"I'll take your word for it," Kaeritha said, unobtrusively loosening her own blades, one by one, in their sheaths. She thought longingly of the cased longbow slung beside her saddle, but there was no way she could reach for it without any watcher noticing. Besides, it was a weapon to be used on foot, not from horseback. Bahzell, on the other hand, had casually eased his arbalest off his shoulder. As she watched from the corner of her eye, he slipped the iron goatsfoot from his belt and spanned the steel-bowed weapon one-handed. It was a prodigious offhand display of strength, and he looked up at her with another grin as he slid a square-headed quarrel onto the string.
"You're certain they'll attack?" she asked, a bit bemused even now to realize she had accepted Bahzell's warning without question.
"As to that, I'll not say as how whoever's up there has wickedness in mind. In fact, I'd be letting us go unmolested for certain if it was me over there. We've the better part of forty swords over here, counting the drovers, and only two wagons. Come to that, we're headed north, not south, so it's like enough any wagons we do have are riding empty. They'd get little loot and plenty of hard knocks from such as us, and your average brigand's not one as likes a fight unless there's plenty of profit in it. All I'm after saying is that there is someone up yonder, and I'm not minded to be taking any chances on their being as smart as I about picking targets, if you take my meaning."
"I was thinking the same thing," Kaeritha murmured. "But you do expect them to hit us, don't you?"
"Aye," Bahzell replied quietly, and flicked his ears. "But if you're asking why I do, well, that I can't tell you."
He watched Vaijon reach Sir Harkon, who had succeeded Yorhus in command of their escort and now rode at the head of the party. The older knight glanced at Vaijon, then stiffened in his saddle. Bahzell doubted anyone would have noticed if he hadn't been looking very closely, and Harkon didn't so much as turn his head to look back at Bahzell, but his hand dropped to his side and inconspicuously flipped the skirt of his poncho back from the hilt of his sword.
The Horse Stealer nodded in satisfaction. The dangerous stretch of forest was already well within bowshot or he would have opted for stopping where they were to reorder their own ranks and let the enemy—assuming there was an enemy—come to them. Unfortunately, not even his eyes could see into those dark, impenetrable trees, and he had no idea what precisely was waiting for them. Had he been planning an ambush, he would have brought along all the bowmen he could find and opened the assault with a storm of arrows, and it was possible that was precisely what would happen. But there was nothing his people could do except hope their armor turned any arrows—a likely outcome, unless they faced longbows or heavy crossbows—and keep moving. Assuming that someone intended to hit them, the attack would undoubtedly come at or near that bend ahead, where the trees came closest to the road, and all they could do was ride right into their enemies' arms.
But not , he thought with an evil smile, the way those enemies expected them to ride. The one thing more devastating than an ambush which completely surprised a target was the counterattack of a target which the ambushers only thought they'd surprised. Bahzell knew, for he'd been on both ends of that particular stick, and he knew that men who were certain they'd achieved surprise expected that momentary advantage, that brief period when their opponents stared at them in shock and tried to get a grasp of what was happening. And when the ambushers didn't get that moment of consternation, the advantage shifted instantly in the other direction.
It took veteran troops to ride into a trap without any indication they realized they were doing so, but he'd come to know these men well, and he'd been impressed by their quality. Which, he supposed, he shouldn't have been, considering whose Order they belonged to. Here and there the loose column closed up a little, but so slowly and casually not even he would have suspected why it was happening. The two extra drivers on each wagon had disappeared back under their vehicles' felted covers, and he had no doubt they were stringing bows for themselves and the men left at the reins, as well. The six lay-brothers who'd been riding on the south side of the wagons had also strung their short horsebows, using the wagons for cover, and he nodded in satisfaction. If an attack did come—
Vaijon and Harkon came abreast of the forest's nearest approach, and movement flickered under the trees. Lesser eyes than Bahzell Bahnakson's might not have seen it, but his had, and his arbalest was already moving up to his shoulder even before he realized they had. It steadied, the string snapped, and the crossbowman who'd been taking aim at Vaijon screamed as the quarrel nailed his shoulder to a tree.
