The horses scream.
Rent awake by a chorus of terror from horse, and hound, from shrieking flocks and coughing fox as they speed away. Osytha shoots upward, hand snatching her baldric without a thought, her eyes wide and ears thumping with chaos. Trying to make sense everything all at once, but it’s much too much. The only thing she understands is what it means to see the whites of Forbítter’s eyes and for his ears to go flat like that, as he rears up and screams.
“Oh, nonono—”
There’s just enough time to dash forward, to make a dangerous dance around the great beast’s wild legs and grab a handful of mane. Barely enough time to pull and leap up, before Forbítter bolts.
They hit the treeline in a flash. No sooner has Osytha swung her leg over than there are branches whipping across her head, her shoulders; the soft brush of leaves, and the stinging cane-slap of twigs. She quells the urge to clamp on tight for dear life — doing so will only mean she absorbs the full brunt of her horse’s gait, and in a contest of might, she’ll lose against him every time. It’s a bit terrifying like this, with no stirrups and no saddle. But she makes herself relax. Legs out long, and holding with her thighs, not the knees. Rides the waves of his motion; lets it flow through her and out. Maintain balance. And breathe.
A quick glance backward shows, in the mix of light from moons and rainbow bursts, a tiny brindle shape bounding after her. Guffy is falling away, his speed no match for a running horse. But he’s a persistent lad with a good nose. He’ll catch up once Osytha has Forbs back under control. She faces forward, and while her attention overwhelmingly goes into making sure she doesn’t catch a heavy bough across the skull, at the back of her mind, she wonders: what the hell was that?
And are the others alright?
There’s a terrible, mighty, drawn-out boom behind them. Trees splintering in the dozens. Percussive thunderclaps of a Shroud engine’s catastrophic failure. And a massive weight crashing into the earth, making it wobble like a popped-up sot on his way home at 3AM. Those chromatic flares find their way through the brush, and the forest dances from pink to scarlet, arsenic green to ozone blue, around fleeing knight and beast.
Slowly, with the worst of the madness over with, Forbítter’s panic begins to subside. He becomes more responsive to the commands from her heels, and Osytha is able to guide his path. His ears lift up as she fills them with her hushed, calm voice. Until he seems with it enough, clear-headed enough, to heed her when she shifts her weight back.
“Whoah,” Osytha softly urges, and the beast begins to slow. “Whoah, now, there’s a good lad…”
He stops. Panting, sweating, snorting in agitation, but he finally comes to a halt in a thin strip of the woods. Osytha scratches him between the withers, soothing him with more gentle tones, lets him come down a little further from the heights of mindless fear. Meanwhile, she looks around in an attempt to get their bearings. Birds are still screaming out there upon the wing, roving in twisting, panicked flocks. Where, exactly, has their flight taken them?
Osytha lets out a nightjar’s questioning call, but hears no answer in return. Well, wherever she’s ended up, it’s far enough from the other syrs that they’re out of earshot, at least with all the rumble and howl still upon the air. She slides off Forbítter’s back and begins to quickly check him over. That was quite the blind sprint back there, and she wants to see if he hurt anything in the process.
After perhaps a half-minute, something rustles her way through the brush, low and hurried. Osytha glances over to the welcome sight of Guffy crashing through a patch of bracken. Little boy scurries on up and immediately flops onto his belly at her feet, wriggling pathetically, a plaintive look in his big brown eyes. He was so worried, poor thing.
“Oh, hush now, boyo,” Osytha croons, crouching down to pat and rub and scritch at that whimpering form. “Et’s alreight. We’re all nicely ’ere, don’t fret thy beautiful wee head…”
Guffy freezes mid-squirm. He whips around to his belly, and up to his feet. Points his head sharp toward the north with his ears pricked right up. Alert.
Osytha spins around, herself, and jumps up out of the crouch. Does so in time to see figures emerging out the brush — one, two, four… more whom she can only hear as they circle her position out of sight. Men and women in gambesons and mail like hers back at the campsite, all of them armed and brandishing. Each bearing the maroon and gold. Rodhan soldiers, to a one.
