Owen, Hugh, Agnes and the detachment of Ferrers soldiers followed him away from the main road along narrow trails beneath the canopy. Dry leaves and broken branches covered the ground, and exposed roots made the way uneven. Every time Hugh asked the prisoner about the direction, he answered quickly and fearfully.
Owen kept his sword dismissed for now, but he stayed alert.
It was quieter than before. The soldiers kept their conversation to a minimum, and Hugh checked their surroundings regularly to make sure the prisoner wasn’t walking them into another ambush.
After a while, Owen caught the faint smell of woodsmoke. Then came distant voices, and every so often the metallic clatter of equipment.
"The camp’s just past those trees," the prisoner whispered.
Hugh raised a hand, and the group stopped.
Owen moved forward with him, and they looked out at the clearing from behind the undergrowth.
Several worn tents had been put up around a central campfire. Stolen travel cases, wooden crates and merchant supplies were stacked beneath makeshift shelters, and a handful of horses were tethered toward the back of the clearing.
Armed men were spread throughout the camp. Some sat by the fire eating and talking, and others were seeing to their weapons or picking through valuables taken from travellers. A few sentries kept watch at the edges of the clearing where the forest came in close.
Their equipment wasn’t what Owen would have expected from ordinary roadside thieves. Several of them carried decent weapons and worn adventuring gear. The prisoner had told the truth. These men had fought monsters and guarded expeditions before they turned to this.
Owen searched the clearing for the captives.
He found them near one of the shelters at the far side: two women, watched by armed bandits. One of them looked very like the girl they had left on the road. The other wore a maid’s travelling uniform. Both of them looked frightened and dishevelled, but they were alive.
"There," Owen murmured. "By that shelter."
Hugh studied the layout. "They’re too close to the rest of them. If we go in hard at the middle of the camp, they could get caught in it."
Owen saw the problem straight away. His fire could do a great deal of damage, but if he threw a broad attack into the center of the camp, he might hurt the very people he had come for.
"Then I won’t," he said. "I’ll go in at the middle and keep it tight. Close, single targets. I’ll draw them toward me and away from the captives."
Hugh nodded and started placing the soldiers. Two would take the sentries on the near side. Another would stay back with the prisoner and make sure he didn’t go anywhere.
"Agnes," Owen said. "Once the guards by that shelter turn toward me, get to the captives. Don’t let anyone use them as shields."
"Yes, Young Master."
"I’ll stay with you," Hugh told Owen. "Keep them off your back, and I’ll watch where the fighting goes. If it starts drifting toward that shelter, I’ll tell you."
"Good."
The nearest sentries went down before they could properly raise an alarm.
One Ferrers soldier caught a lookout from behind and dragged him into the undergrowth. Another sentry turned and tried to run for the middle of the clearing, and Hugh was on him before he had gone three steps.
Thud!
Owen went through the gap they had made.
He was barely out of the trees when a bandit by the fire looked up and saw him.
"Intruders!"
Men scrambled to their feet all over the camp, grabbing for their weapons. The first to reach Owen charged with a sword raised, plainly expecting a young nobleman to be easy work.
Owen summoned his longsword and met him. Steel spread across the blade an instant before the two swords collided.
Clang!
The reinforced blade didn’t give an inch. Owen turned the man’s sword aside and cut back across him in the same motion, and the bandit dropped.
A second man came at him from the side. Owen shifted his feet and changed the longsword into an arming sword as the man pressed in close, too close for a longer blade. The bandit hadn’t expected the sword to shrink in Owen’s hands. He hesitated for half a heartbeat, and that was all Owen needed.
"Urk—!"
The remaining bandits started taking it seriously after that. Armaments began appearing in their hands one after another as they realized they weren’t dealing with ordinary travellers.
Another man closed in, and Owen let fire run along his blade.
Whoosh!
The sudden heat made the bandit flinch and check his approach. Owen stepped into the space it opened and finished him.
More of them were coming now. Owen kept Steel on his sword whenever he knew a heavy clash was coming, and let it drop when he didn’t need it. When one man got inside his reach, he sent the Steel down over his free forearm, took the blow on it, and drove his blade in before the bandit could recover.
Clack!
Hugh was always close. When a bandit tried to come at Owen from behind, Hugh intercepted him before Owen even had to turn. He kept glancing toward the shelter, too.
"Left, Young Master!" he called once. "You’re drifting toward them!"
Owen adjusted at once and drew the fight back toward the fire.
On the far side of the camp, Agnes had reached the shelter. The guards had turned toward the noise, and she was on them before they turned back. All the warmth Owen knew from her had vanished. She cut the first one down with her bonded sword and drove the second away from the captives with a series of quick, hard strikes.
Then she put herself between the two women and the rest of the camp.
The captives had flinched back from the sudden violence, but Owen saw the sister look up at Agnes, then across at the Ferrers soldiers, and slowly begin to understand that these people had come for them.
The remaining bandits tried to regroup by the central fire. Owen kept pressing them. He used short, controlled bursts of fire to stop them from spreading out around him, while Hugh and the Ferrers soldiers cut off every attempt to flank the rescue party.
Whoosh!
Clang!
Several more of them fell. The rest began falling back toward the largest shelter at the far end of the clearing.
"Boss!" one of them shouted desperately. "Boss!"
Owen noticed the change in them. They had been willing enough to fight while they thought they had the numbers. Now that confidence had gone, and every one of the men still standing was looking toward the same shelter, as though they expected someone inside to come out and save them.
Owen slowed his advance. Whoever was in there, the men who followed him were betting everything on him.
As the last of the bandits backed toward the shelter, a deep growl came from inside it.
Grrrrrrr...
It was nothing like any sound the men around him had made. It was low enough to roll right across the clearing, and several of the retreating bandits stopped where they were when they heard it.
The flap of the shelter shifted, and a large man stepped out.
He was a good deal older than most of his followers, broad and weathered, and his equipment was worn in the way of someone who had spent many years fighting in dangerous places. He looked over the clearing slowly, taking in his fallen men, the scattered weapons and the Ferrers soldiers, before his eyes settled on Owen.
When he saw the family crest on their clothes, his expression darkened.
Before he could say anything, something enormous moved behind him.
A giant white tiger stepped out of the shelter.
Its massive shoulders came up nearly to the man’s chest. Its thick white fur was marked with dark stripes, and its heavy paws pressed deep into the earth as it came forward. Its pale eyes were fixed on the armed intruders.
Owen knew at once that this was no ordinary animal.
Its size alone made it dangerous. But the way the surviving bandits shifted aside to give it room told him even more. They knew exactly what it could do.
The leader walked out into the clearing with the tiger beside him. He looked at the bodies of his men, then at Owen and the Ferrers soldiers who had put them there.
The remaining bandits seemed to find a little of their nerve again at the sight of him and his beast. Instead of running for the trees, they fell in behind him.
Owen tightened his grip on his sword and studied the two of them.
He had faced powerful monsters before. He had never faced one standing at a man’s side, in the middle of a rescue, with the people he had come to save only a few dozen paces away.
The bandit leader stood before him with the white tiger at his side, ready to deal with the people who had torn his camp apart.