WOLVERINE'S WORLD - THE FIGHT IN THE RAVINE
We grounded our canoe onto a narrow mud-flat. After grabbing our gear and jumping out, I kicked the canoe loose. It began drifting downstream. If we'd left the canoe where it was, it would mark precisely where we'd crossed the river.
Benjamin was perched up in a tall hickory that was on the edge of the tree-line. He urgently waved us forward.
Once we got in amongst the trees, Benjamin leaped to the ground with the characteristic grace of his kind.
"I'm not complaining," he said as he helpfully relieved Emma of the large load she was carrying - to my surprise, Emma had Anna's bag and guitar, "but our escape plan does seem... unformed."
I saw no reason to lie. "We're making it up as we go along," I told him.
Benjamin's serious brown eyes met mine. "I thought it was something like that. Now what?"
"Run!" Rahne suggested immediately.
"Kill Anna!" Emma snarled.
"Proceed perpendicularly from the river until we get up onto the river-bluffs, then turn south and use overhead cover and rocky terrain to mask our retreat," I said. "Hopefully pursuit will be minimal and we'll eventually link up with troops from the Point."
Benjamin reached out and absently-mindedly ruffled Rahne's wild mop of red hair. She wrinkled her nose at him, but didn't really seem offended.
"Your plan is sound," Benjamin told her, "but I think James has made a fine expansion on it."
Rahne smiled brightly at Benjamin. I'd noticed that she had particularly good instincts about others.
"Oh... and who's Anna and why are we killing her?" Benjamin asked Emma.
"She's that insane twit of an elf who teleported you out of that camp," Emma growled.
We were moving as we talked. I assumed Benjamin was taking us to the others.
"I really don't think I can go along with that," Benjamin told Emma. "Faye and I were in a lot of trouble. Anna got us out of it."
"She... She didn't... She just..." Emma spluttered indignantly.
I gently put a hand on Emma's shoulder. "Emma, please. We really don't have time for that right now."
Emma took a deep breath. And then she nodded her head.
Actually, Emma would have been able to dispose of Anna with ease. Anna was so exhausted from her repeated teleportational jumps that Faye had to carry her.
Faye was effortlessly cradling Anna in her green arms - which looked odd since Anna wasn't really that much smaller than Faye. It reminded me of a young girl carrying her toddler sister.
Anna's eyes were closed and she had her arms around Faye's neck. I saw a look of calculation creep into Emma's eyes.
"You promised, " I told her calmly.
That wasn't strictly true, but Emma considered my words. Then she waved a hand and subsided.
I took a moment to examine Anna's face. I was pretty sure she'd recover, but in all the time I'd known her I'd never seen her perform so many jumps so quickly. Anna was a fine teleporter, but...
She opened her yellow eyes and looked at me.
"I hate to see people in cages," Anna told me blearily.
Behind me, I heard Emma sigh.
I nodded and brushed the hair from Anna's eyes. She closed them and went back to resting her head against Faye's shoulder.
"We have to keep moving," I told everyone. I didn't wait for a response, I just began walking away from the river.
Everyone followed. I didn't have much of a plan, but it was all we had.
On that part of the river, the bluffs are steep and near to the water. We were on them within minutes, climbing up through a dry cut that was filled with brush and saplings. I was in the lead. Faye and Anna were right behind. Emma - her eyes distant as she psychically scanned the region around us - was next. Benjamin kept a protective eye on her. Trailing us all was Rahne, watching our back-trail as she slipped from cover to cover.
In my experience, the dark-elves used flying creatures as trackers and war animals. The tops of the bluffs were heavily treed and I hoped that would provide us with cover from above.
Also, dark-elf mages are quite accomplished. They would be able to follow us with magic. And there was little we could do about that except get to safety.
*A pursuit party has just crossed the river,* Emma mind-spoke to me. *There's about a dozen of them, led by a mage. They have two flying beasts with them.*
That wasn't good. I'd hoped that the enemy would decide that we were not worth chasing.
But that was not the case.
*We have to kill the mage,* I sent to Emma.
*Agreed.*
Emma could be deadly practical.
We slowed and then topped, mimicking exhaustion. That allowed the dark-elves to catch up.
It had been a long time since I'd ranged along the bluffs on that side of the Huds. So long ago that the patterns of vegetation has shifted - generations of fires and regrowth will do that. Even some of the geography had become different as new watercourses cut their way down-slope, while others dried up.
However, enough was still as I remembered it. I chose our ambush site carefully.
I picked a rocky ravine that was comparatively bare of vegetation, but the trees on our side were thick.
Benjamin and Faye were a hundred yards further down the trail from the rest of us. The dark-elf mage was almost certainly tracking them - they'd been in dark-elf captivity long enough for their mages to have established a sense of their presence. Hopefully, the mage would concentrate on them and miss the fact that the rest of us had separated.
After we sprung the ambush, Benjamin and Faye would double back to us as quickly as possible.
Anna was back on her feet, but still shaky. She was with Emma - and, yes, that worried me. But we didn't have much choice. The two of them were waiting on top of our side of the ravine. Given her condition, I hoped Anna wouldn't have to fight.
Rahne and I were hidden in the rocks on the bottom of ravine, on either side of the dark-elf approach.
