Arrows of Promise (Kingmakers Book 2) (5 page)

Amber arrived with much fanfare, dressed fashionably and
with her hair done up, which set more than one guardsman and miner’s head to
turning. Her brother was acting as her bodyguard and he gave very murderous
glares to anyone that stared for more than three seconds.

No one expected the bandits to move the very second she
arrived. After all, they needed time to realize she was there and then more
time to decide what to do about it. But when an hour dragged by and nothing
happened, Riana lost all patience and went toward the tree Thorne was in.

He saw her approach and leaned forward, belly to bark, to
whisper loudly to her, “No movement.”

She stared up at him incredulously. “At all?”

“At all. Cook fire is still going strong. I think they’re
actually making lunch over there.”

Now didn’t that beat all. Throwing up her hands, she stomped
back toward the inn, where everyone was sitting on the front porch.

“No one be coming,” her father guessed, just off the stormy
expression on her face.

“Aye.” Riana almost snarled the word. Bad enough that they
had bandits sitting on their doorstep, but now they weren’t cooperating at all.

Amber pointed a finger at herself. “I thought I was good
bait. I mean, Bria did my hair and everything.”

“You’re wonderful bait,” her brother assured her, soothing a
hand along her back. “Beautiful. They’re just idiots.”

Ashlynn groaned, thoroughly disgusted. “Sitting here any
longer isn’t going to do us any good. We’ll have to think of something else.”

“Something we have no’ tried afore.” Broden frowned at the
ground.

Captain Bragdon quirked a brow at him. “You’ve done this
before?”

“Something akin to it, aye.” Broden shrugged, palms splayed.
“No’ with these gangs. But someone over there recognized it as the trap it be.”

“Smarter than we gave them credit for.” Bragdon stood,
offering his sister a hand up, which she needed. She apparently didn’t have
much experience in dealing with long hems. “If we’re not going to do any good
here, we’ll go back. Sheriff, rest assured, we have Estole well in hand until
this situation is resolved.”

Ashlynn stopped worrying at the tip of her thumb long enough
to give them a brief smile. “I’m not worried with you in charge. Update Edvard
for me when you get back, will you?”

“Of course.” The Bragdon siblings strode off for the docks
without a glance back.

Ash drummed out a rhythm with his fingers on his right knee.
“I really thought this would work.”

“We all did,” Ashlynn grumped.

“Broden,” Ash waited until the other man looked at him
before continuing, “what other tactics have you used before? That consistently
work?”

“Ambushes work fair against them, if ye can get the drop on
them. No’ that we can do that here.” Broden frowned as he tried to recall
everything he’d done in the past. “Flushing them out works fine most of the
time. Starving them out works even better. That tactic works like a charm.”

“Starving them out,” Ash repeated slowly, turning
considering eyes onto the forest. “We can’t starve them out there, can we?”

“Too much game to be had,” Riana said. “And wild roots and
onions. The diet may be a limited one, but they can fill their bellies.”

“How much spring water be over here?” Broden asked her.
“They can no’ drink from the channel, after all.”

Because it was salt water, right. “There be two within
throwing distance of here.” Riana pointed in their general directions. “Next one
out be much further, several marks inland. And hard to find.”

Ashlynn followed her pointing with fingers of her own.
“Isn’t that the two directions where the bandits are making camp?”

“Aye.” Riana considered that for a moment. They’d made camps
near the only sources of fresh water, which only made sense, that’s what a
sensible person did. Aside from those areas, they’d have to walk a long
distance to reach anything else. “Can we block them from using the springs?”

“If we put up a ward around each of them…yes.” Ash gave an
unholy grin, sitting on the edge of his chair as if he were ready to get up and
do it right now. “Maybe we can’t starve them out with food, but we can do it
with water.”

“Hold up now, lad,” Broden cautioned. “Ye be talking about
getting mighty close to these camps and then doing some timely spellwork.”

“You and Riana are used to sneaking around their camps,” Ash
said confidently, not a trace of doubt in his voice.

“Aye, lad, well….”

“And we don’t have to be smack on top of the springs to pull
this off.”

His twin looked at him in surprise and queried doubtfully,
“We don’t?”

“Riana and I figured this out the first day we were marking
things out,” Ash explained to her quickly. “I put the mark on her arrows, she
fires where it needs to go, and then when the last arrow is in place, we set up
the ward just like normal.”

“Ohhh.” Ashlynn turned to Broden with an anticipatory
expression. “That sounds fun. We can do that too.”

“It would have to be quick.” Broden said the words slowly,
the wheels churning in his mind as he thought it all through. “How many arrows
do we need?”

“Just enough to surround the spring. It depends on how big
the springs are.” Ash turned to Riana for the answer.

“I think eight or so will do the trick,” she answered promptly.
“Neither of them be big.”

“Only eight.” Broden rocked in his chair so that the back
two legs were the only things touching the ground. “And if we be in shooting
distance only, no’ on top of their camps…alright, lad. I grant ye, it be
feasible. We have to be quick, though. And we can no’ do it in broad daylight.”

“Dead of night is better for this,” Ashlynn agreed. She had
a wolfish smile on her face.

Her brother gave her a weary look. “Why do you like to skulk
so much?”

