Before his knife had so much as touched the outside of its armor, the scout burst.
No blood spurted, nor did the thing cry out. It simply fell outward into pieces, with the only sounds first the crack of bones and then the muffled thumps of flesh against dirt. One hand dropped from Amris’s neck. He reached up blindly, staring instead at a lump of meat on the ground with the broken ends of ribs sticking out of it, and pried the other away. Breathing was not yet a simple matter, not with his armor broken as it was, but he could manage it again.
Full awareness took him once more at the wetthunkof a blade entering flesh. Drawing his sword now that he had range, Amris turned and saw the other scout falling to the ground in front of Darya, while she smoothly pulled her sword out of its chest.
The gem was dim.
His mind held only himself and Darya, one more than Amris was used to, but was still screamingly empty.
Ice went down his spine. “Gerant—”
Darya’s eyes widened, but she stared at Amris rather than down at her sword, which made him reluctantly believe her quick response. “Is fine. Will return. This happens. What about you? You sound like you’ve been dead.”
“Have I not, in a sense?” he asked, giddy from many sources of relief and shock alike.
“This is a fine time to get metaphysical.”
“Some would argue there’s no better,” Amris said, and then, more soberly, “but truly, lady, I think no more than my voice will suffer, and that not long.” He waved a hand at the corpses. “Their fellows are a greater worry. Before long, they’ll know the riders’ mission failed, and come back this way.”
“True.” Darya wiped her blade and returned it to its sheath, then looked up at Amris with a wolf’s smile. “Wouldn’t it be nice of us to save them the trip?”
* * *
Amris smiled more grimly than any man Darya had met. His face was made for it, all leanness and sharp lines. The height and the armor didn’t hurt either. Even amused, he always looked like he had his mind on some greater purpose—but when he drew his sword and nodded in answer to her joke, Darya recognized the anticipation in his grin.
“Shall I take the vanguard,” he asked, “or be the unexpected reinforcement—or would you rather take them together?”
“Shame to waste a big shiny target and a lot of cover. You think you can hold them off long enough for me to take a couple shots?”
“I’m certain of very little in this time and place,” said Amris, with another, more ironic smile, “butthatI’d vouch for in any company.”
“Good enough for me.” Darya peered up into the trees until she saw what she was searching for. “Go on ahead, then.”
“And you?”
“I may not have arms like those things”—she jerked her chin toward the dead scouts—“but I manage.” With that, as she’d been planning, Darya leapt up and pulled herself to the lowest-hanging branch of a nearby oak. It took her weight easily, and so did the one above it, and she didn’t need or want to go higher. She had to keep Amris in her sights, after all.
Before she swung herself over to the next tree in line, and before Amris headed back up along the path, she saw him give her an ancient warrior’s bow: sword in one hand, the other at shoulder height. Darya laughed under her breath and flicked a salute back at him, but she didn’t have time to notice whether he saw or not.
She was off.
The forest at the side of the road spread out before her, a green and crowded road in itself. Undisturbed age had let the trees grow close together, particularly at the height she’d reached and upward. Light-footed, Darya ran down the branch she’d chosen, circled the trunk, and dashed outward along a second limb, following the course of the road back the way the scouts had gone.
Sitha’s blessing was no good among the trees, since mortal hands hadn’t done much for their creation. Darya trusted in her training and in being generally light and nimble. She listened for the creak that would tell her a branch was breaking, and paid attention to the feel of each one through her boots, but did so at the bottom of her mind, where it was as much instinct as actual knowledge.
Patches of sun below her glinted now and again with metal. Amris was there, moving up on the target as they’d agreed. A spare thought crossed Darya’s mind: the hardship of running in metal armor, after all they’d done that day, and the hope the man wouldn’t simply collapse.
All else was the moment: the smell of pine sap and the richer green scent of the oak leaves she crushed when she grabbed the next branch. Bark scraped her palms. She paid no mind to the pain. Darya looked, leapt between trees, and barely let her feet hit a slender limb that wouldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds under her weight—but she used it to push off and grab the next in line, pulling herself up and over once again.
When she glimpsed the twistedmen and the korvin up ahead, the moment shifted from motion to stillness. The music paused.
Bow to your partners.
The branch of her current fir wasn’t wide enough to lie on, but she could, and did, drop and wrap her legs around it—she was far enough up that they wouldn’t be visible from below. Slowly, not wanting to dislodge herself or shake the trees enough to draw the scouts’ attention, Darya lifted her bow from her back, brought it around, and drew an arrow.
Looking down, she saw she was just in time.
* * *
