Against the Empire: The Dominion and Michian (12 page)

Imelda felt a deep sense of self-satisfaction as she clasped her hands around the fingers of the other members of her group while they rested in a crevasse atop a mountain ridge. Climbing the cliffs with Marina’s system of ropes and pegs had worked, though it had been arduous and time-consuming. They’d reached the top of the ridgeline and clambered along until they judged it was about the right location to move towards the invaders’ camp. For the second time Imelda was healing the cuts and nicks on the fingers of her compatriots, so they’d have the manual dexterity needed to accurately shoot their arrows.

“There they are!” Shaiss called from thirty yards ahead of Imelda and the archers. He was standing at the edge of a stony ledge, crouched down and pointing. Rashrew hurried over and crouched down next to him.

“Mother of God!” Rashrew swore, and Imelda steeled herself for an unpleasant sight. The rest of the group moved over as well to peer down into the canyon.

“Holy Mother of God!” Imelda re-emphasized Rashrew’s expres-sion of dismay. Three hundred feet below them the floor of the canyon swarmed with hundreds of soldiers. The invasion force had multiplied throughout the night.

“Over there,” Rashrew hissed as he pointed back towards the southwest end of the canyon. A large empty area was roped off, and one of the ugly transportation animals was standing with an attendant. As they watched, the animal disappeared, while twenty feet away another animal appeared suddenly, with three men sitting astride its back. They passengers rapidly dismounted, and were escorted outside the arrival area.

“Down there,” one of the archers directed everyone’s attention. “There’s a game trail running along the canyon wall. If we can find a place to reach it, we can get down within easy range of those animals.” Another one of the animals arrived with several sacks of supplies that were unloaded.

All eyes followed the line of the trail as it rose and dropped and disappeared behind outcroppings. “Over there. There’s another trail that descends to meet it,” Shaiss pointed. As a single person the whole group began scampering to find a way down to the trail. Half an hour later Marina and Rashrew were ready to lower the archers down thirty feet by rope to land on the trail.

“Shaiss, you go with them, and keep them hidden with your light-bending powers,” Imelda instructed. “Kill each animal as soon as it shows up. Don’t let a wounded animal return to their homeland to warn them it’s an ambush. We want to kill as many of these animals as we can.”

“We’ll be down close to their level, Imelda. What if they figure out where we are and come after us?” one of the Bondell archers asked.

“Move around. Shaiss can keep you hidden as you skip around on the trail. It’s extremely important that you exterminate as many of those animals as you can,” she said, seeking to emphasize the point. The number of soldiers who had arrived already was disturbing, far outnumbering the Goldenfields and Bondell forces that were sitting at the village.

“They’re starting to move out,” Rashrew observed grimly. “And we don’t have any way to warn our folks.”

The sense of urgency communicated itself to everyone in the group, and the archers shimmied down the rope rapidly, followed by Shaiss. The three who remained above watched the three below scurry along the trail northward towards their targets.

Chapter 11 – The Price of Success

Shaiss and the two archers, Pollux and Nestor, crouched and ran towards the large military encampment below them. “This is good,” Nes-tor announced quietly as they knelt behind a natural ledge along their trail. They peered over the edge of the stony wall, where the animals seemed close enough to touch. “We don’t know if a single arrow will kill an animal or not,” Nestor added as he studied his target.

“Let’s wait until there’s just one animal, then see how quickly we can bring it down,” Pollux responded.

“If you can do it fast, we’ll hunker down here. If it takes too long, the soldiers down there will figure out where the arrows are coming from and we’ll have to move,” Shaiss tried to anticipate the next step. “When we move, stay very close to me; keep a hand on me. We’ll move fifty feet that way,” he indicated.

The two archers strung their bows. “I’ll aim under the fore leg,” Nestor coordinated.

“I’ll aim for the eyes,” Pollux replied, “and I’ll string a second arrow for the neck.”

Both archers pulled their arrows back. “On the count, three, two one,” Pollux called, and both strings
twanged
sharply. The single animal then on the lawn moaned loudly as it received the two arrows. The shot at the body entered the flesh to a depth of several inches, though seemingly not enough to be mortal. The arrow aimed at the eye had instead hit the animal in the jaw, and pierced the flesh on both sides of the face as it hit its target. Pollux let his second arrow fly, and despite the animal’s thrashing, the arrow entered its throat and pierced an artery, sending copious amounts of blood flowing to the ground.

The animal handlers, unarmed soldiers, were shouting and calling wildly as their valuable charge sank to the ground with mortal wounds. Just then a second animal, laden with supplies arrived at a spot nearby.

“We’re safe to shoot again from here. They don’t know where the arrows came from,” Nestor observed. Both archers had arrows in their hands and were taking a bead on the new animal. “The flesh must be too thick. We’ll stick to just the neck and eyes for this one; I’ll shoot at the eye and you shoot at the throat again,” he directed.

“And as soon as you shoot, put a hand on me and we’ll move,” Shaiss added.

Both bow strings snapped as the arrows were released, and then the small group began moving inside Shaiss’s bubble of invisibility. A few seconds later they were at the new site, and watching the scene below them. Each arrow had struck true, and the second animal was now down and thrashing. Armed soldiers had come running to the scene after hearing the shouts, but had come with swords, not bows, so despite the fingers indicating the point the Bondell archers had just vacated, there were no arrows flying upward just yet.

