“Where?” Jon-Tom asked her.
“Back among the trees.”
“They are spreading out in an attempt to encircle you,” said the one-horned stallion.
“Permit me to congratulate you on your timely arrival, mate.” Mudge’s eyes searched the woods as he spoke. “I never sensed ’im.”
“Nor did I,” said Roseroar, sparing a glance for the remains of the crossbow.
“I don’t understand,” Jon-Tom murmured. “We offered them all the food they could eat.”
“It wasn’t just your food they were after.” Drom kicked the crossbow fragments aside. “I know that bunch by reputation. They were after your weapons and armor, your fine clothes and your money.”
Mudge let out a barking laugh. “Our money! Now that’s amusin’. We haven’t a copper to our names,” he lied.
“Ah, but they thought you did.” The unicorn nodded toward the forest. “Small comfort that would have been to you if they had learned that afterwards.”
“You’re right there.”
Roseroar was turning a slow circle, keeping the roasting carcass at her back as much as possible. “They’re still out theah. Probably they think we can’t heah them, but ah can.” She growled deep in her throat, a blood chilling sound. “Our friend here is right. They’re trying to get behind us.”
“And to surprise you. Hathcar did not show his full strength. Many more of his band remained concealed while he spoke to you.”
Jon-Tom eyed the silent trees in alarm. “How many more?”
“A large number, though, of course, I am only guessing based on what I could observe during my approach.”
“We appreciate your help. You might as well take off now. Our problems aren’t yours.”
“They are now,” the unicorn told him. “These are indifferent murderers, full of false pride. I have embarrassed their leader in front of his band. Now he must kill me or lose face and possibly his status as leader.”
Roseroar strode toward the back of the clearing. “Move in heah, where theah’s some covah.”
The unicorn shook his head, the mane of gold rippling in the filtered light. “It will not be good enough, tigress. I can see that you are powerful as well as well-versed in war, but there are too many of them, and you will be fighting in very close quarters. If they come at you from all directions simultaneously you won’t have a chance. You require a more defensible position.”
“You know of one?” Jon-Tom asked him.
“It is not far from here. I think if we can get there we will be able to stand them off.”
“Then let’s get the hell out of here,” he muttered as he shouldered his pack.
Mudge held back, torn between common sense and the effort he’d put into their supper. Roseroar saw his hesitation.
“A full belly’s small consolation to someone with his guts hangin’ out. Ah declah, short-whiskahs, sometimes ah wondah about yo priorities.”
“Sometimes I wonder meself, lass.” He looked longingly back at the lost roast as they hurried through the woods, following the stallion’s lead.
Drom maintained a steady but slow pace to enable his newfound friends to keep up with him. Everyone watched the surrounding woods. But it was Roseroar’s ears they relied on most.
“Stayin’ carefully upwind of us, but I can heah them movin’ faster. They’re still behind us, though. Must think we’re still in the camp.”
“Wait a minute!” Jon-Tom called a halt. “Where’s Mudge?”
Roseroar cursed under her breath. “Damn that ottah! Ah knew ah should’ve kept a closer watch on him. He’s gone back fo some of that meat. Yoah friend is a creature of base instincts.”
“Yes, but he’s not stupid. Here he comes.”
Mudge appeared, laboring beneath a section of roast nearly as big as himself. “Sorry, mates. I worked all day on this bloody banquet, and I’m damned if I was goin’ to leave it all for those bastards.”
“You’re damned anyway,” snapped Jon-Tom. “How are you going to keep up, hauling that on your back?”
The otter swung the heavy, pungent load off his shoulders. “Roseroar?”
“Not me, ottah. Yo stew in yoah own stew.”
“We’re wasting time,” said Drom. “Here.” He dipped his head forward. “Hold it still.”
A quick jab and the roast was impaled on the spiral horn. “Now let’s be away from here before they discover our flight.” He turned and resumed his walk. “Disgusting.”
“What is?” Jon-Tom asked as he jogged alongside.
“The smell of cooked flesh, the odiferous thought of consuming the body of another living creature, the miasma of carbonized protein, what else?”