Within minutes, our pursuers appeared.
A pair of flying creatures - they resembled small, blue, misshapen men with wings - passed overhead. They were flying in broad circles, ranging a wide distance to the sides of the approaching dark-elves.
Then a skirmish line of four widely-spaced dark-elf archers appeared on the far lip of the ravine. They paused, not liking the openness of the ravine, and took a moment to examine it and the far side for signs of trouble. Then they broke out of cover and began scrambling and sliding down the side of the cut.
A lot depended on how closely the dark-elf mage was following. It would be wiser if the mage allowed his skirmishers to get to the other side of the ravine before exposing himself. It would be better for us if he were too eager.
The four archer-skirmishers passed Rahne and I and began climbing the even steeper slope of our side of the ravine. The mage and a half-dozen warriors appeared behind them and began climbing down after the skirmishers. The mage was in the center of his group, with warriors all around him. They were going to pass much closer to my hiding-spot than Rahne's - just a few yards away.
That was how I had planned it.
*Now?* Emma asked in my mind.
*Now.*
Emma let out a telepathic call to battle.
I exploded out of my tiny overhang. The loose camouflage of dead branches, leaves, loose rocks and other ravine-bottom debris that I'd piled up in the opening flew from me. A dark-elf warrior was just a few feet from me. His eyes were wide with surprise as he swung his shield into position and draw back his sword to strike.
Slamming into him, I grabbed the edge of his shield and yanked hard. Standing as he was on a slope, he lost balance and toppled. With a quick flash of my claws, I made sure that he was bleeding to death when he hit the rocks.
The path between the mage and I was momentarily clear, but the other dark-elf warriors were throwing themselves between us. For his part, the wide-eyed mage - this kind of fighting was too close for him - was backing away as he tried to summon a spell.
In a tumbling scatter of loose rocks, one of the skirmishers cascaded down to the bottom of the ravine and landed just a few feet away from me. He seemed to be trying to regain control of his limbs, but he was moving in a jerky and uncoordinated way. Emma was picking the skirmishers off of the side slope with her psychic powers. I ignored him and lunged for the nearest warrior.
My target was smart. He didn't try to immediately take me down. Instead he used his sword to keep me at bay and mindful of tne threat he presented. He was waiting for his fellows to close with me.
I kicked him square in the middle of his shield. That made him stagger backwards and I ducked off to the side.
There was a horrified shriek from overhead. Over the shoulder of the warrior I was angling towards, I saw one of the skirmishers cart-wheeling through the air. He vanished into the trees on the far side of the ravine in a series of loud crashes. His screaming stopped abruptly.
That certainly looked like Faye's work. She and Benjamin had rejoined Emma and Anna.
I partially dodged a sword-slash - it clipped me on my left bicep - and then began backing down the ravine, trying to open the distance between me and the warriors I was fighting. They pursued eagerly - except for the smart one. He stopped and looked over his shoulder at the mage they were supposed to be guarding.
The mage was lying on a large and flat shelf of stone that was part of the channel in the bottom of the ravine. Blood was pouring out of his open throat and from a narrow pair of wounds that had precisely gone through his back and into his heart. He was beyond helping.
And there was no sign of my lovely, lethal, little Rahne.
The smart warrior spat out something that I assumed was a curse. The rest closed on me. I was in trouble.
A boulder landed between me and the warriors. In a cloud of dust, we all flinched back from the rock shards that flew into us.
Then Anna appeared next to me in a cloud of dark smoke and sulfur-stench. I can't really say she grabbed me. It was more like she fell into me and I grabbed her.
"Hiya, lover," she said with a crooked smile.
"Dammit, Anna..." I began angrily, but then stopped. It was Anna. Nobody could tell her anything. And besides, she could very well be saving my life.
Anna tried to teleport me back to the others, but she was too weak. We did make it part-way up-slope.
The last of the skirmishers - he'd somehow avoided being injured or killed - loosed an arrow at us from across the slope. I pivoted Anna out of the way and blocked the shot with my right arm. I hissed in agony as the arrow penetrated my arm, neatly lodged between the two bones of the forearm.
Rahne appeared out of nowhere and sliced open the archer's legs. He collapsed and began rolling downhill. He was the last of the skirmishers.
Rahne waved at us, pointed behind us, and then continued up-slope.
I looked in the direction Rahne had pointed. Some of the remaining warriors in the ravine bottom were gamely climbing after Anna and I.
However, one of the dark-elves - I recognized him as that damned smart one - grabbed his eager fellows and yanked them back. Then he more or less kicked and shoved them into cover behind a large pair of boulders.
Because of his helmet, I couldn't make out that warrior's face, but I made a mental note of his equipment and body language. I don't like it when my foes have competent people on their side. It would be best if I killed him the next time I saw him.
Anna and I held each other as we climbed the rest of the way up the slope. There was a repetitive, meaty, slapping sound as we climbed. At the top, I saw Benjamin killing one of the flying creatures. He had it by its clawed feet and was smashing it again and again against the trunk of convenient pine tree. The other one was lying nearby, at the foot of another stained tree. Benjamin was covered with droplets of oddly dark blood-spray.
"That went well," he told us cheerfully.