The night sounds of the woods carried on: the croak of tree frogs, the chirp of crickets, the sawing of less identifiable insects. An occasional tiny rustle in the weeds. Anything bigger might have been either scared off by the noise of the camp below, or, depending on how the robbers buried their scraps, attracted.

Dag felt around with his groundsense beyond the tightening perimeter of the patrol, but found no nervous scavengers.

Then, too soon, a startled yell from his far right, partway around the patroller circle. Grunts, cries, the ring of metal on metal. The camp stirred. That’s it, in we go.

“Closer,” snapped Dag to Saun, and led a slide downslope to shorten their range.

By the time he’d closed the distance to a bare twenty paces and found a gap in the trees through which to shoot, the targets were obligingly rising to their feet. From even farther to his right, a flaming arrow arced high and came down on a tent; in a few minutes, he might even be able to see what he was shooting at.

Dag let both fear and hope fade from his mind, together with worries about the inner nature of what they faced. It was just targets. One at a time. That one.

And that one. And in that confusion of flickering shadows…

Dag loosed another shaft, and was rewarded by a distant yelp. He had no idea what he’d hit or where, but it would be moving slower now. He paused to observe, and was satisfied when Saun’s next shaft also vanished into the black dark beyond the cabin and returned a meaty thunk they could hear all the way up here.

All around in the woods, the patrol was igniting with excitement; his head would be as full of them as Mari’s was in a moment if they didn’t all get a grip on themselves.

The advantage of twenty paces was that it was a nice, short, snappy range to shoot from. The disadvantage was how little time it took your targets to run up on your position… Dag cursed as three or four large shapes came crashing through the dark at them.