work in the fields. Why should the enemy have put them out? It would have been more logical for them to take their captives away; sell them, perhaps, or put them to work in their own fields back in the northern mountains.
Unless, of course, they had decided to stay.
He couldn’t do anything here, and this was information that the Hawkbrothers didn’t have. He had to get back, as quickly as he could.
It’s not cowardice to go. I can’t do anything by myself, and Stariall and the rest need to know what’s happened here.
Carefully, he backed the horse into the heavier cover before he mounted. He considered his next move carefully. He hadn’t really been paying attention when the horse took off on its own. Somehow, if there were sentries (and there probably were) the horse had managed to thread its way past them without being spotted. So if he could retrace the horse’s path, he could do the same.
Finally, finally something he could do right! He felt a grin stretch his mouth, an expression that had not been on his lips since his parents died. If? Say rather, how quickly. The day he could not track a shod horse in the soft earth of the forest floor would be a day when he renounced his heritage and asked to be apprenticed to a clerk!
He had to cast around a bit before he found the clear trail; it had gotten a little muddled when he finally got control of the reins back from the stubborn beast. But once he found the trail, the rest was easy.
He soon saw how the horse had gotten up onto the bluff without his realizing it; the beast had wound a zigzag course up the slope, taking the ascent so gradually that he hadn’t known they were climbing. He was tempted to cut straight down, but reminded himself that the horse had managed to avoid the sentries this way; it wouldn’t be a good idea to take what appeared to be a shorter path only to run into one of the enemy.
The horse didn’t want to be ridden away from its mates, and fought him for a good long time, which didn’t make finding the path more difficult, but did take up more valuable time. It was sunset by the time that Darian got to a point where he was fairly certain that there were no enemies to watch out for. By then, the horse was tired enough to stop fighting, which was just as well, because Darian’s temper was frayed to a thin strand, and he was in no mood for further nonsense.
With a clear path ahead of them, Darian finally got some revenge; he smacked the horse’s rump with his unstrung bow, startling it into a tired gallop, and headed for the Hawkbrother encampment as fast as the miserable beast would go.
Weary and aching, Darian found himself the center of another Council, but now he understood what was being said, which was certainly an improvement over the last time.
Hweel had met him outside the valley, and Snowfire at the entrance; Darian had feared anger or reproach for being gone so long, but to his surprise, Snowfire had been perfectly calm right up until the moment he had gotten within speaking distance and blurted, “I’ve been to Errold’s Grove! They’re all slaves!”
Snowfire’s expression had changed completely in that moment, and Darian found himself swept off the horse and into the middle of a Council that was assembled so hastily that people actually came running to the clearing while pulling on tunics or holding half-braided hair in one hand. Hertasi simply appeared with boots, shirts, food, hair-thongs, or anything else that had been forgotten, and vanished again. One of them left a bowl of stew, bread, and tea at Darian’s hand without him ever actually seeing the food left there, just the flash of a departing tailtip.
As firelight flickered on the concerned faces of his Hawkbrother hosts, he alternated bites of stew and gulps of tea with words of explanation.
The only person missing from this council session was Starfall, but although no one said anything, Darian guessed from what wasn’t said that Starfall had more than enough problems of his own.
Finally the others stopped firing questions at him and began a worried discussion among themselves. Darian turned his own attention to the remains of his meal, too tired and hungry to really think of anything else. As he wiped the bowl with his bread, Wintersky came and sat on a rock beside him.
“I hope you don’t think we deceived you, Dar’ian,” the young man said, leaning forward earnestly. “After the way that Kel and Hweel were caught by those magic-sniffing creatures, we didn’t want to risk anything or anyone that might set off more such guardians, and someone kept us from being able to use scrying to set a watch on the place magically. And it didn’t seem advisable to risk being seen ourselves - the enemy doesn’t know we’re here, and if he did, he might decide to attack. We were certain that all the barbarians had were houses, some stock, but never people. If we’d had any idea that those barbarians had your people, we’d have risked more to find out for certain, then to do something for them - “
“I know!” Darian interrupted, just as earnestly. He scratched his head, and gave Wintersky an anxious smile. “I was mad at first, but, well, I had a lot of time to think on the ride back. I trust your word; I know that - if you say you would have done something, if you’d known what was going on, then you would have.”
“We should have made sure.”
Darian looked up, and saw Snowfire standing over him, his eyes expressionless and flat, shadows flitting over his face as the light from the fire shifted and changed. “We should have made sure,” the Hawkbrother repeated harshly. “That was a mistake on our part. I’m sorry, Dar’ian.”
