I stopped that line of thinking before it could turn from anxiety to panic. “Let’s go then,” I said, pleased at the calm timbre of my voice.
The three of us crept forward as the last of the light slowly bled from the sky. In the grey, Marten and Tempi were difficult to see, which reassured me. If it was hard for me, it would be near impossible for sentries to spot us from a distance.
Soon I spied firelight reflecting off the undersides of high branches ahead. Crouching, I followed Marten and Tempi up the side of a steep bank, made slippery by the rain. I thought I saw a stir of movement ahead of us.
Then lightning struck. In the near dark it was enough to blind me, but not before the muddy bank was highlighted in dazzling white.
A tall man stood on the ridge with a drawn bow. Tempi crouched a few feet up the bank, frozen in the act of carefully placing his feet. Above him was Marten. The old tracker had gone to one knee and drawn his bow as well. The lightning showed me all of this in a great flash, then left me blind. The thunder came an instant after, deafening me as well. I dropped to the ground and rolled, wet leaves and dirt clinging to my face.
When I opened my eyes all I could see were the blue ghosts the lightning had left dancing in front of my eyes. There was no outcry. If the sentry had made one it had been covered by the thunder. I lay very still until my eyes adjusted. It took me a long, breathless second to find Tempi. He was up the bank some fifteen feet, kneeling over a dark shape. The sentry.
I approached him, scrabbling through the wet fern and muddy leaves. Lightning flickered again above us, more gently this time, and I saw the shaft of one of Marten’s arrows protruding at an angle from the sentry’s chest. The fletching had come loose and it fluttered in the wind like a tiny, sodden flag.
“Dead,” Tempi said when Marten and I were close enough to hear.
I doubted it. Even a deep chest wound won’t kill a man as quickly as that. But as I moved closer I saw the angle of the arrow. It was a heart shot. I looked at Marten with amazement. “That’s a shot to sing a song about,” I said quietly.
“Luck.” He dismissed it and turned his attention to the top of the ridge a few feet above us. “Let’s hope I have some left,” he said as he began to crawl.
As I crawled after him I caught a glimpse of Tempi still kneeling over the fallen man. He leaned close, as if whispering to the body.
Then I saw the camp, and all vague curiosity about the Adem’s peculiarity was pushed from my mind.
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
Flame, Thunder, Broken Tree
THE RIDGE WE CROUCHED on made a wide half-circle, holding the bandits’ camp in the center of a protective crescent. The result was that the camp sat at the bottom of a large, shallow bowl. From our position I could see the open portion of the bowl was bordered by a stream that curved in and away.
The trunk of a towering oak tree rose like a pillar in the center of the bowl, sheltering the camp with its huge branches. Two fires burned sullenly on either side of the great oak. Both would have been big as bonfires if not for the weather. As it was, they merely shed enough light to reveal the camp.
Camp is a misleading term, “encampment” would be better. There were six field tents, short and sloping, mostly intended for sleeping and storing equipment. The seventh tent was almost a small pavilion, rectangular and large enough for several men to stand upright.
Six men sat huddled close to the fires on makeshift benches. They were bundled up against the rain, all of them with the hard-eyed, long-suffering look of experienced soldiers.
I ducked back below the ridgeline and was surprised to feel no fear at all. I turned to Marten, and saw his eyes were a little wild. “How many do you think there are?” I asked.
His eyes flickered thoughtfully. “At least two to a tent. If their leader keeps to the big tent that makes thirteen, and we’ve killed three. So ten. Ten at the very least.” He licked his lips nervously. “But they could be sleeping as many as four to a tent, and the big tent could sleep five more in addition to the leader. That makes thirty, less three.”
“So at best we’re outnumbered two to one,” I said. “Do you like those odds?”
His eyes moved to the ridgeline, then back to me. “I’d take two to one. We’ve got surprise, we’re right up close.” He paused and coughed into his sleeve. He spat. “But there’s twenty of them down there. I can feel it in my balls.”
