Willow retreated into a corner of the cart, huddling, head down, in her robes. Silver Snow caught her wrist.
“Hand me my arrows!” she commanded.
Her own archers, she saw, had assumed a winged formation that would catch the bandits in a lethal crossfire, if the official’s escort drove them between the wings. The only problem—and it was a significant one—was that her own cart lay too close to the path of the necessary charge.
In that press, surely no one would note arrows flying from a direction from which no one would expect them to come. At least, she hoped so. She aimed carefully, trying to pick off a bandit who snarled and thrust at one of the oxen. Then the fellow was scrabbling at his eye, the crimson of blood gouting out over the scarlet of his eyebrow as he sought to pull out her arrow. She discovered suddenly that, even though her quarry might happily have killed or violated her, killing him was far different from killing a beast. Her hand shook; she missed her next shot and was speedily ashamed. Her supply of arrows was strictly limited; she needed a steady hand.
Even the official, she saw, armed with a fine sword, had entered the fight. A mounted bandit, attracted by the richness of the lord’s sable robes, kicked his horse toward the official and swung savagely at him. Carefully Silver Snow aimed, but Ao Li intervened with a shrewd thrust of a spear, to bear the choking man to the ground. At his gesture, two troopers dragged the bandit away from the fight.
That captive must have been the leader. For at his taking, the others panicked as might a hill of ants stirred by a stick. They broke from the rough order in which they had fought, now charging in, cutting, slashing, and shooting with the ferocity of cornered wolves.
Willow’s eyes were bright, and she yapped again, smiling when animals erupted from shadows to slash at the bandits’ ankles, skillfully evading the blows of the men whom they brought down.
“They will be killed!” protested Silver Snow.
“Elder Sister, many will die willingly to protect their kits, or to avenge those already lost. They too are soldiers . . . there!” She pointed, and Silver Snow drew bow and fired at the bandit who had slashed down to cripple Ao Li’s sword-arm, so that he stood weaponless.
“Get back!” shouted Silver Snow, but, of course, the old man would not. Seizing the spear of a fallen bandit in his left hand, he advanced until two of the bandits rode at him from opposite directions. Their double attack brought him down.
Silver Snow blinked furiously. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes, hotter even than her heated cheeks. For Ao Li’s men, his death was a signal as potent as the capture of the bandit chief had been to his followers. The soldiers pushed ahead relentlessly, their faces grim as they deployed in a well-drilled formation that the bandits could not match, nor from which the wretches could not retreat.
“This is death country,” murmured Silver Snow.
“Aye.” Willow pressed closer to her mistress, offering comfort, just as a beast reassures a kit.
“No!” Silver Snow gasped. “It is not just what we see about us. Those whom we fight must have a line of retreat or they are speedily swallowed in death country.”
“More from your dusty scrolls, mistress?” Willow asked. “Yes. Sun Tzu taught that an army should never engage in death country, meaning any ground from which their enemies were unable to retreat.”
-Willow nodded. “So is truth spoken. Flave I not seen a vixen backed up by hounds against a wall turn and fight, killing one hound and forcing the other to let her flee to her earth? We cannot let the soldiers’ blind courage drive these bandits against such a wall.”
She cried out once again in that strange yapping tongue, something that sounded like a string of commands. The power of fox-spirits over the friends-in-fur became manifest as the animals charged from cover, distracting soldiers and bandits dike with their sortie and their equally sudden and inexplicable retreat. Willow had no intention of permitting her friends to be forced into death country of their own.
“The bay horses,” reminded Willow.
That was right. Were not some among the guards spies who deserved no better fate than that of their scarlet-browed conspirators? Creeping to another corner of her cart, Silver Snow peered out just in time to see a man wearing the livery of the escort single out a soldier to slay. She drew and shot, and Willow nodded approvingly.
“Now, that one,” she pointed with a sharp-nailed finger.
“Quick, Willow! Another arrow!” A mounted bandit— one of the men who had killed Ao Li had assailed the official who had seized the reins of a riderless mount. Silver Snow nocked, drew, and shot in one smooth, practiced motion. The bandit fell, doubling over his chest from which an arrow jutted, sunk in almost to the fletching. She had not known that she possessed the strength to send an arrow that deep . . . Ao Li, that death was for you! Do you see it? Do you approve?
However she was not sure that he would. He had spent his life serving the father and his death serving the daughter. Still, he might not have approved a lady’s taking part in a battle.
“Watch the bay horses,” whispered Willow.
The soldiers were pressing forward once again. Then the official shouted, and Silver Snow nodded approvingly. He, too, had read Sun Tzu and wished to risk no more men. The bandits turned and fled, leaving their dead and wounded behind them.
Now that the battle was over, Silver Snow tried to hide her bow beneath the cushions and quilts in the cart, but she was shaking so violently that she allowed Willow to push her down into the nest meant to keep them warm. Her hands trembled, and the bow dropped from them. Runnels of sweat ran beneath her robes, but still she shivered from the cold. She pressed her hands against her burning cheeks, unaware that now she presented the very image of a delicate lady overborne by violence. Her bow—it must be hid! And she mastered herself enough to thrust it beneath a cushion.
Outside, she could hear the official’s now-hoarse voice, commanding that the bandits be bound, that the ones among them who were wounded have those wounds bandaged until they could be sentenced, she was certain, to one of the more painful methods of execution. Hearing the groans and cries of wounded soldiers and wounded bandits alike, she decided that there were far too many methods of inflicting pain and death.
Her father had spent a lifetime in such actions, well learned in such methods. Yet he was not mad, not brutal with others. Truly, he was even more worthy of veneration than she, in what she now perceived to be sheltered innocence, had been capable of understanding. Perhaps she could write to tell him so. He was owed that tribute too.
Then, lamenting, a troop of men in faded garments and old leather armor marched slowly toward her. Several clearly struggled to hold themselves proudly, not out of deference, surely, for her, whom they had known since she was old enough to shoot at a mark or ride a pony. Rather, they marched to honor the man whose body they laid down before the cart.
“Ao Li.” Silver Snow’s eyes filled with tears. The old troop leader’s face still wore a look of anger and surprise, though blood trickling from his mouth and nose turned his well-known (and to her, always kindly) features into a demon-mask. His open eyes gazed up at the darkening sky *What would her father have done? This far away from him, she must stand in the place of Ao Li’s general, for whom he had died. Drawing a deep, shuddering breath, she snatched up a veil and stepped down from the sanctuary of the ox-cart.
She knelt at the guardsman’s side, put out one hand, and closed his staring eyes. “I avenged you, old friend,” she murmured.