A Meeting At Corvallis

some sort of sword, most often the heavy machete-like choppers known as falchions … or as machetes,
outside the Valley. Several had boiled-leather jerkins strapped with pieces of sheet metal, and a couple
had bowl or kettle helmets.
"Yes, suspiciously well armed," Alleyne agreed. "And the weapons are far too uniform."
"Now that you mention it—" Astrid began, and then whirled at a sound of distress.
Crystal was kneeling beside the dead bandit, being noisily sick into a growing pool of blood. Eilir
made a tsk sound with her lips.
Sometimes, soul-sister, you are sort of insensitive, she signed, and went over to put an arm
around the girls shoulders and urge her away from the body.
Astrid blinked. Well, I said she'd done well, she thought, then dismissed it.
The horses were restive, tossing their heads; then they pricked their ears and snorted. More hooves
pounded on the trail, and then another dozen mounted Dunedain came up, as many again running on foot
beside them gripping the stirrup-leathers for support, all well spattered with muck and woods-duff
thrown up by busy hooves. Astrid waved them forward, and turned back to Alleyne.
"—now that you mention it, yes, they are well armed," she said. "Normally bandits just have odds
and ends, no two alike. The ones we ran out of the lodge here a couple of years back, they were using it
for a base, they were certainly like that … and these all have shoes, see? Fairly new shoes, too."
The robbers' footwear was modern, tanned leather uppers with laces, and either hobnail-studded
alder wood or pieces of rubber tire for soles. Not expensive: village cobblers and workshops in a dozen
towns from the Protectorate to Corvallis turned out the like. A Mackenzie crofter might have worn them,
or a Bearkiller tenant-farmer. But oddly uniform, again; not identical, nothing was these days when
handmade was the rule, but as if they'd all come from the same place. She frowned, absently taking her
bow as someone handed it to her, and a handful of arrows with bloody points and shafts. Her hands
moved automatically, wiping blood off the steel, checking the fletching and slipping them back into her
quiver.
"Now, if I was trying to make a gang of bandits more effective, what would I give them?" she mused
aloud.
Eilir was back. She and John Hordle began to speak simultaneously, in Sign and aloud, then looked
at each other and grinned. Alleyne answered instead.
"Weapons, and in this season, shoes. A man with chilblains can't fight very well."
The lookout she'd posted called down from his perch high in a Douglas fir. "They're coming back!
More of them!" Then, after an instant: "I think someone's after them. They look like they're running!
Running hard!"
"Positions!" Astrid said. "Kevin, you stay with Sadb."
She joined Alleyne behind his boulder this time; there weren't as many good positions, with their
numbers more than doubled. He was chuckling as she settled in. At her arched brow, he leaned his head
towards the trail.
"Eilir is reusing the rope," he said. "I like that girl's spirit, damn me if I don't."
Astrid chuckled herself as she saw the trip-rope deployed; covered in mud, it would be nearly
invisible while lying slack. There wasn't time for anything fancy, just a knot around one tree and a half
hitch around another.
"Eilir's lawar," she agreed happily.
The first of the bandits came around the bend again, running hard. The rope snapped up, and three
went down like puppets with their strings cut. A clash of metal and war cries sounded from behind them;
somebody was chasing them. And then she noticed another figure with the outlaws; this one had a
white-and-brown camouflage surcoat over his mail hauberk; both were knee-length. Similar cloth
masked his kite-shaped shield, and a conical nose-guarded helmet, his blade was a double-edged
longsword.
The rest of the Dunedain stood as she did, and the outlaws screamed in despair at the sight of better
than thirty bows drawn to the ear. A few tried to run on the Dunedain bows snapped, and nearly every
one of the slashing volley struck.