“I told ye, Ma,” came a young boy’s voice from below her.
Bryan looked back at the compound, where talons were now running about.
“Get back down!” he whispered to the woman. “I will be back for you. I promise.”
The woman hesitated, not wanting to retreat again into the dark and dirty hole. “Me and the boy and me daughter been in there the better part of a week-” she began to explain, but Bryan gave her no choice in the matter. He rushed over and gently pushed down the trapdoor, promising again that he would soon return to get her and her children to safety. And when the door was closed tightly, he then slid a heavy box over it to further disguise it from talon eyes.
The woman hid her disappointment well from her anxious son. “Sit quiet,” she instructed him. “That one will come back for us, I know.”
Bryan slipped his bow off his shoulder as he went up the ladder.
“On the wall!” cried one of the talons, spotting him. “The ghost fighter!” A whole group of the monsters rushed across the compound toward the marauding half-elf, but they quickly changed their minds, and their direction, when the first of Bryan’s arrows whistled in.
Bryan got another few good shots off, killing two other talons before the lines of defense and retaliation began to organize around him. As the first spear came out from behind a barricade, he hopped over the wall, dropping lightly to the ground, and rushed off for the protection of the rocky outcropping.
The wooden gates burst open and a score of talons charged out, one of them dropping with an arrow in its throat. Bryan sprinted off into the open, but never too far ahead to dissuade his pursuers. Normally he would have taken that last shot offered and slipped away along the cover of the mountainside, but the appearance of a woman and her children had changed the purpose of this encounter.
Bryan sprinted across the open ground ahead of the talons, sending an arrow whizzing off wildly over his shoulder every so often. One of the talons got out ahead of its comrades, gaining on the half-elf.
“Too close,” Bryan noted, measuring the distance to the trees. He notched another arrow to his bowstring and let the talon come on a bit more.
Just as the thing heaved its spear, Bryan spun about and fired.
Bryan’s aim proved the better. The talon dropped to the ground.
But on sudden impulse the young warrior flinched to the side, putting himself dangerously in line with the flying spear, one hand reaching for a dagger on his belt. With perfect timing he spun just as the spear connected, feigning a solid hit while taking only a glancing blow.
Bryan stumbled backward and started off again for the trees, purposely leaning to the side, lurching and stumbling, and, secretly, cutting a small line into his forearm.
“Gurgrol’s got ’im!” he heard one of the pursuing talons cry in glee, apparently unconcerned that Gurgrol had paid for the effort dearly.
Then Bryan disappeared into the thick copse, heading straight for his trap tree and taking care to leave a noticeable, splotchy blood trail. When he reached the massive elm, he smeared a red stain on its trunk, then wrapped his cloak around his superficial wound and rushed off farther into the mass of tangled underbrush.
Spurred by the apparent hit, the talons crashed into the copse soon after Bryan, tearing apart the shrubs as they went. The blood trail showed clearly, and it led them straight to the elm.
“There ’e is!” shouted one of the talons, spotting the cloaked body straddling the high branches. Spears and arrows went up into the tree, coming closer to their throwers in their descent than they ever got to the high figure. Then one talon got a small rock and whipped it up, bouncing it off a branch right next to the figure.
“Bah, ’e’s prob’ly dead already,” the talon spat, noting that the figure didn’t move.
“If only you knew,” Bryan whispered under his breath from a vantage point a short distance away.
The talon leaped into the lowest branches, a knife in its teeth, and began making its way up. Bryan waited anxiously as it stepped on one particular branch-chosen because any talon climbing the tree would have to step on that particular branch to get up any higher.
The branch bent under the talon’s weight, pulling tight a hidden string. The beast heard a click off to the side, but didn’t discern it as the release of a crossbow.
To the amazement of the talons on the ground, their comrade slumped to the side and came crashing down, quite dead.
“Ghost fighter,” one of them muttered, and they all backed away a cautious step.
“Burn ’im!” another cried, and immediately a chorus of assenting cheers rose up. Several of the talons scrambled around in search of kindling.
Bryan knew it was time to leave, but he paused when he was a safe distance from the copse to watch the flames leap high into the air and to listen to the victorious hoots of the talons.
“They never know when I’m kidding,” Bryan remarked again, and he went off to find some rest. He would be busy that night.
Again, a lone guard on the compound wall found a dagger in its chest.
The night was more than half through, but the talon party continued undaunted. They danced and sang their guttural songs all around the cluster of houses, paying little heed to the cloaked figure on the wall.
Bryan managed to get back into the house by the ladder, and he found, to his relief, the pantry empty of talons. He heard some shuffling in the next room, but couldn’t wait to find out if the talons meant to come out or not. Moving to the trapdoor, he lifted it gently, calling to the woman in a quiet whisper to calm any startled outbursts.
“Come quickly,” Bryan prompted, pulling the young boy out of the hole and then taking the infant girl from her mother.
“Did-” the boy blurted before Bryan could stop him. Bryan verily tossed the baby back to her mother, drawing his sword and throwing himself beside the door to the next room. But the talons were engaged in their own games and apparently took no note of the noise.
When he was certain that all was clear, Bryan led the family out of the house and up to the wall, pulling the ladder up behind them and dropping it over the other side. He could kill a score of talons this night, he knew, so engrossed were they in their celebration over the death of the “ghost fighter.” But one look at the mother and her two children flushed any such thoughts out of the young warrior’s mind. He had only one purpose this night.
“We have to get to the river.”
They were in a boat-one of Bryan’s hidden and growing stash-a couple of hours later, Bryan rowing the three across to the safety of the eastern bank.
“Why were they at such a party?” the mother asked, the first words she had spoken to Bryan since they left the compound.
“They thought they had killed me.”
“You must be mighty indeed to inspire such joy,” the woman remarked.
“They make me more than I am,” Bryan replied humbly. “And I only use their fear to my advantage.”
“You have been doing this a long time?” the young boy asked.
“It seems like years,” Bryan replied, and the woman noticed for the first time how weary the young hero appeared.
“And is it over now?” she asked. “They think you are dead; why not let it be so?”
Bryan had to take a long moment to find an answer.
How much longer could he hope to evade the talons?
Why not continue on with this family and join up with the Calvan army in the north at the Four Bridges? Certainly he could use the rest and the company of humans.
But how many more families now crouched in dark holes, waiting without hope?
“I must go back,” he said at length.
The woman did not question him further. She had seen too much death and suffering in the past few days to be concerned with the antics of one young warrior.
“Is there anything I can do to repay you?” she offered.