Sheathing his broadsword, the old lord took the spear and scrutinized its single-edged blade, answering, “No, lieutenant, I think not. I’d have known of any band this large.”
Vaskos paced up to them with the filled water bottles, adding, “Nor would outlaws have small children in a forest camp. And the mud along the rill has bare footprints so small that only a child of no more than three yean could have pressed them.”
Now Hohguhn had, while listening to father and son, snapped up the cheekpieces of his open-faced helm and removed it to vigorously apply dirty fingernails to furiously itching scalp, so the humming sound and its deadly import were clearer than to those whose ears still were covered by steel.
With a shouted “Down!” be flung his wiry body against that of the startled komees, while violently shoving big Vaskos, who fell forward so that the stone aimed for his unprotected face clanged instead off his raised visor.
But three of the wandering Freefighters were not so lucky, and when at last the komees’ party had crawled or scurried back to the shelter of the woods opposite those which held the slingers, the bodies of those three still lay where they had fallen. Against men clad in open-faced helms, slingstones can spell instant death.
CHAPTER V
Briefly Vaskos showed himself, trying to spot the positions of the ambushers, and a subdued humming launched a ragged volley toward him. But the range was too great and only one or two stones bounced off the first treetrunks, most falling in the deserted clearing.
“That be a warnin* and a sample of more to come, y* child-stealin* bastards!” snarled a deep voice from the trees and brush which hid the slingers. “We’uns owe yer mistress nothin’, y* hear? Make a Ehleenee church out’n ever” house we left, but you come after us ‘n* our women *n* our kids ‘n* we’ll kfll ever1 last one of you priest-bound boy-buggers!”
“That,” whispered the komees amazedly, “was Ehrik Ooontehros, the village headman! What in the world could that witless bitch have done to inflame so even-tempered a man to ambush and murder?”
Before Vaskos or Hohguhn, who were continuing to watch the source of both stones and voice, could divine his intent, Komees Hari was already swinging up onto Steelsheen and mindspeaking the stallion out into the campsite, even while he stripped off his gauntlets and commenced to unbuckle his helm.
Hohguhn would never have suspected that big, burly Vaskos could move so fast. At a weaving, crouching run, he reached his father’s side just before the older man cleared the last of the screening brush. Gripping the near stirrup leathers, he frantically remonstrated.
“Is my father a fool? They’ve already downed three good men-they’ll not stick at yet another. Wait until Gaib and his men are up to us, at least. A few patterns of shafts will clear that brush in record time.”
The old nobleman lifted off the helm and thrust it down at Vaskos, patting his son’s weather-browned cheek with the other hand. “You need not fear for me, lad. Those poor men yonder are my people. They’ll not harm me-not if they can see who I am. Hehrah has obviously wronged them in some way, else they’d be in Horse Hall village, not faring like wild beasts here in the forest Without doubt, some more of her damned perversion of a religion. You caught what Ehrik said about churches, didn’t you?”
Then the big gray was into the clearing, and Vaskos was left clutching his father’s helm and nursing his apprehensions. He watched the stallion come to a halt, then commence a slow, stately walk across the width of the campsite, tail held high and neck arched in pride. Then came again the sound he had so feared: the humming of a whirling sling. •
“Father?’ he shouted. “My lord, beware!” But when he would have run after his sire, many hands restrained him.
And Captain Linstahk was there before him, saying, “You cannot aid him now, Vaskos. And would your death make his any more meaningful?”
With the abrupt end of the humming, a whistling stone narrowly missed Hari’s head, caroming off his shoulderpiece. But the old nobleman might have been an image, carved of one of those stone outcrops which dotted his lands. He never so much as flinched at the loud clang of stone on steel. He sat his mount easily, erect in his high-bowed warkak, loosely handling his reins, his bare swordhand resting on his armored thigh.