Free Demontech: Rally Point: 2 (Demontech Book 2) by David Sherman

All around, fallen leaves and twigs spotted the ground and quietly rotted away, returning their stored nutrients to the soil.
    Even though the light was merely dim, and no treetop dwellers scattered slops at him, the forest reminded Haft uncomfortably of the short stretch he and Spinner had traversed leading to the border between Bostia and Skragland. There, as they reentered the light at the border, a giant cat of the forest had attacked them and nearly won.
    Bare patches of dirt bore the tracks of deer and other grazers, occasionally there were signs of boar. Ground dwellers scampered through what undergrowth there was, squee -ed out their alarms and flashed white-tailed alerts. Haft went suddenly cold when he saw the pug of a hunting cat. He dropped to a knee to examine it. It was half the size of the paws of the gray tabur he and Spinner had fought and killed. He thought the cat more likely to flee a man than try to eat one. Still, when he stood and continued to move through the trees, he was more wary. He checked that his axe was loose in its belt loop; his fingers caressed the trigger of his crossbow. Man-eaters or not, cats were frightening, deadly, beasts and he had no desire to encounter another.
    In places, the spacing of the trees allowed the scouts to see as far as a hundred yards though the dimness of the light made objects at that distance hard to make out. After a time, Haft dimly made out Wolf in the distance, where it was bolting down a meal. The beast looked directly at him as he approached and seemed to laugh. Then, finished, Wolf ran forward before Haft reached him.
    Haft stopped to examine the scene. There were many paw marks of dogs around the half-eaten carcass of a yearling deer. Wolf had interrupted the pack in its meal and sent it to flight. With the bigger predator gone, the feral dogs were edging closer, to retake their stolen catch. Haft was suddenly aware of their growls. He casually walked away. Dogs might attack a man who displayed fear; they were less likely to attack one who displayed an air of confidence.
    The ground rolled in gentle swells and troughs, it angled slowly, imperceptibly, downward toward the distant sea. Streams and rills cut every which way through the land; the mountains that formed the spine of the Princedon Peninsula and divided the flow of water north and south were some distance ahead. In flat places and broad hollows, water from heavy rains pooled in season.
    Haft couldn’t see the position of the sun under the trees and had to guess at the passage of time. When he was sure enough time had passed for the sun to be halfway from zenith to dusk, he began to look for a suitable flood clearing, one with a stream of fast-running water and large enough to bivouac the entire company. When he found one he sent his three scouts to make sure the lack of human sign truly meant no one was near, and went to wait by the side of the road, where he was surprised when Fletcher joined him from the direction of the bivouac.
    “Where’s everybody else?” Haft asked.
    “Kocsokoz, Kovasch, and Meszaros are with your men scouting the area.” Fletcher grinned. “We followed you. Eight pairs of eyes are better than four.”
    Haft looked away, muttering to himself. He thought four pairs of eyes were enough—and he was head scout; nobody should be scouting without him knowing about it. He turned back to Fletcher.
    “And just what do you think would have happened if we realized we were being followed? How many of you would we have killed before we realized who you were?”
    Fletcher shook his head. “None. You would have waited until we were close enough to recognize before you fired.”
    Haft looked away, muttering again; Fletcher was right. Otherwise their arrows might miss. He’d rather get quick kills with arrows than go into the uncertainty of a close fight with men of whose fighting abilities he wasn’t fully confident. Still, he was upset that other scouts had trailed them without