Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [51]
A well-constructed little ambush, if it had worked. Was this all of it? Suddenly his horse threw up its head and blew a rattling snort. Arcolin looked up and caught sight of someone who seemed to be walking on air parallel to a massive oak limb. His mind refused to accept it for an instant, then he knew: he’d seen sailors in Immerdzan port, feet on a rope slung below the horizontal poles—what did they call them?—resting their elbows on the … the yard, that was it. Guards, he’d been told, to keep thieves off the ship in harbor and fight pirates at sea. Even as this ran through his mind, he signaled Devlin, backed farther downslope … surely not all the trees were rigged, just those around planned ambush sites.
A shrill whistle sounded loud as a scream, and yells followed as the enemy charged toward the trail. Arcolin risked quick glances upward, aware that any one of them could end with a crossbow bolt in the eye—ropes rigged on both sides of the trail but none here … or here. His own troops backed down the slope in order; the brigands followed, more raggedly as they rushed to close and the slope pulled them on.
His cohort reached the lower trail, the one skirting the wet ground around tributary headwaters. Arcolin halted them, and in the seconds before the enemy reached them they had time to form the tight, protective formation—the flexible tight, protective formation—he wanted.
The first enemy charged out of the woods, five—six—seven—the fastest, least controlled—and tried to stop, still slipping, sliding—and then, desperate, charged into the waiting cohort and died. Behind came more—a ragged line—and hoofbeats of more than a few horses. Those on foot arrived first—fifteen—twenty—with a motley collection of shields and weapons, including two short pikes. The first rank held them off without difficulty. Devlin dispatched one of the pikemen, and Jenits took the other.
Horsemen burst out of the cover, three close together, three more behind, clearly intending to break the formation. At his signal, Arcolin’s formation split, opening a lane through which the horses charged even as their riders tried to halt and turn them. One, indeed, managed this, but at the cost of slowing his mount so much that Arcolin’s soldiers easily surrounded him and pulled him off.
The rest of the brigands fled back into the woods; those whose horses were mired in the swamp floundered through the muck, and a tensquad caught and killed three of them. Two more fell to the crossbows they’d captured on that first patrol.
“That’s more like it,” Devlin said, surveying the row of brigand bodies. “And if we were better with our crossbows, we’d have had more of them. What warned you about the bowman in the trees, Captain?”
“My horse as much as anything,” Arcolin said, patting the sweaty neck of his chestnut. “And I saw how they’d been picking us off despite our scouts. They’ve got sailors up on the trees.”
“Sailors?”
“Remember the harbors we went through? The guard sailors up on those crosspieces—the yards, they called them—standing on those ropes slung below when they weren’t walking on the yards themselves? They’ve rigged trees beside the main trails, at least in some places, and can shoot down on us.”
“That’s bad,” Devlin said. “We didn’t see anything like that in Siniava’s War.”
“No. But Alured was on our side then. These will be pirate friends of his, I have no doubt. They’ll be able to look right down and see our scouts—and our scouts aren’t looking up. This fellow must’ve been four or five armspans up—that would be no height to a sailor.”
“What do we do?” Burek said.
“Today? They’ll expect us to pursue, and they’ll try to lead us back where their aerial bowmen can attack … so we’re not going to do that. Today we take the swamp trail back south, as if we’re running away, then we