“No idea,” she admitted cheerfully. “We can do this tonight,
right?”

“Might as well plan for that,” Broden said with a sour
glance toward the bandits’ camps. “No’ like they be planning to attack today,
anyhow.”

Everyone chose to sleep early and rise at just around three
in the morning. The twins were at first voting for midnight, but Broden
explained to them that people were still more or less awake at that time. Early
in the morning was the best time to get the drop on people. It also gave them
time to get some decent sleep in before having to skulk around in a pitch-black
forest.

Ash put a spell on Riana’s eyes that let her see like a cat
in the dark. It took some getting used to as things weren’t in true color, but
she liked being able to walk without fear of tripping over something. Her
father, she noticed, didn’t need more than a second to adjust. Ashlynn had
apparently done this to him before. Now when had that happened? On that trip to
get the girls, maybe?

Of course Ash had to take down the ward for a second, just
long enough for them to skip outside of it, before he raised it again. Once
they were outside, they split up, each going for a different spring.

Riana had drawn a map on the ground for her father and
Ashlynn so they knew exactly where to go. She didn’t worry about them as they
split off, heading west as she and Ash went north. They moved quietly, watching
where they put their feet. At this time of year, there were no dry leaves on
the ground, which Riana was thankful for as it would have been a dead giveaway
to their location if someone heard it. The nightlife in the forest had grown
accustomed to the bandits in their midst and they were making their usual calls
to each other. The sounds were reassuring. Dead silence would make it harder on
them to sneak.

Ash stopped and waited for her to pass him before falling
into step behind her. She carefully bit her lip to hide a smile. Wasn’t sure
where to go in the dark, eh? Granted, the place looked different than it did in
broad daylight. She was careful to not lose him as she wound her way in and
around trees.

The bandits weren’t that far away, no more than a skipping
rock could travel. Watchmen were of course on duty but they weren’t being
particularly diligent. This was their second (third?) night out there and they
knew that when the ward was up, nothing would come out of the settlement. Or at
least, they thought they knew that. Riana eased her way around the watchmen and
toward the spring.

At this time of the morning, the fires were down to embers,
barely giving off any light at all. The spring was more than a dozen paces from
the camp, out of necessity, as it was surrounded by sharp rocks on all sides.
It gave them the room they needed to work in without worrying about the bandits
catching on.

Ash leaned in against her shoulder and breathed into her
ear, “Remember, the arrows have to be in line with each other. No obstacles in
the way.”

She nodded her understanding, loosening her quiver enough to
put four arrows into her hand. Ash put his finger briefly on each shaft, the
spell giving off a muted glow. With the last one in place, she nocked an arrow
and carefully fired. Then she held her breath, waiting.

Nothing from the camp stirred. Were they that dead to the
world, that the sound of an arrow whistling past didn’t alarm them?

“Sounds like the wind in the branches,” Ash assured her.
“Fire.”

She didn’t think so at all, but if he said so…twirling
another arrow into place, she aimed and fired. All four arrows formed a rough
half-circle around the spring. It looked like her estimation of eight was
dead-on. Lifting out four more, she waited for Ash to place the markers on
them, then repeated the process for the other half. When the last arrow was in
place, Ash lost no time in activating the ward. Of course, wards glowed, and rather
brightly at that.

“Hey,” one of the bandit watchmen said to the other on duty,
“what is that? That glowing over there?”

“How much did you drink?” the other responded.

Ash and Riana didn’t wait to see how that conversation
played out. Eventually one of them would get curious enough to go see. They
wanted to be well out of the area and back behind their own ward when that
happened. Moving as quickly as they could, without making a lot of racket in
the process, they hightailed it toward the settlement.

When they got there, the ward was down, with Ashlynn
bouncing impatiently on the tips of her toes, waiting for them. They sprinted
the rest of the distance, sliding into place behind her. Ashlynn snapped the
wards into place with record speed.

Only after they were up did she turn to them, giddy as a
child with new toys. “That was fun.”

“Aye, it be that,” Broden agreed, also grinning. “Reminds me
of the old days.”

“You two are incorrigible—” Ash broke off when yelling
started from the bandit camps. “That was quick.”

Riana shrugged, not surprised. “Glowing wards in the dead o’
night bound to get a man’s attention. Da, how much time do ye give it before
they come at us?”

“A day, at most.” Broden inclined his head back toward their
tents. “Get some sleep while ye can. The morning will belike be busy.”

Broden was up with the birds but even then Thorne was still
up in the tree before he could get there. Climbing the hickory, he sat on the
same branch as the lad and peered intently in the direction of the bandit
camps. “No smoke this morning.”

“Not a wisp of it,” Thorne agreed, gaze firmly ahead. “I’ve
been seeing a lot of movement, too. Even hearing some shouting, when the wind’s
strong enough to carry the sounds this way. Your trick of shutting down their
water access has them real riled up, sir.”

“The question be, lad, whether they be riled enough to move
yet.” The fact that they were not stopping to try and cook something for
breakfast suggested they would move soon, though. It would be hard to cook
without water, but not impossible, at least not with one meal. Trying to cook a
day’s worth of meals without water, that was the tricky part.