The horsemen riding unaware into the trap down the road below were stripped to the waist in the muggy heat, regardless of the mosquitoes that were beginning to whine. Even at a hundred yards and through the gloaming he could see that three of them carried long spears tipped with ground-down butcher knives, and they all had a clutch of javelins slung over their backs as well in something like a big quiver. Then the still air shifted and a little breeze cuffed at leaf and twig around him, cooling the sweat that stuck strands of his hair to the back of his neck beneath the flare of the helm. The horses tossed their heads at the scent of their own kind; one nickered, and was answered by an equine snort from behind the two Mackenzies.

Rudi came smoothly to his feet, as swiftly as if he and the animal had practiced the signal together. ?Ambush!? he shouted, his trained voice throwing the sound from deep in his chest.?Trap! In the brush above you!?

The scrub exploded with armed men, screams and ragged figures and the ugly sheen of spearheads; manymore than he?d thought there would be, but it was too late to undo his decision. They wavered for a moment, caught between the foemen they had expected to take unawares and the strangers above them.

Closer to thirty than to six of them. More like forty, the Dagda club them dead! went through him in a flickering instant. I do hope the men they wanted to kill can take some of the weight! ?Morrigu!? Rudi screamed, to rivet their attention.?Morrigu!?

He called on the Crow Goddess as he drew and shot, for She was the one whose feathered host fed on the fruits of battle, the Dark Mother who had sent Raven to claim him in the nemed while he was still a child. Edain simply howled, the cry of the Wolf that was his sept totem, and then their voices rose together in the racking banshee shriek of the Clan?s battle-yell.