“Can you convince Dedan?”
He nodded. “He’ll believe me. He’s not half the ass he seems most of the time.”
“Good.” I considered briefly. Things had been happening more quickly than I can tell them aloud. So despite everything that had happened, Dedan and Hespe were still five or six minutes behind us. “Go turn the two of them around,” I told Marten. “Then come back for Tempi and me.”
He looked uncertain. “You sure you don’t want to come now? We don’t know when their guard might change.”
“I’ll have Tempi with me. Besides, it should only take you a couple minutes. I want to see if I can get a better count of how many there are.”
Marten hurried off, and Tempi and I edged our way back up to the top of the ridge. After a moment he edged closer until the left side of his body was pressed up against my right.
I noticed something I’d missed earlier. There were wooden poles the size of tall fenceposts scattered throughout the camp.
“Posts?” I asked Tempi, driving my finger into the ground to illustrate what I mean.
He nodded to show he understood, then shrugged.
I guessed they might be tethers for horses, or drying poles for sodden clothes. I pushed it from my mind in favor of more pressing matters. “What do you think we should do?”
Tempi was silent for a long moment. “Kill some. Leave. Wait. Others come. We ...” He gave the characteristic pause that meant he was lacking the word he wanted to use. “Jump behind trees?”
“Surprise.”
He nodded. “We surprise. Wait. Hunt rest. Tell Maer.”
I nodded. Not the quick resolution we had hoped for, but the only sane option against this number of men. When Marten came back the three of us would take our first sting at them. I guessed with surprise on our side, Marten could mark as many as three or four with his bow before we were forced to flee. Odds were he wouldn’t kill all of them, but any man arrowshot would be less of a threat to us in the days to come. “Any other way?”
A long pause. “No way that is of the Lethani,” he said.
Having seen enough, I carefully slid down several feet until I was out of sight. I shivered as the rain continued to pelt down. It felt colder than it had a couple minutes ago, and I began to worry that I’d caught Marten’s cold. That was the last thing I needed right now.
I caught sight of Marten approaching and was about to explain our plan when I saw his panicked expression.
“I can’t find them!” he hissed frantically. “I trailed back to where they should have been. But they weren’t there. So either they already turned back, which they wouldn’t do, or they were too close behind us and ended up following the wrong set of tracks in this bad light.”
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the constant rain. “Can’t you track them down?”
“If I could, I would have. But all the prints look the same in the dark. What are we going to do?” He clutched at my arm, I could tell by his eyes that he was on the verge of panic. “They won’t be careful. They’ll think we’ve scouted everything ahead of them. What should we do?”
I reached into the pocket that held Dedan’s simulacra. “I can find them.”
But before I could do anything, there was an outcry from the eastern edge of the camp. It was followed a second later by a furious shout and a string of cursing.
“Is that Dedan?” I asked.
Marten nodded. From over the ridge came the sound of frantic movement. The three of us moved as quickly as we dared, peering over the top.
Men were swarming from th
e low tents like hornets from a nest. There were at least a dozen of them now, and I saw four with strung bows. Long sections of planking appeared from nowhere and were leaned against the posts, making crude walls about four feet high. Within seconds the vulnerable, wide-open camp became a veritable fortress. I counted at least sixteen men, but now whole sections of the camp were cut off from view. The light was worse as well, as the makeshift walls blocked the fires and cast deep shadows against the night.
Marten was swearing a steady stream, understandably, as his bow wasn’t nearly as useful now. He nocked an arrow quick as winking and might have fired it just as fast if I hadn’t laid a hand on his arm. “Wait.”
He frowned, then nodded, knowing they would have half a dozen arrows for every one of his. Tempi was suddenly useless as well. He would be riddled with arrows long before he came close to the camp.
The only bright facet was that their attention wasn’t directed toward us. They were focused off to the east where we had heard the sentry’s cry and Dedan’s cursing. The three of us might escape before we were discovered, but that would mean leaving Dedan and Hespe behind.
