“Fireblast,” Ryan cursed. Shooting one of the men and dropping him dead in his tracks had been the plan. Maybe he’d have been lucky enough to down another one or two before they’d have even known he was among them. Wounding the man and letting him scream spun events into the sudden rush of near death.
He sighted on another target, reminding himself to aim higher with the bow because the trajectory had proved wrong on the first shot. He let out half a breath, then released the three-fingered hold he had on the string.
This time the feathered missile flew true, biting deeply into the chest of a brushwooder taking cover behind a lightning-blasted tree at the wrong angle. The man went backward, hands wrapping around the shaft as he was driven by the impact, and stretched out across a patch of snow that quickly turned dark.
Blasters roared, muzzle-flashes visible among the trees in a semicircle of fire.
None of the bullets came close to Ryan. He drew back another arrow and released it, leading a figure sprinting across an open space. Though he’d aimed at the center of the body, the shaft went low, taking the brushwooder in the thighs from the side, fixing them together. The man fell headlong to the ground.
Bullets whacked into the oak tree, ripping leaves and branches free. A collective cry rose up from the brushwooders as more and more of them spotted the source of the arrows.
Ryan abandoned the bow, letting it drop through the branches below, and reached down to grab the barrel of the Steyr. Slipping the sling from his shoulder, he brought the rifle on target as three men broke cover and streaked for the tree.
His finger stroked the trigger, two shots per man. Three corpses dropped in a tangled sprawl before the last one could break away.
“He’s in the tree!” a woman yelled.
“Over here!”
“Get him!” someone yelled. “Blow the son of a bitch out of the tree!”
Ryan emptied the Steyr’s clip rapidly. He knew he brought down three more men scattered beneath the trees, and one of them for sure wouldn’t be getting back up again.
A bullet cut through Ryan’s sleeve as he worked his way into a clear area between the branches on the rear side of the tree. He stepped out over the ten-foot drop and let go.
He bent his knees to get himself loose for the hard landing. At the bottom of the fall, he let his weight go with the pull of gravity, then pushed himself back up.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the shadow along the bole of the tree that didn’t fit. It was man-shaped and held a blaster.
“FUCKERS REALLY PUT his foot up the ass of Satan this time.”
As he gazed through his Starlight binoculars at the one-eyed man in the oak tree calmly fitting another arrow to the bowstring, Hayden LeMarck said, “I’ll give you five to two that he comes out of it alive.”
“I’ll take your jack,” Wallis Thoroughgood replied, “and be man enough to stand you a beer at Dripping Sal’s when we get back to Jakestown.” He was a blocky man, crowding sixty if he was a day. Dressed in a coat and insulated coveralls, only the man’s round face showed, the features resembling those of a demented cherub.
The rattle of bridles and the creak of saddle leather sounded behind LeMarck. “Keep those damn horses still. You don’t, and we could still end up hip deep in goddamn brushwooders.”
“Yes, sir,” someone replied.
As one of the head sec men for Baron Sparning Hardcoe, LeMarck got respect. He was a tall, lean man with fair hair and muttonchop whiskers that ran deep auburn. A hawk’s bill of a nose jutted over a thin-lipped mouth.
The brushwooders had raided some of the outer farms around the little ville of Angeltears less than a week earlier. Representatives from the ville had sailed north to Jakestown ville, the biggest community in the seven villes under the control of the Five Barons, and talked with Baron Hardcoe himself. Hardcoe had made it LeMarck’s job to track down the brushwooders and punish them, and assigned twenty men to go with him.