She realises she’s still gripping her baldric. The sword rasps out into her hands and she lets the scabbard fall. Hunkers down into plfug as she eyes up her opponents.
One knight in her shirt and hosen, against four armed and armoured assailants that she can see. Perhaps two or three others that she can’t, if her ears are telling her right. Not good odds. Not good odds at all.
A man sporting a tabard over his byrnie, and an arming sword and buckler in his hands, responds to Osytha’s stance by lowering into a guard of his own.
“This one of them?” he asks, in a voice like gravel and smoke.
Another at his side lowers her halberd toward Osytha. “Yeah,” the woman says. “I recognise the mug. And her horse for sure.”
“Alright. We want her alive for now. The horse as well, if you can — that’s a fine courser. Might as well kill the mutt.”
All around Osytha, footsteps crunch through the leaf litter towards her.
She glances down at Guffy. “Beflēoh!” she yells. A startled little face looks back up at her, confused, hesitating. “Agán, beflēoh! Bloody mongrel!”
Guffers gives her one last, hurt look — and then he’s darting off. The nearest Rodhan strikes down with his blade, but Osytha lunges forward with an unterhau counterstrike against his weak, and with that opening, her wee lad disappears away into the forest.
Osytha keeps moving, holding the soldier’s blade in a bind as she seeks to escape the circle. If she stays surround, she has no chance. So, she makes a bold play to break through. The man with whom she’s locked blades, he tries to pull his sword back, slip the tip around the other side of hers and take the line, but she forces him into a high block with a threat from her own. That gives her more space, and continuing with a passing step—
Something catches around her calf. Another bloody halberd, tangled in her footwork. Feels a sharp bite through her hose, feels resistance, feels her balance go all wrong.
She catches herself before she falls, but it’s awkward. Has to fling an arm out to keep balance. Osytha tries to recover into tag, but that man, he’s taken the chance to suppress her sword down with his own. He steps in while she’s open, before she can get momentum back. There’s a blur of movement, low in her vision. And then her universe crystallises into pain.
It’s a solid punch. Good carry-through. Strong enough to knock the wind out of Osytha and paralyse her diaphragm, leave her reeling with black spots across her vision. Everything’s already spinning so much, it hardly makes a difference when a rough kick and hard shove send her toppling to the earth. Barely feels the hands pinning her down, putting their rope around her. It’s nothing compared to the agony of lungs which refuse to draw breath, or the dull throb from her gut, or that sharp spike through her shin. Osytha can only lie there, gagging and wide-eyed like a goldfish out of its tank, as she’s disarmed and bound.
Her dazed mind is vaguely aware something similar is happening with Forbs, in the strange, sideways world she sees before her. Forbítter rages against the grasp of rope as many hands lash the poor beast, restraining him, using a sturdy birch as an anchor. Then, he largely disappears behind a pair of boots, approaching her. Their owner kneels, bringing a maroon and gold tabard into view. Pale eyes in a grizzled face peer down impassively at the proud knight drooling on the ground.
“Looks like we found our sneak of weasels,” he observes.
“Shall we go after the others, sarge?” asks a voice from somewhere on top of her.
“No,” he replies, tucking his sword and shield away in a leisurely sort of manner. “Not with our numbers, not if her cohorts have regrouped. We report back as ordered, so the other scouting parties know to refocus their efforts around here. Plus, brass will be wanting to have a chat with this one.”
He grabs a handful of Osytha’s hair and yanks her head back, sharp. She still can’t find any breath to give voice to the pain, only returns the sergeant’s hard stare with a stunned, wavering one of her own. “Guess all that ruckus flushed you out of your hole, eh? Lucky break for us.”
“What do we do about that, sarge? The airship?”
“Like I said. We report back. You don’t fuck around with that kind of magitech — they’ll need to send specialists out to tell us when it’s safe to check for survivors.” He releases his grip, and Osytha’s head thunks back down in the mulch. Then, the man rises to his feet. “Just, don’t be surprised if there aren’t any. Plews, Conill, got a handle on that beast yet?”
“Just about, sarge!” someone shouts back.
“Then prepare to move out. We don’t want to cop any grief before we’ve had a chance to spread the good news, after all.”
