Perhaps later she would laugh, too. Her expertise was military history, the study of the strategies of the grandest wars, but that did not include knowledge of something so base and coarse as banditry.

"Are we in danger?" Xink asked. This time Praulth hissed for silence.

She heard movement. Her heart beat even harder. There were deliberate footsteps approaching, leaves crunching. She peered deeper into the thicket.

She saw movement. A shape appeared beneath the interlocking branches, amidst the complex shadows.

"Come, then!" Merse cried out. "You won't have an easy time of it." He slashed the knife through the air.

The figure paused. At the same instant another arrow sprang from the woods, faster than the eye could completely follow. This one whipped past Merse's cheek and struck the same tree as before, a mere handsbreadth above the first arrow.

"Godsdamnit, Frog! Stop showing off!"

A female voice. She emerged into view, walking as steadily as before. She was short and extremely muscular.

"Keep the blade in hand or put it away," she said. "Makes no difference. Obviously you won't get to use it." She had halted just beyond the trees, at the roadside.

Praulth gazed at her. She looked... rugged. Someone who spent her time outdoors, on the move.

"You sound confident of that," Merse said, voice stony, betraying no fear. Praulth wasn't sure she would even be able to form words at the moment. But she made certain her face didn't reflect that fear. She was a personage of importance, and her dignity mattered, even now.

"I've got cause to be," the bandit said. "My archer could put shafts in both your eyes before you got off your saddle." She held up a hand, shook her head. Her tone softened. "But—but that's how we used to do things. The truth is, we're no longer in that business. We only want one thing."