Forty minutes later, Fiona had covered the six miles to the basin where the hunters had made camp. She slowed her pace about two hundred yards away, as Gretched had taught her. An ogre might have heard her running, but no human could at that distance. She tread carefully down the center of the path, thankful for the shafts of moonlight to help her avoid sticks and pine cones.
A hundred and fifty yards before the trail turned up to the camp, Fiona left the trail to climb the steep slope carpeted in fern and pine needle. This detour cost time, but enabled her to approach the camp from behind the big mossy boulder. She tipped her head around the side, scoping out the camp. Tonight, four torches stood guard around the camp to ward off the night; that worked to Fiona's advantage, as the bright light masked her in the shadows. She inventoried the gear between her and the men's backs. She saw the pikes, the bedrolls, and yes! the coil of rope. She only needed maybe twenty feet; she didn't have to be picky.
She had her target; now she needed a plan. Three men sat around the campfire, smelling of stale armpit, crusty leather, and urine. Beard nursed a clay mug of ale. Felt cap bragged about a man he knocked out in a bar fight. "Shoulda seen hiss teeth flyin' cross the bar!" he bellowed, slapping his knee.
Felt cap's story continued, but a new scent pulled Fiona's attention away from the braggart. Fresh tang of sweat, and the blood of shallow scratches. The clean-shaven young man with the bowl cut crashed clumsily out of the woods from the trail.
"Well about time you got back, scout! What did you find for us to eat?"
Bowl cut rubbed his hands on his bramble-abraded arms. "There's a herd of elk just three miles north," he began, which won three approving nods, "but I found something much better. I found a pair of free ogre ears!"
Fiona's eyes bulged.
"Well, they don't count if they're dead when ya found 'em," said beard. "And as brave as you think y'are, we ain't nowhere big enough a party to take on a live ogre tonight."
"No, it's great though!" bowl cut said enthusiastically. "They're still attached to a very-much-alive ogre who's glued right fast in a sand pit! I didn't wanna fall in, or I'da taken em for maself and showed you lot up when we got back to town. But that monster can't make a move. If we git over there fast, and tie ourselves off in a climbing line, I can slice 'em right off just like that!"
Fiona stifled a gasp. Now she had competition – and her competition needed the same rope she had her eye on. She was horrified at the thought of these men torturing Gretched just for a prize, even they thought she was just a big dumb ugly beast. Doesn't "humane" mean not taking a life for mere amusement?
But now what? If Fiona tried to mount a rescue, she'd put herself in their crosshairs. They couldn't tell she was really a princess, and by the time they were through with her, they'd have enough ears to go around. She certainly valued having someone to talk to; it kept her sane. But if she crossed swords with these hunters, what prince would want a princess with truncated ears? Or worse, they might dispatch her to make the harvest easier. She shuddered. Why would she risk any of this? Leaving the tower had felt like such a brave gamble, but now suddenly almost everything she waited for was on the line. Would she jeopardize her fairy tale future just to have something to do during the wait?
The picture of Gretched lying calmly in the sand flashed into her mind. She saw herself there, felt her own cheeks sliding below the liquefied sand. She closed her eyes as she imagined the sand slipping into her nose, suffocating her. Her eyes popped open. NO! No, she couldn't stand by and let that happen to the ogress. Surely she'd wake up every night with that nightmare; she'd be scarred emotionally as surely as lost ears would scar her daytime beauty.
Beard was pulling on his boots, a cue to the others that the decision had been made. "We'll go git ya yer ears, and then on the way back, we'll see about an elk." The men picked through their gear. Felt cap slid a dagger into his boot; bowl cut hefted a makeshift mace over his shoulder. Weasel tossed the rope coil over his head and one arm. The activity around the camp wound down, and the men exchanged nods. Bowl cut started out of the camp down the trail opposite the boulder she hid behind.
The air was calm; she had been relying on the campfire smoke to mask her musk. That, and the men's lousy olfactory sense. Once they left the smoky glade, she let them get a hundred yards ahead before following them out of the camp.
Bowl cut walked eagerly out at the front, beard keeping pace with him. Weasel and felt cap moseyed a dozen yards behind, felt cap attending to sharpening his dagger on a strop. Felt cap carried on a loud conversation, anticipating the free frothy pints they'd win when the village heard that they were ogre-slayers. The trail descended steeply here, approaching a switchback.
Fiona saw an opportunity. She closed her following distance to maybe thirty yards – way too close to sneak up on Gretched, but these oafs were providing her plenty of cover. As the men turned back downhill at the switchback, Fiona slowed on the trail above. She waited until bowl cut and beard had passed her position, and watched the second two approach. three … two … one … she dropped down the fern-covered hillside separating the upper trail from the lower.
Her sliding footsteps made enough noise to alert the two men, but she only needed four steps to complete the descent. The men turned their faces to the big dark form dropping down the hillside, jaws slack. Neither managed to utter a yelp before Fiona's outstretched arms held their skulls, one in each massive hand, and slammed them together. They made a hollow clock like coconut shells.
As her feet hit the trail, Fiona slowed her descent, but she kept a little momentum to carry herself, and the two bodies attached to the skulls between her hands, just off the trail on the downhill side. She arrested her descent on a bush and sat motionless, controlling her breathing.
"Wassat!?" beard hollered back up the trail towards where the other two had just vanished. "You boys gonna catch up?" Bowl cut clenched his jaw, teeth grinding. Beard turned forward. "They're fine ah'm sure. Just not around the switchback yet. Prob'ly stopped to pee. A'sides, if it's like ya sed, two of us is more than enough for gittin ears." The men took a couple more steps down the trail.
Fiona gave the men a few minutes' head start before she moved, to hide her noise.
She liberated the coil of rope from felt cap's inert body, draping the coil over her head and across her body. This trail had another switchback not seventy yards ahead. Fiona picked her way carefully straight down the hillside, passing her hands from one tree trunk to the next to maintain balance and control her descent. Arriving at the lower trail, she planted herself in the middle of the trail and squatted into a stable athletic stance, knees apart, waiting, ready.
The two still-animate hunters turned down the second switchback. Their chatter had died down a bit after losing track of their companions; the younger waved his torch as if to throw the light farther down the trail. They continued walking right towards Fiona. They were only five yards away before their poorly-dark-adapted eyes noticed the creature at the edge of the dim sphere of torchlight.
"WHO THERE?" beard yelled. Fiona lunged forward and closed the gap between them in four fast, long steps. Her feet stomped heavily on the trail, crunching leaves either side and thudding against the dirt. She raised her arms in a wye above her head, stretched out her fingers, and roared.
The men froze, eyes huge. A dark stain ran down the younger one's leg. The torch clattered into the dirt, sizzling against a damp leaf. "Now would be an excellent time for you to run away," Fiona said.
Both men turned, yelled, and ran full tilt up the trail, guided only by the filtered moonlight and raw terror. Fiona relaxed, put her hands on her hips, and tracked them by the sound of their screams as they crashed back up the trail. One evidently missed the switchback and ran headlong into a tree branch. Ten seconds later, she heard them panting and running past on the upper trail, towards the higher switchback.
The situation had been so urgent, the adrenaline so high. Her actions had felt so appropriate for the situation that she hadn't even considered how indecorous they were, much less why they were so effective coming from a princess. Instead, her thoughts turned immediately to the next step in the rescue. Fiona started back down the trail at a speedy clip.