Someone shouted, and a dozen more crossbows fired from the trees. The knight riding directly behind Vaijon pitched out of his saddle without a sound, the lay-brother beside him cursed and clapped a hand to the short, stubby shaft suddenly standing out of his left thigh, and yet another quarrel struck Vaijon himself in the chest. Fortunately, it came in at an oblique angle and skipped off his mail, ripping a huge tear in his poncho without inflicting any other damage. Harkon was less lucky, for his horse went down, shrieking as a quarrel drove home just behind its left foreleg. But at least the knight-commander had known something was coming, and he kicked out of the stirrups. He landed rolling and came upright, his sword already in his hand, just as another horse reared in agony and collapsed, spilling yet another lay-brother from the saddle. But that was all the damage the crossbowmen managed to inflict, and someone else shouted under the trees—this time in consternation—as the entire "unprepared" column wheeled sharply to its left and charged.
The woods loomed before them, motionless and menacing for several moments, and then figures began to spill out of the trees. They came in dribs and drabs, like water spurting through leaks in a dike, their surprise obvious in their lack of formation. These were men who had expected to emerge from cover only to confront victims who'd already lost men to crossbow fire and whose survivors were half-broken by the surprise of ambush, and Bahzell shook his head in disgust as he spanned the arbalest once more.
If he'd been in command over there, he would have broken off and fled the instant it was apparent surprise had been lost, or at least stayed put in the trees. The ambushers' only missile weapons appeared to be crossbows, which were notoriously slow-firing in most people's hands. Prince Bahnak's Horse Stealers had adopted weapons like Bahzell's own arbalest, but they had the strength of arm to span them like light crossbows, which let them maintain a rate of fire no one else could match. Still, even human crossbowmen could have gotten off at least one more shot each while their attackers came at them and, at the very least, they could have forced their enemies to come into the trees after them, where mounted troops would be at a severe disadvantage. Coming out into the open, especially without even taking time to shake down into coherent formation, was stupid.
Still, he allowed as he raised the arbalest and sent another deadly bolt through the throat of an attacker, the brigands did have a marked advantage in numbers. There must be forty or fifty of them, and their decision to leave the sanctuary of the trees might not be quite so addlepated as it first seemed.
Most of the Order of Tomanāk's knights were medium or heavy horse who fought with lance, sword, battleaxe, or mace. There were exceptions—those who, like Bahzell or, for that matter, Kaeritha, preferred to fight on foot—but almost all of the Order's warriors were horsemen. At the moment, that was a disadvantage, for the greatest weapon of a mounted man was normally his horse's momentum. But the snow off the high road was more than horse belly-deep in places, and however willing their mounts, that snow slowed them as they floundered towards their enemies. It was a problem for anyone on foot, as well, of course, but less of one, relatively speaking.
Fortunately, however, Tomanāk's Order rejected the nose-lifted disdain some chivalric orders felt for missile weapons. Unlike those orders—whose members, as far as Bahzell could figure, regarded war as some sort of game in which an arrow was a rank breach of etiquette—Tomanāk's followers used whatever weapon served best, and the Order's lay-brothers were mounted archers. Few of them carried the heavy Sothōii horsebows which made the windriders so deadly, but the lighter version they did use was lethally effective in expert hands, and they were experts.
Now the wagoneers and the lay-brothers who'd strung their bows while concealed behind the wagons—a full dozen of them in all—laid down a deadly fire that did to the ambushers what the brigands' abortive crossbow volley had failed to do to the head of the column. Men screamed and fell, thrashing in the snow as needle-pointed pile arrows slammed into them. Blood spattered the snow, shocking in its redness, and Bahzell dropped his arbalest, drew his sword, and went racing after Kaeritha's mount.
The snow was an impediment to him, as well, but not nearly as much a one as it would have been to another footman, and he drew even with Kaeritha just before she reached the enemy. She might prefer to fight on foot, and a quarterstaff might not be a typical mounted weapon, but that didn't seem to faze her. She dropped her reins, guiding her horse solely with knee and heel, and the staff blurred as she sent it hissing through the air in a two-hand stroke. She took her first victim squarely in the forehead with a perfectly timed strike, and blood sprayed as the impact shattered his skull.
Bahzell had little time to notice. The snow and heavy going had deprived his own people of any sort of formation, as well, and what had been intended as a nice, neat ambush turned into an ugly, sprawling melee. Knots of combat coalesced out of the confusion as two or three men on each side came together, and the Horse Stealer's lips drew back and his ears flattened as he met his first foe head-on.
The brigand in question slithered and skidded in the snow, trying to stop himself as he realized what he faced, but it was too late for that, and Bahzell's sword came down two-handed. Razor-edged steel slammed into the angle of neck and shoulder, and the bandit didn't even have time to scream as it sheared clear down through his torso to emerge below the opposite armpit. The mangled corpse flew aside, blood steaming in the cold, and Bahzell turned as three more brigands came at him.