Suddenly Jon-Tom wasn’t so hungry anymore.
Creepers and vines strangled the entrance to the ancient structure. Roseroar was reluctant to enter. The strangely slitted windows and triangular doorways bespoke a time and people who had ruled the world long before the warmblooded.
“Sulolk used this place,” murmured Drom as he trotted inside.
Distant shouts of outrage came from behind them, deciding the tigress. She bent beneath the low portal and squeezed in.
The single chamber beyond had a vaulted ceiling that enabled her to stand easily. There was more than enough room for all of them. Mudge was admiring the narrow windows, fashioned by a forgotten people for reasons of unknown aesthetics but admirably suited to the refugees’ present needs. He notched an arrow into his bow and settled himself behind one thin gap.
Jon-Tom took up a stance to the left of the opening, ready to use his steel-tipped staff on anyone who tried to enter. A moment later he was able to move to a second window as Roseroar jammed a massive stone weighing at least three hundred pounds into the doorway, blocking it completely.
“This is a good place to fight from.” Drom used a hoof to shove the cooling roast from his horn onto clean rock. “A small spring flows from the floor of a back room. Cracks in the ceiling allow fresh air to circulate. I have often slept here in safety.” He indicated the damp grass growing from the floor. “There is food as well.”
“For you,” admitted Jon-Tom, watching the woods for signs of their pursuers. “Well, we have what’s in our packs and the roast we saved.” He glanced to his right, toward the other guarded window. “You shouldn’t have done that, Mudge.”
“Cor, it ain’t no fun fightin’ on an empty stomach, mate.” He leaned forward; his black nose twitched as he sampled the air. “If they try chargin’ us, I can pick ’em off easy. Our ’orny friend’s right. This is a damn good place.”
Roseroar was eyeing the wall carvings uneasily. “This is a very old place. I smell ancient feahs.” She had drawn both longswords.
There was a thump as Drom settled down to wait. “I smell only clean grass and water.”
Threatening shouts began to emanate from the trees. Mudge responded with some choice comments about Hathcar’s mother, whom he had never met but whom thousands of others undoubtedly had. This inspired a rain of arrows which splintered harmlessly against the thick stone walls. One flew through Jon-Tom’s window to stick in the earth behind him.
“Here they come!” he warned his companions.
There was nothing subtle about the bandits’ strategy. While archers tried to pin down the defenders, an assortment of raccoons, foxes, and cats rushed at the entrance, carrying a big log between them. But Roseroar braced her massive shoulders against the boulder from behind and kept it from being pushed inward, while Mudge put arrows in the log wielders as fast as they could be replaced.
“Another bugger down!” the otter would yell each time an arrow struck home.
This continued for several minutes while Mudge reduced the number of Hathcar’s band and Roseroar kept the boulder from moving so much as an inch inward. No martyrs to futility, those hefting the battering ram finally gave up and fled for the safety of the woods with the otter’s deadly shafts urging them on.
No one had approached
Jon-Tom’s window during the fight. Mudge and Roseroar had done all the work and he felt pretty useless.
“What now? I don’t think they’ll try that again.”
“No, but they’ll bloody well try somethin’ else,” murmured the otter. “Say, mate, why don’t you ’ave a go at ’em with your duar?”
Jon-Tom blinked. “I hadn’t thought of that. Well, I had, but it’s hard to think and sing when you’re running.”
“Why make music? To aggravate them?” asked Drom interestedly.
“Nope. ’E’s a spellsinger, ’e is,” said Mudge, “and a right good one, too. When ’e can control it,” he added by way of afterthought.
“A spellsinger. I am impressed,” said the unicorn. Jon-Tom felt a little better, though he wished the golden stallion would quit staring at him so intensely.
“What do you think they’ll try next?” Jon-Tom asked the otter.
Mudge eyed the trees. “This bunch bein’ about as imaginative as a pile o’ cow flop, I’d expect them to try smokin’ us out. If four legs there is right about the cracks in the roof lettin’ air in, they’ll be wastin’ their time.”
