Page 134 of The Boy Bride

Out of the woods on the north side of the trail, exactly where Fang was trying to go, flew an arrow. It hissed past Lill’s face, uncomfortably close, and the man who had hold of him let go with a yelp of shock. The arrow had gone through his upper arm. Lill had a moment of that slowed-down battlefield clarity that the masters used to talk about, in which he recognized the green feathers that had been used to make the fletches, the distinctive way they had been cut, Khatu’s signature style.

As he was noticing this, Lill was dropping to a crouch on the trail, hand going to the knife holster on his thigh. Somehow he had time for the thought, This is the second time I’ve been shot at by Khatu, as he drew two knives and threw them. He hit both targets: the two men carrying the torches. One of them screamed; the other made a soft oof noise. Neither was a killing blow. One of the men wore leather armour that had taken most of the impact; the other had been hit in the thigh.

The friendly dog, whose master had dropped its lead, began trying to lick Lill’s face. Fang’s master was crouching warily beside his dog. Smart. Lill pushed the friendly dog’s muzzle away with his free hand. A memory flashed through his mind: a beating he’d taken once in the Order for hesitating to kill a guard dog in a training exercise. Another arrow whizzed across the trail, missing whoever it was aimed at.

The man with the leather armour had wrenched Lill’s knife out of his breastplate and drawn his sword. He plunged toward Lill, running low across the trail.

“Go into the woods!” Fang’s master yelled at him. “What are you doing?”

The man with the armour knew what he was doing. He wore a leather helmet along with his breastplate and greaves, making him a very bad target. Lill straightened up and skipped backward, nudging the friendly dog away with his foot. It yapped encouragingly at him. He drew his own sword. Please, Khatu, have the sense not to shoot at me, he thought.

The armoured man was big, nearly Vanu’s height and more than Vanu’s breadth. Lill waited until the man was almost upon him, lifting his sword with clumsy confidence, and went in with a low attack, under his guard, into the unprotected join of his armour. He’d tried that same attack with Vanu that morning and been slammed back with baffling speed and—even more baffling—an encouraging smile.

This time the bafflement was all on the other side. Lill landed the blow and drew back, yanking his sword free. The armoured man didn’t seem to know what had happened as he crumpled sideways and thumped down on his knees on the trail, dropping his sword and clutching his side.

Another of Khatu’s arrows wobbled ridiculously through the light of the dropped torches in the middle of the trail. Lill glanced quickly over his opponents. The man with the knife in his thigh was out of commission, as was the armoured man Lill had just stabbed. The one Khatu had shot had snapped off the arrow and was struggling to draw his sword with his non-dominant hand. The friendly dog, half-hiding behind Lill’s legs, laid back its ears and growled at him.

“Drop your sword, and I won’t hurt you,” Lill told him.

The man got his sword out of sheath and snorted derisively.

“Leave him!” Fang’s master called. “He’s not our problem!”

“Help me,” groaned the man Lill had stabbed.

The man with the arrow in his arm ignored them and came at Lill, swinging his sword in a loose, flashy attack. Lill drew a knife and hurled it with full force, and it hit the man in the eye.

“We surrender!” yelled Fang’s master, clutching his dog’s collar, as his companion crashed to the ground.

Khatu chose that moment to shoot again, hitting the man Lill had already hit in the thigh, this time in the shoulder.

“Fucking stop that!” Lill shouted in frustration. He pointed his sword at Fang’s master. “Take your friends and your dogs and get out of here.”

The man Lill had stabbed managed to stagger to his feet, and between him and Fang’s master, they got the third surviving member of their party up and limped off down the hill toward Dukka. Lill went to kick dirt over the discarded torches and extinguish them. He heard a snuffling behind him and realized that the friendly dog was still there.

“You’re not very good at obeying orders, are you?” he muttered, looking down at the dog. “I guess I’m not either, any more.”

He looked up and around toward the dark edge of the forest. He’d been expecting Khatu to come bursting out of it for some time now, and he was beginning to get a bad feeling about why that hadn’t happened. Now he heard some loud crunching of undergrowth. He ran toward the source of the noise, the friendly dog bounding after him.

“Lill!” Khatu was limping badly and panting, grabbing at tree branches for support, his bow still in his hand. “Snow in the lowlands, what was that? That was purest bee-fuckery! Since when have you known how to do all that?”

“Since long before you met me. You’re hurt?”

“Hey? Oh, yeah—no, it’s nothing. Bit of a sword cut. That’s why I hid instead of running. I managed to grab my bow and quiver when I got away,” he added proudly. “But I only had a few arrows left.”

“Where?”

“Uh, mostly out there, now.”

Lill shook his head impatiently. “No, the sword cut. Where are you hurt?”

“Oh, just my leg. It’s nothing much.”

This, which Lill didn’t believe at first, did seem to be substantially true. Khatu had been injured in his escape attempt, with a shallow cut to his left thigh, but he had tied up the wound with his sash and didn’t seem to be losing blood any longer. He claimed he could make it back up the mountain.

“You’ve made a friend,” he said, reaching down to pet the friendly dog.

“It’s not going to try to follow us, is it?” said Lill, appalled at the idea of trying to bring both Khatu and the dog up the mountain with any degree of stealth.