The Last Ring-bearer - Kirill Yeskov [154]
The landlord took personal charge of the hunt, declaring that he would not rest until he sees Runcorn's corpse with his own eyes. The fugitive's tracks led inside the forest and were clearly readable throughout the day; the man had not bothered to conceal them, apparently assuming that he was believed dead. Closer to evening the company leader found a cocked crossbow hidden in the bushes by the path; more precisely, the crossbow was found later, after its bolt had already buried itself in the leader's gut. While the henchmen bickered around the wounded man, another arrow whistled in from somewhere, taking a man in the neck. Runcorn gave himself away thereby – his silhouette showed briefly between the trees some thirty yards away down the dale, and they all chased him down a narrow clearing between the bushes. That was the idea: to get them all to run without looking down. As a result, three men wound up in the pit, more than he expected. Eggy the Chicken Hawk's bandits have crafted it with skill and care: eight feet deep with sharp stakes at the bottom, smeared with rotten meat to guarantee a blood poisoning at the very least.
Twilight fell, and the gloom deepened. The landlord's men were very cautious now, moving along in pairs; when they finally spotted Runcorn in the bushes, they showered him with arrows from twenty yards away. Alas, when they approached (right in the path of a fivehundred-pound log that dropped from a nearby tree), they found only a roll of bark dressed in some rags. Only then did the landlord realize that even just getting away from Eggy's forest stronghold where this damned wos had so expertly lured them would be very difficult: the night forest around them was chock-full of deadly traps, and their four wounded (not to mention two dead) have robbed their company of mobility. Another thing he understood now was that their overwhelming numerical superiority was of no consequence in this situation and the role of prey was theirs at least until dawn.
Chapter 56
They set up a defense perimeter in a worst possible location – an overgrown dale with zero visibility – because moving elsewhere was even more dangerous. There was not even a suggestion to light a fire, they were afraid to even talk, much less expose themselves to light. Even the wounded had to be tended to in pitch-black darkness. Gripping their bows and swords, the lord's men stared and listened to the moonless night, firing at every rustle and every suggestion of movement in the fog rising from rotting leaves. It ended with someone losing his cool at about two in the morning: the idiot yelled "Woses!" and sank an arrow into his neighbor, who had just gotten up to stretch his numb legs; then he ran inside the perimeter, crashing through the bushes. The worst thing that can happen in a nightly battle happened then: the perimeter fell apart and everyone ran around in the dark shooting at everybody else, every man for himself.
This was no accident, though: the 'someone' who caused the free-for-all with a shot at his comrade was none other than Runcorn. The forester had appropriated the cloak of one of the dead (who were left unguarded), blended in with the lord's men as they were setting up their defense, and waited. He certainly had a hundred opportunities to put an arrow into the landlord and vanish into darkness in the ensuing chaos – but in his judgment the man did not deserve such an easy death, so he had other plans.
Only at dawn did the outcome of the fight become clear to the hapless hunters – they lost two more men and the landlord himself vanished without a trace. Supposing that he got lost in the night scuffle and secreted himself in the dark (which is the correct solution: only a total idiot would run headlong through the night forest; a thinking person would hide quietly