Two animals arrived simultaneously, bringing another load of supplies and three more soldiers. The handlers at the site started screaming at the animals to return to safety.

“You take the near one and I’ll take the far one,” Pollux an-nounced, and immediately released an arrow at his target. Nestor shot at his, then pulled another arrow from his quiver and shot it, as Pollux’s second arrow also went flying. Both paused for a second to look at their quarries. Pollux’s was thrashing, but Nestor’s second arrow had missed, and now he sent a third arrow that finished the job.

“Both of you grab hold,” Shaiss called. “We’re going to go back past our first spot and wait there for the next arrival.”

As they moved, archers began to arrive, and aim where they were directed by observers who had seen where the Bondell shots had appeared from thin air. Their arrows failed to hit the three moving targets hidden by Shaiss’s powers, and soon they sat safely in a new location.

For several minutes no new animals arrived, while the invaders brought more and more archers back to the site, which soon bristled with arrows pointed outward in all directions.

“It looks like a porcupine’s dream down there,” Shaiss said playfully.

“Why aren’t more animals arriving?” Nestor asked.

“We don’t know how many there are,” Pollux pointed out. “Maybe they only had four rotating in and out, and we’ve killed them all.”

“Or maybe they have more, but the folks at their home base don’t know why these haven’t returned,” Nestor asked.

“Look out,” Shaiss said and pointed. A makeshift ladder was being raised against the canyon wall. Just then another animal did appear at the landing pad.

“Shoot it now!” Shaiss urged. “Shoot fast and then we’ll move in a hurry.”

Both archers shot their first arrows. “Let’s move,” Shaiss said. He started to move forward, and as he did, he saw a swarm of arrows flying towards their location. Pollux placed a hand on him and followed him, but Nestor, seeing the animal not yet mortally wounded stayed to shoot one more arrow.

Shaiss didn’t realize that Nestor was still at their original site, and moved quickly to try to avoid the rain of arrows that were approaching. As he moved, his invisibility left Nestor exposed, and a great shout went up while more arrows began flying in frustration towards the first visible target the invaders had to focus on.

Nestor screamed, as Pollux and Shaiss put a bare yard of safety between themselves and the arrows that arrived. They kept moving for several more seconds, then stopped and looked around. The fifth animal was dead, thanks to Nestor’s last arrow, but he had paid for his success, as his body pay motionless, several arrows, protruding from him. Up ahead, men were starting to climb up the wooden ladder, promising more trouble for the men from Bondell and Goldenfields.

“Let’s get behind that rock ledge,” Shaiss suggested. “I can focus light to burn their ladder, but I’ll have to let us be visible to do it,” he explained his inability to do two functions at once. “That will buy us a little time to see if any more animals arrive, but after that we’ll have to give it up and head back.”

Pollux didn’t completely comprehend what Shaiss had in mind for the ladder, but trusted him. After seeing Nestor’s death, he fatalistically believed that his own life might also shortly come to an end, and he hoped to also kill one more animal at least before then. He patted Shaiss on the back in agreement, and they moved forward to their original location behind a ledge of stones.

“Lay down,” Shaiss instructed Pollux to stay hidden from view by the valley floor. He stretched himself out, pointed his finger at the base of the ladder that several men were now climbing, and refocused his use of his energy to develop the deadly beam he had used as a weapon against the lacertii several weeks ago. The beam jumped off his finger tips, so brilliant that Pollux turned his eyes away from it, too late to avoid momentary blindness.

All eyes in the canyon were drawn to the beam of light as it gave away the location of the hidden men who were killing the precious transport animals. But the light was so unusual, so unlike anything the invaders had ever seen before that no one thought to begin flinging arrows immediately into the sky towards its source. The ladder that received the light beam burst into flames as Shaiss washed the beam up and down a large length of the wood until he was satisfied with his work and shut the beam down.

“Move back a little,” he urged Pollux, and both men pushed themselves further behind the stone ledge.

Seconds later, as the wooden ladder burned and soldiers began falling or jumping off it, a woman on the floor of the canyon raised her bow and aimed a shot at the spot where the light beam had come from. her arrow arced across the sky in a solitary flight, and struck the dirt where Shaiss had laid moments before, kicking dust up into his eyes as he swore. Other arrows quickly began to fly as well, and the two men listened to a steady hail of them strike their stony protection or bounce off the canyon wall behind them.

 
Shaiss waited for the arrows to stop flying and for his ingenaire abilities to be reinvigorated. “Can we move from here?” Pollux asked as an arrow that bounced off the wall above came down and grazed his temple on the rebound, causing blood to flow down his cheek.

“Let’s wait until there’s a pause in the archery, then we’ll move back to our last position by Nestor,” Shaiss suggested.

Two minutes later the arrows were no longer flying at them. “There’s an animal arriving!” Pollux exclaimed. He prepared an arrow. “Can you hide me?” has asked as he prepared to rise up and shoot.

“Just a moment,” Shaiss urged. He knew it was critical to kill the animal quickly; as soon as it appeared, handlers had begun screaming at it to leave. “Okay, shoot!” he said as he re-energized his powers to deflect the light from around them.