on Argoth’s lips and he shooed it away. Where was Varro? It was past time. He and his ridiculous, bleach-streaked beard should have ridden into view long ago, leading their quarry into the trap.
Argoth was just about ready to break position and organize a search when Varro burst from behind the grove of river birch, riding his spotted steed at a full gallop.
Moments later a dozen riders rounded the same corner, their horses stretched out, racing to catch him. Most of them wore helmets and shaped-leather cuirasses festooned with various furs. One man rode with a mail tunic, another was bare-chested. All had their faces painted white and black. All of them Bone Face rot.
Varro splashed across the stream, and then he cut through the deep meadow grass, making straight for the steep ravine where Argoth and the rest of the men waited.
Argoth gave the hand signal to get ready, and his men nocked their arrows. Each man clutched four others in the hand that held their bow.
Their goal was to kill most of these dung heaps but keep one or two for the Shoka warlord to question. A band of Bone Faces had been sallying forth from this quarter, and it was time to be rid of them and find out if they were on their own or scouts for a far larger raiding party.
This was going to be like shooting rabbits in a hutch.
Varro closed half the distance to the ravine, then his horse stumbled and rolled, throwing Varro wide into the tall brown and green meadow grass.
The horse screamed and struggled to its feet, but it couldn’t stand straight. One of its forelegs was broken. Argoth winced; it must have stepped into the hole of a fox or ground squirrel.
The horse limped, but Varro was up, running, cutting his way through the tall grass.
His pursuers gained on him, but not by much. Varro was a dreadman, one of those upon whom the Divines had bestowed a weave of might. He ran with the speed of that weave, flying through the meadow with enormous, quick strides. He was fast to begin with, and his weave doubled, almost tripled, the liveliness with which he ran.
But then he slowed.
What was he doing? This wasn’t a time for tricks. All he needed to do was run into the ravine.
He slowed even further until he ran with the speed of a normal man.
Varro glanced back over his shoulder, and when he turned back around, Argoth could see from Varro’s expression that something was terribly wrong.
He wasn’t going to make the ravine. He wasn’t going to make it out of the meadow.
Argoth rose. “Mount up,” he called. “Mount up!” It was possible the Bone Faces had a dreadman among them. But he wouldn’t be one of those in heavy armor. Dreadmen only wore such when they were sure to be fighting their own kind. In most battles it was speed they desired. Brutal, blinding speed.
Argoth put away his doubts about sending Nettle to help Hogan with his harvest. This type of battle would have thrown the boy into a situation he was not prepared for. Exactly the type of situation into which he’d put his son, of a different wife and in a different land, so many years ago.
In one step he mounted his stallion. Then he gave him his heels and was flying down the narrow trail, hugging his steed’s thick neck, dodging branches all the way to the bottom of the ravine.
By the time Argoth galloped out of the ravine, holding his bow and guiding his horse with his knees, the Bone Faces had surrounded Varro and beat him to the ground. He lay on his face with two men holding him down, but Argoth could not tell if he was still alive.
The bare-chested man knelt at Varro’s feet, binding them with a rope. The man’s face, from his forehead to the crack of his mouth, had been painted black; from his lower lip down was white.
Argoth let out his battle cry and guessed if they had a dreadman, it would be the bare-chested one. None of them wore insignia, but that one had the hard-cut look of one who used a weave.
The Bone Faces turned.
Argoth stood a little higher in his stirrups and released his first arrow. He immediately took the second from the clutch he held in his bow hand.
The first arrow would have skewered a normal man. But Bare Chest dodged to the side, and the arrow flew