Free Snowbrother by S.M. Stirling Page B

Kommanza stopped, backed his horse. It was restless, whickering; his eyes swept methodically over the bushes.
    The elder Minztan drew a deep, controlled breath. Fingers drew a tiny pattern in the snow before her eyes; with a straining effort no less real for the stillness of her body, she sent her consciousness plunging through it into the totality of the woods around. She did not attempt to spin illusion, or turn the hunter's mind; such was work for an Adept.
    Instead, she pulled the patters of the wilderness around her, made it fit like a seamless web that left no telltale detail to disrupt and catch the eye. The plains warrior shook his head, muttered, heeled his mount into motion. The Minztan could feel his unease. But no steppedweller was at home in the deep woods; the strangeness played on their nerves, until the true hunter's sense was lost as imagination put a lurker behind every piece of cover.
    After he passed, the young man raised his crossbow, It was an easy shot, and the armor would be no protection this close. His companion touched his arm and shook her head.
    Seconds later a whistle call came from their left, faint but clear in a rising-falling four-note pattern. The man repeated it through the bone whistle in his mouth, the sound loud and piercing through the trees. And faint and far, to their right, another echoed it.
    Just then another horse came up: the squadleader riding the line of her section. Passing at a canter, she shouted at the lone scout and plunged on into the woods.
    Silence fell. When it was safe the younger Minztan whispered: "Did you hear that one"—he nodded toward where the noncom had disappeared "—coming?"
    She shook her head. "They scout in a grid, like a diamond-mesh fishnet. If you'd killed that one they'd have spotted the gap and had a troop on the way here in minutes; each one keeps in touch with those little flutes."
    Bitterly, she pounded her fist into the snow. "Why didn't they get the stockade finished?
    With that and the pigeons, the Seeker's people in Garnetseat could have come up, we would have swamped them with numbers. Fools! Why did the New Way give us aid in goods and food, if not for that?"
    "Can we do anything?"
    "Perhaps. Perhaps. It depends on how soon the raiders leave, how fast they travel, how quickly we can alert the relief. They won't be counting on our having a force ready to move on short notice. But we didn't think so many could come into the woods in winter, not the full hundred we have seen."
    She bit at the knuckle of her mitten. "Of course, if they go the right way, It could come, if the right people survived the first attack."
    She looked to where the westering sun threw red light on the treetops. That was a huge flock of ifs , though. "We'll wait for full night, then travel. Best we try to get some sleep; you nap first. Safe enough, now their first line is past us."
    Curiosity prompted him as he curled into the snow. "What did she say, the one who went by?"
    For the first time that day the woman smiled, hard and sour. "She said, 'Be careful, they may try to turn in the dark.' "
    Taimi was glad of the work that morning, and gladder still of the enforced silence. Hours went by as he helped empty the village granaries, heaving wicker baskets of oats and rye from the bams to fill a long train of slender steppe sleds. The task was not heavy; there were plenty of hands, and the Kommanz were in no hurry. It was near noon before he began to notice detail: grain dust coating the inside of nose and throat, hunger, the number of empty sacks in the sleds the enemy had brought… It was a moment before the meaning of that struck him. His folk fed the stock they kept over winter on hay, not having breadstuff to spare. But the Kommanza had brought hundreds of war-horses and draft beasts many days' journey into a land where the winter snows hid only pine needles and weeds. The animals had traveled fast and kept in condition on grain, and the raiders had been so confident