This was the time when a skilled arcanist should be able to tip the scales, if not to give us an advantage, then at least to make escape possible. But I had no fire, no link. I was clever enough to make do without one of those, but without both I was nearly helpless.
Rain began to pour down more heavily. Thunder grumbled. It was only a matter of time before the bandits figured out there were only two of them and rushed over the ridge to make short work of our companions. If the three of us drew their attention we would be overrun just as quickly.
There was a concert of gentle hums, and a flight of arrows leapt over the eastern ridge. Marten stopped swearing and held his breath. He looked at me. “What are we going to do?” he said urgently. There was a questioning shout from the camp, and when no answer was forthcoming another flight of arrows hummed over the eastern ridge, finding the range of their target.
“What are we going to do?” Marten repeated. “What if they’re hurt?”
What if they’re dead? I closed my eyes and slid down below the ridgeline, trying to gain a moment of clear thought. My foot bumped something soft and solid. The dead sentry. A dark thought occurred. I drew a deep breath and threw myself into the Heart of Stone. Deep. Deeper than I had ever been before. All fear left me, all hesitation.
I took hold of the body by its wrist and began to drag it up toward the lip of the ridge. He was a heavy man, but I hardly noticed. “Marten, may I use your dead?” I asked absently. The words were in a pleasant baritone, the calmest voice I had ever heard.
Without waiting for an answer, I looked over the ridgeline toward the camp. I saw one of the men behind the wall bending his bow for another shot. I drew my long, slender knife of good Ramston steel and fixed the image of the bowman in my mind. I set my teeth and stabbed the dead sentry in the kidney. The knife went in slowly, as if I were stabbing heavy clay instead of flesh.
A scream rose above the sound of the thunder. The man fell, his bow flying wildly out of his hands. Another mercenary stooped to look at his companion. I refocused and stabbed the sentry in his other kidney, using both hands this time. There was a second scream, shriller than the first. More a keen than a scream, I thought in an odd separate corner of my mind.
“Don’t shoot yet,” I cautioned Marten calmly, not looking away from the camp. “They still don’t know where we are.” I drew the knife out, refocused, and drove it coolly into the sentry’s eye. A man stood upright behind the wooden wall, blood pouring down his face from underneath his clutching hands. Two of his comrades rose, trying to get him back below the wooden parapet. My knife rose and fell and one of them toppled to the ground even as his hands rose to his own bleeding face.
“Holy God,” Marten choked. “Dear holy God.”
I set the knife against the sentry’s throat and surveyed the camp. Their military efficiency was falling apart as they began to panic. One of the wounded men continued to scream, high and piercing over the grumbling thunder.
I saw one of the bowmen searching the ridgeline with hard eyes. I drew the knife across the sentry’s throat, but nothing seemed to happen. Then the bowman looked puzzled and raised his hand to touch his own throat. It came away lightly smeared with blood. His eyes grew wide and he began to shout. Dropping his bow he ran to the other side of the low wall, then back, trying to escape but not knowing where to run.
Then he regained his composure and began desperately searching the ridgeline all around the camp. He showed no signs of falling. I frowned, set the knife against the dead sentry’s neck again and leaned against it hard. My arms trembled, but the knife began to move again, slowly, as if I were trying to cut a block of ice. The bowman’s hands flew to his neck and blood poured over them. He staggered, stumbled, and fell into one of the fires. He thrashed wildly, scattering burning coals everywhere, adding to the confusion.
I was deciding where to strike next when lightning lit the sky, showing me a clear, stark picture of the body. The rain had mingled with the blood, and it was everywhere. My hands were dark with it.
Unwilling to maim his hands, I rolled him over onto his stomach and struggled to remove his boots. Then I refocused myself and sawed through the thick tendons above the ankles and behind the knees. It crippled two more men. But the knife was moving more and more slowly, and my arms ached with the strain of it. The corpse was an excellent link, but the only energy I had was the strength of my body. Under these conditions, it felt more like I was cutting wood than flesh.