“Are yo certain theah’s no back way in?”
“None that I was ever able to discover,” Drom told the tigress.
“Not that you’d fit places where some o’ the rest of us might,” observed Mudge thoughtfully. He handed his bow and quiver to Jon-Tom. “I’d better check out the nooks and crannies, mate. We don’t want some nasty surprises to show up and stick us in the behind when we ain’t lookin’.” He headed for the crumbling back wall.
Jon-Tom eyed the bow uncertainly. “Mudge, I’m not good at this.”
“Just give a shout if they come at us again. It ain’t ’ard, mate. Just shove an arrow through the window there. They don’t know you can’t shoot.” He bent, crawled under a lopsided stone and disappeared.
Jon-Tom awkwardly notched an arrow, rested it on the window sill as Roseroar took up a position behind the one the otter had vacated.
“Ah don’t understand,” she murmured, squinting at the forest. “We all ain’t worth the trouble we’re causin’ this Hathcar. That ottah brought down five or six o’ them. If ah was this fella ah’d give up and go in search of less deadly prey.”
“That would be the reasonable thing to do,” said Drom, nodding, “except that as chief he has lost face already before his band. He will not give up, though if he suffers many more losses his own fighters may force him to quit.” The unicorn climbed to his feet and strolled over to Roseroar’s window. She made room for him.
“Hathcar!” he shouted.
A reluctant voice finally replied. “Who calls? Is that you, meddler with a spike in his brain?”
“It is I.” Drom was unperturbed by the bandit leader’s tone. “Listen to me! These travelers are poor. They have no money.”
Cuscus laughter rang through the trees. “You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s true. In any case, you cannot defeat them.”
“Don’t bet on that.”
“You cannot break in here.”
“Maybe not, but we’ll force you out. It may take time, but we’ll do it.”
“If you do, then I will only lead them to another place of safety, one even harder to assault than this one. I know these woods, and you know I speak the truth. So why not depart now before suffering any more senseless losses? It’s a stupid leader who sacrifices his people for no gain.”
Muttering came from different places in the trees, proof that Drom’s last words had hit home. Hathcar hastened to respond.
“No matter if you lead them elsewhere. We’ll track you down no matter where you go.”
“Perhaps you will. Or perhaps you’ll find yourselves led into a trap. We of the forest have ways of defending ourselves against you lovers of civilization. There are hidden pits and tree-mounted weapons scattered throughout my territory. Follow me and find them at your peril.”
This time the woods were silent. Drom nodded to himself. “Good. They’re thinking it over, probably arguing about it. If they come to their senses, we may be able to get out of here without any more violence.”
Jon-Tom peered through the narrow slit in the stone. “You think they’ll really react that sensibly?”
“I don’t know, but he knows I’m talking truth,” said the unicorn softly. “I know this section of forest better than he does, and he knows that I know that.”
“But how could we slip out of here and get past them?”
Drom chuckled. “I did fudge on that one a bit. Yet for all he knows there are a dozen secret passages out of here.”
“If there are, they’re bloody well still secret.” Mudge emerged from the crawlspace he’d entered and wiped limestone dust from his shirt and whiskers. “Tight as a teenage whore. Nothin’ bigger than a snake could get out the back way. We’re safe enough here, all right.” Jon-Tom gladly handed back the otter’s bow and found himself a soft place on the floor.
“Then I guess we wait until they attack again or give up and leave us alone. I suppose we ought to stand watch tonight.”
“Allow me, suh,” said Roseroar. “Ah’m as comfortable with the night as ah am with the day.”
“While we wait to see what they’ll do,” said Drom, “perhaps now you’ll tell me what you people are doing in this country, so far from civilization.”
Jon-Tom sighed. “It’s a long story,” he told the unicorn, and proceeded to relate it yet again. As he spoke, the sun set and the trees blended into a shadowy curtain outside. An occasional arrow plunked against the stone, more for nuisance value than out of any hope of hitting any of the defenders inside.
