brother. "Hee hee hee."
"There!" Cadderly whispered harshly, pointing to a window under the spreading limbs of a wide elm tree. "Someone walked by that window, inside the house." Cadderly scanned the farmyard, wondering where Danica's stealthy progress had put her. The young monk was nowhere in sight, had disappeared into the shadows.
"Tune for going," Ivan said to Pikel as he hoisted his great axe.
Pikel grabbed his brother's shoulder and cooed, pointing plaintively to the tree.
"I'm not for going up another tree," Ivan growled, but his anger couldn't hold out against Pikel's pitiful expression. "All right," the gruff dwarf conceded. "Yerselfcanget up the tree."
Pikel hopped at the news, and his wide smile disappeared under his helmet as the cooking pot dropped over his face. Ivan roughly adjusted it, realigned his own deer-antlered helm, and pushed his brother off.
"Ivan," Cadderly said gravely before they had gone two steps. The dwarf turned a sour expression back to the young priest.
"Do not loll anyone if it can be avoided," Cadderly said firmly, "as we agreed."
"As yerself agreed," Ivan corrected.
"Ivan." The weight of Cadderfy's tone brought a frown to the dwarf.
"Damn boy's taking all the fun out of it," Ivan remarked to Pikel as the two turned and headed off once more, skittering, hopping, crawling, falling over one another, and, somehow, finally getting to the base of the wide elm.
Cadderly shook his head in disbelief that the dwarven racket hadn't alerted the whole countryside of their presence. He continued to shake his head as Pikel clambered up onto Ivan's shoulders, reaching futilely for the lowest branch. The green-bearded dwarf hopped up, dropping his dub on Ivan's head, but managed to grasp the branch. Hanging by his fingers, his feet wiggling wildly, Pikel would never have gotten up, except that Ivan promptly returned the dub, slamming it against Pikel's rump and nearly launching him over the thick branch.
"Oooo," Pikel moaned softly, rubbing his seat and taking the dub from Ivan.
Cadderly sighed deeply; the dwarven brothers were better at defense than at stealthy attack.
The one guard for the four remaining Night Masks shook his head in disbelief, too, watching the dwarven escapades. He crouched in the tight and smelly chicken coop, one leg up on the wall-to-wall perching bench, and peered through a crack in the old boards, a crack wide enough for him to level his crossbow and take aim. He figured Ivan for the tougher foe, and thought that if he could take out the dwarf on the ground, the one in the tree would be in serious trouble.
Squawk!
The startled Night Mask spun about frantically and fired, seeing a flurry of movement. The air was full of chickens-one less when the crossbow quarrel cut through - but in the dim light and close quarters, the birds seemed like one ominous, feathered foe to the man.
He got hit twice, on the face and neck, and felt the liquid oozing under his tunic. He grabbed for the wounds, hoping to stop the flow of blood.
The relieved man nearly laughed aloud when he found the blood was really eggs . . . until he realized that someone, behind the barricade of flapping chickens, must have thrown them at him. The man snarled, dropped his crossbow, and drew out a slender dagger.
The chickens quieted quickly. He saw no enemy in the small coop.
The bench, the man thought; his enemy had to be under the bench. His smile disappeared and his mouth dropped open as he started to bend.
Under the bench and, maybe, behind him.
A hand slapped across the man's mouth; another grabbed his weapon hand. His eyes opened wide, then dosed tight at the searing pain as his own knife pierced his throat, under the chin, and slid unerringly to his brain.
Danica dropped the man aside and turned to regard the dwarven brothers. Ivan was under the farmhouse window by this time, with Pikel carefully picking steps in the tree right above him. It was a recipe for disaster, Danica knew, and she figured she had better get back outside and into a new position, just in case.
She paused before stepping over the dead assassin and considered the kill. Cadderly had prompted an agreement that no man would be slain if it could be avoided, and Danica, though she, like Ivan, had thought the agreement absurd, felt some pangs of guilt for not honoring the spirit of her lover's wishes. Perhaps she could have taken this guard out without killing him.
Danica felt no sympathy for the man she had