“What are you gonna do, Kerian?” Jeratt asked.
She told him, and he said this would mean she’d not be able to stay long in this forest now.
“We didn’t plan to stay forever, you know that Ander’s waiting at the falls. The others are waiting.”
He knew this, and his approving grin flashed cold and bright. Bayel nodded, and he said he thought the idea was good. Kerian looked past them to the darkness where her Night People stood or sat, checking their weapons.
“It’s time,” she said. “Jeratt, take your warriors. Bayel, you and yours come with me. We’ll meet back here when it’s done.” She looked keenly at one, then the other. “Any questions?”
These two, who with her and Felan had been the heart of the Night People, had no questions.
“Then go,” Kerian said. “Remember who we do this for.”
Once they were four. Now they were three. This was for Felan.
They owned the forest, Kerian and her Night People. They knew every trail, each game path. They knew where the streams ran, where the deer gathered at dawn. They had run here as children, as youths hunting. They flowed through the forest this night like silent dreams, men and women with soot-black faces, warriors dressed in leathers like hunters, hung with the weapons of war. Jeratt divided his force, sending ten into hiding west and east of their camp. Seven went south with him, slipping between the trees, and they went so silently that the nine Knights riding by in the opposite direction never saw them. These were not the six Wael had predicted, but Jeratt considered them no threat. The elves knew the air as wolves do, and they kept downwind so the horses picking their way through the night forest didn’t catch their scent. Jeratt watched them go.
Since the Knights rode by night, they did not go with visors down. They did not go armored, only mailed, for it seemed they wanted to be as quiet as possible. They had dismounted at the head of the trail, where the ground rose and grew stony. They’d led their horses then, with the beasts’ noses wrapped in cloth or covered with a hand to muffle the sound of their snorting. They did not go by with a ringing of bridles and bits tonight. Those had been quieted, too, with slim leather casings on every metal piece that might chime.
Jeratt noted, too, that these were only human Knights. No draconians were with them, for those creatures had no skill at running quiet. The beast-men were gone to the highway or were perhaps still at the tavern.
When the Knights came closest, Jeratt marked the first rider and knew him by his white face and his dead eyes. The Knights went up the trail, and the forest settled back to its usual sounds, the rustle of small things in the brush, the sudden flight of an owl, the sound of something caught in sharp talons and dying. Jeratt looked south toward the crossroad and the little village where Lord Thagol had lately come to rule. He was a half-elf, and that meant he shared in much of the heritage of his elf parent. As could any elf, he was able to see the outline of a creature walking in darkness, the red glow of the heat of its body. Its life force, some said. In the full darkness of a forest night, Jeratt looked and smiled in satisfaction when he saw the distant flicker—only here and there—of a thin red glow, the outline of other elves. There was Kerian, and with her, her warriors, slipping silently, a force the size of his own running south to the crossroad. As he looked, he saw half their number break away, the light of their bodies gliding around to the west in such a way that the two groups would find themselves in position to attack their prey from front and behind.
“Good girl,” Jeratt whispered.
One of his warriors looked up. He shook his head, and they all settled to silence, so still that the high shrill cry of a nightjar startled Jeratt.
“All right now,” he whispered.
From the campsite came a harsh curse, sudden shouting. Jeratt held his people still with one gesture. Another cry, more cursing and the sounds of night creatures fleeing. The bright clash of steel, a sudden scream too loud to be human.
A horse down!
“Hush,” Jeratt said to the restless warrior beside him. “Wait.”
They saw the faint red flickers of men and women in combat. The forest filled with cries now, bellowing human rage and the eerie banshee cries of the Night People.
“Watch,” Jeratt whispered, his lips close to the other elf’s ear. “See.”
See it all, the shape of the battle. Jeratt grinned coldly, and the woman warrior made a small, satisfied sound as, pursued, Thagol’s Knights fled the campsite, all but one on foot. Eager now, Jeratt watched a handful of his men pretend to flight. Swiftly they came through the forest, leaping streamlets, blow downs, boulders, and leading the Knights onto rough ground. In this way, the hunt came crashing through the forest, tearing through the underbrush, the Knights believing themselves in pursuit of ambushing foes. Furious, driven by Thagol’s cursing, the humans tore past Jeratt and the remainder of his warriors, and at the exact moment Thagol passed him, Jeratt sent another nightjar cry into the darkness.
His eager warriors burst from cover. Voices high and howling, in one swift maneuver they blocked the Knights’ pursuit. Turning, the elves circled the five humans, a noose tightening. Afoot, four had no chance against the greater number. Three died at once, the fourth after a flashing steel struggle.
The fifth Knight, Thagol, was still mounted. He abandoned the field before the first Knight died.
Kerian saw her people slip into position, half in the forest shadows beyond the tavern’s dooryard and half in back, both exits covered. She looked for Bayel and found him coming around the back of the tavern. He dropped to a knee beside her at the overgrown verge of the tavern’s wood lot, never rustling leaf or branch.
“Seven inside,” he said. “The taverner, two Knights and four draconians.”
She nodded then leaned close. “We’re ready. Remember the taverner.”
Bayel’s eyes on the Waycross and the golden light shining out from the windows, front and back, he said, “It’ll be done as you wish, Kerian.”
Someone—or something—passed before the wide window looking into the tavern’s front yard. Draconian by the shape, Kerian thought. It stood too tall to be an elf, the shape of it too grotesque to be either human or elf. The tavern door opened, and the wind shifted. Two draconians came out into the night. She smelled their dry reptilian stink, the bite of the acid reek of their breath. Here, outside the forest, stars shone brightly. The sky was awash with them. Their silvery light glinted from the harnesses of the draconians, metal buckles, polished leather, a bright length of steel as one unsheathed a long knife.
“Got it off that elf,” the creature growled. It laughed, a ripping sound. “Right before his head exploded.”
Bayel moved restlessly. Kerian clamped a hard hand on his arm.
“No,” the other snarled. “Didn’t explode, did it? Bone and brains all over?”
The first draconian shrugged. “Might as well have. Blood pouring out of it everywhere, mouth, ears, and eyes. That lord of ours—” It laughed again. “He’s got a searching way about him, eh?”
They stood for a moment admiring the blade, arguing a little about whether it should have been given over to the Lord Knight and deciding that since Lord Thagol hadn’t asked for it, there was no need to offer. Kerian watched them walk away from the Waycross toward the road. They’d take up guard posts there, she thought. Thagol was gone, probably most of his Knights with him. He was an arrogant bastard, but he wouldn’t leave his headquarters unguarded.
She was right, and when she saw them settled, one at the north-south road and the other at the east-west, she nodded to Bayel.
An owl’s rattling cry tore the night’s silence. One of the draconians looked up, expecting to see the raptor bursting up from the woods, a struggling rabbit in its talons. It looked again then turned to its companion. The other shrugged.