Hathcar had indeed lost too many in the futile attack to try it again. He knew that if he continued to fling his followers uselessly against an impregnable position they would melt quietly away into the woods. That night he moved away from the main campfire and sought counsel from an elderly rat and wolf, the two wisest of his band.
“So how do we pry those stinking bastards out of there?”
The rat’s hair was tinged with white and his face and arms were scarred. He picked at the dirt with one hand. “Why bother? Why not let them rot in there if they so desire? There are easier pickin’s elsewhere.”
Hathcar leaned toward him, glaring in the moonlight. “Do you know what happened today? Do you? They made a fool of me. Me, Hathcar! Nobody makes a fool of Hathcar and walks away to boast of it, nobody! Not on their own legs, they don’t.”
“It was just a thought,” the rat mumbled. “It had to be said.”
“Right. It’s been said. It’s also been forgotten.” The rat said nothing.
“How about smoking them out?” suggested the wolf.
The cuscus let out a derisive snort. “Don’t you think they’ve already thought of that? If they haven’t tried to break out, it means they aren’t worried about smoke; and if they aren’t worried about it, it probably means it won’t work if we try it.”
“Could we,” suggested the rat, “maybe force our way in through the roof?”
Hathcar sighed. “You’re all looking at the obvious, all of you. I’m the only one who can see beyond the self-evident. That cursed four-legs led them straight here, so he’s probably telling the truth when he says he knows it well. He wouldn’t box himself into a situation he wasn’t comfortable with. He says they can slip out anytime and hide somewhere else twice as strong. Maybe he’s lying, but we can’t take that chance. We have to take them here, while we know what we’re up against. That means our first priority is to get rid of that horned meddler.”
“How about moving a couple of archers in close? Those with good night vision. If they can sneak up against the wall they might get a clear shot inside.”
Hathcar considered. “Not bad, except that if they don’t snuff the unicorn right away that fucking water rat’s likely to get ’em both. I’ve never seen anybody shoot like that.” He shook his head.
“No, it?
??s not good enough, Parsh. I’m sure they’ve got a guard up, and I won’t send any more of the boys against that otter’s bow. No, we have to bring the unicorn out somehow, far enough so we can get a clear shot at him. By himself, if possible.”
The rat spat on the ground. “That’s likely, isn’t it?”
“You know, there may be a way.”
Hathcar frowned at the wolf. “I was only half-serious, Brungunt.”
“I’m wholly serious. All we need is the right kind of bait.”
“That blow you took in Ollorory village has addled your brains,” said Parsh. “Nothing’s going to bring that unicorn out where we can get at him.”
“Go on, Brungunt,” said the thoughtful Hathcar.
The wolf leaned close. “It should be done when most of them sleep. We must watch and smell for when the stallion takes his turn as sentry. If they post only the one guard, we may have a chance. Great care must be taken, for it will be a near thing, a delicate business. Bait or no bait, if the meddler senses our presence, I do not think he can be drawn out. So after we set the bait we must retreat well out of range. It will work, you’ll see. So powerful is the bait, it will draw our quarry well out where we can cut off his retreat. Then it won’t matter if he bolts into the woods. The important thing is that we’ll be rid of him, and the ones we really want will be deprived of his advice and aid.”
“No,” said Hathcar, his eyes gleaming, “no. I want that four-legs, too. I want him dead. Or better yet, we’ll just hamstring him.” He grinned viciously in the dark. “Yes, hamstring him. That’s better still.” He forced himself from contemplation of pleasures to come. “This bait? Where do we get it?”
Brungunt scratched an ear and even the skeptical Parsh looked interested. “First we must find a village or farm that numbers humans among its occupants.” He was nodding to himself as he spoke. “This is an old, old magic we will work tonight, but you don’t have to be a sorcerer to work it. It works itself. It is said by those who may know that a unicorn may not be taken by force, but only by stealth and guile.”
“Get to the point,” said Hathcar impatiently.
The wolf hurried his words. “We don’t have to sneak up on him. He’ll come to us. He’ll follow a maiden fair and true. It is said.”