A Meeting At Corvallis

survive in that profession. All but the dead or wounded dove for cover, and a flurry of crossbow bolts
and arrows came back at the ambushers; one bolt went by overhead with an unpleasant vvvvwhhppt
sound of cloven air and hammered into a chinquapin to stand buzzing like an angry wasp. Astrid ignored
it and shot again, again, then dropped her bow and reached up for the next rope as the remainder of the
gang ran shouting around the curve and into sight. It wound tight around her left forearm, and a quick
snatch and wrench of her right hand put the cord-wound hilt of her long sword in her grip.
"A Elbereth Gilthoniel!" she shouted, from the bottom of her lungs.
She took three steps forward and launched herself into the air. The weight wrenched at her left arm,
and she felt the strong pull of the rope and the springy branch it was lashed to bending beneath her solid
hundred and sixty pounds of body and gear. Momentum swept her forward with blurring speed, higher
above the surface as she fell towards the trail, skimming in a great arch that left her barreling down the
trail towards the enemy at head-height.
"A Elbereth Gilthoniel!" she shouted again, a great, high-soaring silver trumpet-call as she flew.
"Fuck me!" a snaggle-toothed man screamed, as much in astonishment as fear, just before her boot
heels struck him in the face.
Crack.
The bandit was flung half a dozen feet backward at the collision, his face a red pulp of flesh and bone
fragments. Something heavy and strong seemed to flow up from her feet through her body, cracking it
like a whip and snapping her teeth together with a painful click, but she dropped to the ground and let the
rope fall away, twitching her shoulder to slide the shield around to where she could run her forearms
through the loop. Eilir dropped beside her, jack-knifing in the air, her sword and buckler flicking into her
hands even as she landed. A spearman gaped at her, then thrust overarm. Eilir ducked under it in a
smooth continuation of her fall, whirling as she crouched to snap her short-sword at the back of his knee
in a hocking stroke. There was a grisly popping sound like a taut cable parting and he went over
backward, screaming and clutching at the injury as if he could squeeze the hamstring back to wholeness.
Astrid brought targe and blade up as another bandit ran at her anamchara, stepped forward with a
raking stride of her long legs. Her backsword came up and around and down with a looping cut as her
right foot squelched into the mud, flashing down in a blurring arc with the weight and the flexing snap of
her whole body behind it.
Crack! as the edge cut, and a billman was left staring at the ashwood stub of his weapon's haft as the
business end pinwheeled away; she recovered and killed him with a snapping lunge to the neck, fast as a
frog's tongue. He dropped with blood spraying from his severed carotids, the red unearthly bright against
the dun colors of winter. The enemy were trying to rally, but their heads whipped about as Dunedain ran
down the hills to either side, looking to be twice their actual numbers as they leapt and shouted, their
blades out and bright. The outlaw gang froze for crucial seconds as the Dunedain war cry rang out from a
dozen throats:
"Lacho calad! Dredo morn!"
Then the rest were beside the two leaders, Alleyne to her left with his heater-shaped shield blazoned
with five roses up and his blade ready.
"St. George for England! A Loring! A Loring!" he called, handsome face set and grim.
Little John Hordle came thundering up beyond Eilir with his great sword gripped in the two-handed
style.
"Sod this for a game of soldiers!" he shouted.
The great blade spun in a horizontal circle. It sliced through a wooden shield and gouged bone-deep
into the arm beneath, and took off half the man's face on the upstroke, like a knife topping a boiled egg.
A spray of droplets hung in the air for an instant, a red curve splaying out like a ripple in a pond.
"You bints are fucking mad!" he went on in a roar like a foghorn in a fit, as he kicked a spearman
in the stomach and crushed his skull with the ball pommel of his heavy blade. "Who do you think you
are, Errol sodding Flynn?"
The enemy wavered, then as one man turned and ran. A dozen paces were enough to put them
around the bend in the trail, and the ground to its left was near-vertical cliff. Astrid swung sword and