It had been scarcely more than a minute or two since the camp had been alerted. I spat water and took a moment’s rest for my trembling arms and exhausted mind. I eyed the camp below, watching the confusion and panic build.
A man emerged from the large tent at the base of the tree. He was dressed differently than the others, wearing a hauberk of bright chainmail that came nearly to his knees with a coif covering his head. He stepped into the chaos with a fearless grace, taking everything in at a glance. He snapped orders I couldn’t hear over the sound of rain and thunder. His men calmed, settled back into their positions, and took up their bows and swords.
As I watched him stride across the encampment I was reminded of ... something. He stood in plain view, not bothering to crouch behind one of the protective walls. He gestured to his men, and something in that motion was terribly familiar....
“Kvothe,” Marten hissed. I looked up to see the tracker with his bow drawn tight to his ear. “I’ve got the shot on their boss.”
“Take it.”
His bow hummed and the man sprouted an arrow from his upper thigh, piercing the chain mail, the leg itself, and the armor behind it. From the corner of my eye I saw Marten draw another arrow and put it to the string in a fluid motion, but before he could shoot it, I saw their leader bend. Not a deep bending at the waist as if he were doubling over in pain. He bent at the neck to look down at the arrow that had pierced his leg.
After a second’s scrutiny he grasped the arrow in a fist and snapped off the fletching. Then he reached behind himself and pulled the arrow from his leg. I froze as he looked straight toward us and pointed to our position with the hand that held the broken arrow. He spoke a brief word of command to his men, tossed the arrow into the fire, and stalked gracefully to the other side of the camp.
“Great Tehlu overroll me with your wings,” Marten said, his hand falling away from his bowstring. “Protect me from demons and creatures that walk in the night.”
Only the fact that I was deep in the Heart of Stone kept me from a similar reaction. I turned back to the camp in time to see a small forest of bows being bent in our direction. I ducked my head and aimed a kick at the stupefied tracker, knocking him over as the arrows hummed past. He tumbled over, his quiver of arrows scattering down the muddy bank.
“Tempi?” I called.
“Here,” he replied from off to my left. “Aesh. No arrow.
”
More arrows sang overhead, a few of them sticking into trees. Soon they would get the range and start arcing the arrows overhead so they fell on us from above. A thought came to me as calmly as a bubble rising to the surface of a pond. “Tempi, bring me this man’s bow.”
“Ia.”
I heard Marten muttering something, his voice low, urgent, and indistinct. At first I thought he’d been shot, then I realized he was praying. “Tehlu shelter me from iron and anger,” he murmured softly. “Tehlu keep me safe from demons in the night.”
Tempi pushed the bow into my hand. I took a deep breath and broke my mind into two pieces, then three, then four. In each piece of my mind I held the bowstring. I forced myself to relax and broke my mind again, five. I tried again and failed. Tired, wet and cold, I had reached my limit. I heard bowstrings thrum again and arrows hit the ground around us like a heavy rain. I felt a tug on the outside of my arm near my shoulder as one of the arrows grazed me before burying itself in the dirt. There was a stinging, then a burning pain.
I pushed the pain away and set my teeth. Five would have to be enough. I drew my knife lightly across the back of my own arm, just enough to draw a little blood, then mouthed the proper bindings and drew the blade across the bowstring, hard.
The string held for a terrifying moment, then parted. The bow jerked in my hand, jolting my wounded arm before it flew out of my grasp. Cries of pain and dismay came over the ridge, letting me know I’d been at least partly successful. Hopefully all five strings had been severed, leaving us with only one or two bowmen to deal with.
But as soon as the bow flung itself out of my grasp, I felt the cold leech into me. Not just my arms, but all the way through me: stomach, chest, and throat. I had known I couldn’t trust the strength of my arm alone to make it through five bowstrings at once. So I had used the only fire that is always with an arcanist, the heat of my blood. Binder’s chills would have me soon. If I didn’t find a way to get warm, I would lapse into shock, then hypothermia, then death.
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