Darian shrugged awkwardly. “Wintersky was explaining - and I’d kind of figured some of it out myself. You thought everything was all right. And you and Starfall were busy,” he reminded his mentor shyly. “You told me yourself, you have to fix the magic so no one else can get at it - “ Suddenly, the thought he’d set aside last night came back to him. “Snowfire, how are you doing that? Are you making just - uhm - what’s the word - nodes the way they used to be?”
Snowfire’s expression changed, and he looked down at Darian with speculation. “Not exactly. Why?”
Darian licked his lips, and wondered just how stupid he was going to sound. After all, compared to what the Hawkbrothers knew, he didn’t know much of anything about magic, really. But still. . . .
“There’s definitely a mage with the enemy, right?” Darian asked. “I mean with them, at Errold’s Grove, not just working with them or behind the attack.”
Snowfire nodded. “I cannot imagine how they could be blocking our scrying if there wasn’t.”
“And the mage is going to want that power - he’d have to want to grab for it.” He bit his lip, hoping that he wasn’t going to make a total fool of himself. “And I guess if there was a big source of power, he’d try to get to it, right?” Before Snowfire could answer that, he asked another question. “And there are way too many of those enemy soldiers for us to fight, right?”
Snowfire looked both guilty and relieved. “F
ar too many for us to take in direct confrontation,” he acknowledged. “Yet - I do not know how we are to free your people, otherwise.”
“But what - what if you baited a big trap for them?” Darian asked. “What if you made a big source of magic, made it show up all of a sudden? Wouldn’t the mage send out men, maybe a lot of them, to try and take it over?”
“Or loot it,” Wintersky suggested, his sleepy eyes brightening. “If you moved it around a little, he might get the idea it’s portable and send his fighters to loot it for him. He might think it was an artifact someone had found.”
“And I know traps, lots of traps,” Darian offered in eager triumph, holding out one hand as if he was offering his knowledge as a gift. “My parents and I, that’s what we did. A lot of the animals we trapped were as big as humans, or bigger. We could take a lot of the enemy out with traps, without ever needing to send anybody closer than bowshot. You set a trap that blocks them from going back the way they came, then you make sure that they can’t get back without having to go through all your other traps. That’s called a channeling trap. Maybe we could even fix things up so that the enemy has to divide up into small groups. Why, if we did that, we could just have one bowman up in a tree near each trap, and what the trap didn’t take care of, he could!”
Snowfire looked at him, and beamed with the most wonderful expression Darian had ever seen.
Respect.
And what was more, others among the Hawkbrothers, who had overheard the conversation, were looking at him in the same way - and those who had been too engrossed in their own conversation to hear were whispering questions to those who had. In another few moments, they were all looking at him that way, and silence replaced the murmur of voices in the clearing.
“Just how many traps do you mean, when you say lots of traps, Dar’ian?” asked Rainwind, a scout only a little older than most of the rest. He stood up and joined Snowfire, a man who was a little more weathered, a little shorter, and a little stockier than Darian’s mentor. “We know some, obviously, but trapping is not the way we usually deal with things. We are more direct and, to be honest, more accustomed to having a superior force. What traps we do use are for snaring game, not stopping soldiers - “ He shrugged.
Darian blinked, and made a quick mental survey of the traps he and his parents had used for large, dangerous, clever animals. “I know by heart maybe six or eight major different kinds that would work against a man - or several men at a time,” he said finally. “Maybe more; we might be able to adapt others I know by disguising them, or we could combine some. I grew up making traps in this part of the Pelagiris. Some of what we caught were probably smarter than these barbarians.”
Someone whistled through his teeth with admiration.
“So you’d already know how to adapt the designs to use the local cover!” Snowfire exclaimed, his whole body taking on a new animation.
Darian nodded. “Entirely using found materials, too,” he said earnestly. “We only carried basic tools with us when we went out trapping, and adapted what we found at the different locations. The most we ever carried were some metal triggering devices and those were mostly just time savers. I can show you some examples of the traps I know if you can stand to watch. I’m not just talking about different kinds of pit-traps. I know how to set a pit-trap to get a lot of people instead of just one or two, I know of snares and drop-nets that will get more than one, a couple kinds of channeling-traps, deadfalls with wood, deadfalls with rock, ankle-traps, leg-breakers, foot-piercers - “ He began rattling off the kinds of traps that could be set in such a way that wary enemy soldiers wouldn’t see them until it was far too late, and the eyes of his listeners either widened or narrowed according to the nature of the listener. The others rose to stand around him, until once again he was the center of a circle of listeners. “Trapping is just a different kind of hunting. My father said that it was hunting while absent, using the ultimate in disguise - not actually being there!”
“If we can do this - if we could lure a good number of their people out - “ Snowfire murmured to himself, as his eyes widened.
