Echoes of Betrayal by Elizabeth Moon Read Free Book Online

his Squires said.
    “Can they use stray arrows in those crossbows?” asked one of the rangers.
    “Yes, but not very accurately,” Kieri said. “Some of the units in Aarenis use a compound bow—not as long as the blackwood bows—and shorter arrows as well, but even those don’t fly well from crossbows except in a dropping volley. I think if they had plenty of bolts, they’d have fired another volley. Look—they’re moving.”
    The Pargunese, closely hidden under their overlapping shields, were creeping slowly along the scathefire track, still heading south.
    “How do they do that?” one of the Squires, Panin, asked.
    “Training,” Kieri said. “But it’s hard, exhausting work to keep those shields tight and carry their weapons. Those in the rear are having to walk backward.” He looked around. “We’ll keep pace with them; it won’t be hard.”
    “And when they reach the barricade?”
    “They can’t get past it in that formation. They may even break open before then. And then—we hit them again.”
    “It seems … unfair,” Cern said. Kieri recalled that he was only five years out of Falk’s Hall.
    “War’s not fair,” Kieri said. “We want to hinder them—kill them in the end—losing as few of our own people as possible.” He had said this before, but these Squires had not seen even one pitched battle. “Their invasion wasn’t fair; the scathefire wasn’t fair.”
    The Pargunese would expect a hostile force to be pacing them … they would be, even in the cold, sweating and miserable under their shields. Someone’s arm would get tired; someone walking backward would stumble. Fury and panic both would be stalking their minds even as the Lyonyans stalked their flanks. After a while, the Pargunese began to relax their formation, as he’d expected. They did so cautiously. Blinded on the flanks by the protective shields, with no more mounted fighters to keep a lookout, they could not see Kieri’s forces. First their ankles, then their shins … a gradual lowering of the interior shields … those in the rear swung around to change places with the next forward rank … and then the leaders saw the barricade. They halted.
    Kieri hoped they would see it as he intended: a crude, hasty barrier of logs and tangled brush bracing some sharpened stakes reaching across the scathefire track. Beyond it, a wagon on its side, barrels and bales spilled out onto the snow, traces cut where the team had been freed, signs of panicked flight. Would they take the bait or suspect the trap?
    Suddenly, the tight cluster opened out; from his height, Kieri could see a man in armor in the middle of the cluster, space opening around him … and then the transformation he had never expected to see again, as the man’s armor seemed first to melt into his body andthen split apart … his shape changing from human to the spider-like form of one of Achrya’s servants. Kieri felt the taig’s revulsion at the touch of the thing’s claws. The Pargunese soldiers kept a careful distance. The thing chittered, audible even at this distance. Another Pargunese yelled; the soldiers opened a lane to the front.
    “You have to hit the eyes,” Kieri murmured to the ranger at his side. “Or underneath …”
    The thing paused at the barricade, head lifted, turning from side to side. Kieri felt a chill run down his backbone. It was Achrya’s, and Achrya could see what mortals could not. The dragon had said Achrya would soon have no power, but this was Achrya’s servant. “Now!” he said. Bowstrings twanged; arrows split the air, some sent high and some lower … but the thing was over the barricade in a blur of speed before the first arrow arrived. Pargunese men fell instead; those unwounded did not re-form or return fire—as he’d expected—but rushed forward to the barricade as if compelled to follow the spider-thing.
    “What
is
that?” Vardan asked; Kieri heard others asking as well.
    “Achrya’s