Chapter 205: How The Forest Fights
The archers were moving south along the right flank. The noise coming through the brush followed the pattern of men changing position, not retreating. They were circling, looking for a clearer shot at the fallen trunk where Aydos and Yilbars had taken cover.
Aydos lay flat behind the trunk with a drawn bow and one wounded man pressed against the wood beside him. If the archers moved far enough south to see over the trunk’s height, the cover would fail for both of them.
Siban raised his right hand toward Aydos and pointed east, toward the sound.
Then he turned to Sorhat. Two trees away, Sorhat was still braced against his oak, a shaft through his arm and a knife in his free hand.
"Next tree, left," Siban said, low and restrained.
Sorhat shoved away from the bark and moved. He kept his good shoulder close to the trees as he crossed.
Siban watched him cross the distance, then turned back to the immediate problem. There were three assault fighters from the left flank still hidden somewhere in the brush to the west.
He pressed his left arm tighter against his side. The cut had soaked through his sleeve to the elbow. Every surface it touched returned as sharp pain.
But he checked the hand again. Steady enough for a knife, as long as he didn’t try for a full grip.
He noted it away and moved along the near side of the oaks, staying inside the trunks’ shadow.
At the fallen trunk, Aydos held the bow at partial draw, watching the right flank through a narrow gap between two birches. Twelve meters, maybe a little more.
He couldn’t see the archers clearly, but the brush noise gave him movement, direction, and timing.
The first archer stepped into the gap between the birches.
Aydos released before the man had fully crossed. At that range, the arrow flew flat and fast. The archer got struck square in the chest and crashed on the ground with his life waning away.
The second archer reacted to the shot. Instead of staying inside cover, he stepped clear of the brush line to get a better look at the trunk.
That was a mistake.
Aydos’s arrow caught him through the side as he turned, and he hit the ground hard. More movement stirred in the brush behind him for multiple seconds, then stopped.
Two down from the right flank.
Aydos reached for another arrow and kept watching east. One surviving archer was still possible. He couldn’t afford to assume otherwise.
The three assault fighters from the left were pressing through the brush west of the oaks. They were advancing toward the positions the team had occupied when the ambush began.
Siban intercepted the first man where the brush thinned between two trees, before the fighter had enough room to bring his short axe into motion.
Siban went in fast. Right shoulder into the man’s chest, full body weight behind the impact. He pinned him against the nearest trunk before the axe could build force.
When the weapon arm lifted to swing, Siban drove the knife into the armpit. Then into the neck.
The man slid down the bark. Siban stepped past him without checking the result.
The second fighter came running from the left.
Siban knew his left arm was useless for grappling, so he changed tactics. One full step back. He took the man’s momentum on his right side and let it pass instead of trying to stop it.
The knife cut across the exposed throat as the fighter drove through the space Siban had occupied a heartbeat earlier.
The man managed four more strides before his legs failed.
The third fighter pushed toward Sorhat’s new position, trying to get past the tree and toward the fallen trunk.
Sorhat waited. One step past.
Then he drove the knife into the man’s gut and forced it upward.
The fighter’s blade answered on the same motion, cutting across Sorhat’s already injured side. The strike opened muscle along the shoulder blade.
Sorhat took it with nothing louder than a hard breath through his nose.
The fighter collapsed.
Sorhat stayed against his tree, bleeding from two wounds, his good hand still locked around the knife.
The second wave came through the brush before the first had fully been taken care of.
More fighters from the original assault group. They had held back while the ambush drew the Nüden’s attention. Now they were pushing into the gaps between cover while the team was displaced and wounded.
Aydos tracked the nearest fighter through brush movement and shadow. Ten meters.
He fired.
The arrow punched through leaves and found the man beyond them. The fighter dropped into the undergrowth without ceremony.
Then an arrow came from above.
The right flank still had an archer alive. He had found elevation, higher ground or a raised root mass, something that lifted his line of fire above the trunk’s protection.
The arrow dropped at a steep slant and drove through Aydos’s shoulder as he reached for another shaft.
The impact slammed him backward into Yilbars. Yilbars made a grunt from the ground.
Aydos stayed upright through force of habit more than balance. His bow slipped from his hand.
He let it go and drew his knife with the arm that still worked.
At his tree, Sorhat tracked a fourth fighter moving along the brushes toward his position. The man’s attention was on the fallen trunk ahead.
Too focused.
As he passed the tree, Sorhat’s knife cut across his throat.
The fighter staggered two more strides into the undergrowth before stopping.
Then Sorhat’s legs failed.
He had been leaning against the bark. When his strength finally gave out, he slid down the trunk with nothing remained to maintain posture.
Face toward the wood. Hands still gripping the knife.
He slid until he was sitting in the wet leaves at the oak’s base.
His breathing carried fifteen meters through the forest.
Siban looked toward the place where the last archer in the right flank had fired.
The brush between the open ground and the right flank was thinner from the south, where Aydos’s earlier kills had done two men. That route offered less concealment, but fewer obstacles.
Siban moved south through the oaks toward it, pushing through a gap between two trunks into the sparse growth beyond.
He stepped between a pair of oaks.
One man came out of the ground.
The hollow sat behind a root mass on the left, a natural depression in the clay packed with years of leaves. The surface looked even with the surrounding ground.
Siban had passed it without noticing the body beneath the cover.
The guide was already moving by the time Siban’s foot cleared the root.
The impact hit from the left side with full commitment and no warning. Both men crashed hard into the wet leaf mat before Siban could complete his next step.
The clay beneath the leaves offered no traction.
Both men rolled through cold mud and soaked leaves, fighting for top position and finding no stable footing.
Siban kept his left arm locked to his side. No grip strength there, and he would not let the man trap or control it.
The man had both hands. Both had knives.
The problem became simple and immediate, to gain control of the blade hand before the other man did.
Wet leaves under them. Cold clay beneath that. Forest canopy overhead.
Neither man had landed a decisive strike yet.