“If you can lure them out and we can channel them past the bluff, or through a couple of other places where there’s only one way to go, I can show you where and how to rig a deadfall that will block their way back!” Darian assured him. “There is one place where the river is very deep and dangerous and the path beside it is narrow, and if you can weaken one of the overhangs, we can drop a large piece of the bluff just behind them at that point. Then they’ll have to go the way we channel them.”
“And that will be a gauntlet of further traps.” Snowfire’s lips thinned with satisfaction. “It is cruel, perhaps, but have they not earned such an ordeal?”
“Yes!” Darian responded fiercely. Nodding heads showed that the others agreed with him.
“Show us!” demanded one of the others; paper and a charcoal stick appeared when Rainwind left the group and returned with them in his hands, and Snowfire conjured a mage-light to give Darian brighter and steadier illumination than firelight. Darian hunched over the first sheet, drawing a map.
“Here, here’s the village, and here’s the bluff, and here’s where the bluff goes up to the riverbed; far enough from the village that they just can’t call for help.” He sketched in the landmarks with a careful hand. “Now, if we rig a deadfall here, when it’s triggered, it’ll completely block the way back. It’s all sandstone through there; too dangerous to climb the rockpile, or at least that’s what they’ll think. Their only choice will be to climb the cliff, swim the river, or keep going.”
“What’s to stop them from swimming the river?” Wintersky asked. “Some of them did that when they attacked your village and the bridge burned.”
“Us,” said Ayshen, as he strolled into the firelight, his sharp teeth set in a grim smile. He had one of his enormous cooking knives in one hand. “Forgive me, Snowfire, but this may be the first time in my memory that there has been a combat where hertasi might be of service. We can swim like fish - how do you think we catch them, so big and so fresh? - and any clumsy human foolish enough to be in the same water with us will not live to learn his mistake.”
“Or if he does, it will not be for long,” added another hertasi in his shadow, who then ducked shyly out of sight.
“If they stay out of sight, the enemy won’t even know what’s attacking the swimmers,” Rainwind pointed out. “They’ve never been here before, for all they know, that part of the river could be inhabited by gigantic, man-killing Changed fish. They’ll have no reason to think of traps at that point,”
:I fancy we can be of service in the woods.: Tyrsell was nowhere in sight, but it was obvious he had been listening to the Council talk. :Exactly how, I am not yet sure, but certainly we will be useful in some capacity. I will have to see the territory, first.:
“If nothing else, perhaps the dyheli could drive the enemy into further traps,” offered Daystorm, a female scout. “It would be useful to have them in a panic, fleeing from the sound of many hooves. And again - it would just look like animals. It seems to me - “
“Go on,” Snowfire urged, when the other hesitated.
“Well,” she said. “It seems to me that we ought to keep things looking like it’s accident or Changed animals as long as possible. If we do that, they won’t actually be looking for traps for a while.”
“Eventually - “ Snowfire began.
“Oh, eventually, a trap will look like a trap, of course,” she admitted. “But it would be very useful to have them thinking that fate - or the Forest - has suddenly turned against them.”
“And therrre isss, of courrrssse, myssself,” Kel put in gravely, sounding quite calm - but the pinning of his eyes gave away his excitement. His wings were extended a little, as if he wanted badly to be in the air at this very moment.
“Not if they have bows,” Snowfire replied sternly. “You are hardly arrow-proof. And in the air you are a very large target, especially in
the day. So was Skandranon.”
Kel’s only reply was a snort, but it was obvious that Snowfire was going to stand firm. “I am the scout-leader, and you are tacitly working under my command, Kel,” he reminded the gryphon. He didn’t add anything else, but Kel sighed.
“Very well,” the gryphon said, giving in. “Commanderrr.”
“We have an advantage,” Snowfire continued. “Many of us are Master-level mages; we can help create these traps with magic at a low enough level that working this magic will not immediately attract the attention of the enemy, especially if we shield what we are doing. So we can work quickly, much more quickly than if we did this with hands alone.”
Darian studied his crude map. “I wish we could get them all with a single deadfall here,” he muttered, and looked up hopefully. “Could you bring down that much rock?”
Snowfire sighed. “Before the Storms, it would have been possible, with a waiting crack-spell, which would create a split at an angle that would cause a slide, when it was triggered. Now - no. That kind of spell, on that scale, wouldn’t remain stable long enough with the way mage-energy is in flux - it depends upon tension through its length. We will probably be able to catch the tailmost rank with what crack-spells we can set, but no more.” Now the Hawkbrother joined Darian in close examination of the map. “It might even be worthwhile to do nothing more than block their way. As Daystorm pointed out, so long as they think the fall of rock is accidental, they will simply carry on with their original mission, and worry about finding a new way back when they’ve obtained what they were sent after. We don’t want them swimming the river, of course, but other than that, we could leave them alone for a while. We could lead them quite a merry chase before we start eliminating them with traps and tricks.”
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