Unlike Chapter 3, I'd consider this to be genuinely long, but a lot happens and I hope you find the events depicted worth the effort.

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Almost two weeks later around the middle of the day, Kit was taking a turn along the road while I enjoyed a swimming break. I had just put my loincloth back on when I heard the whistle that signaled trouble. I threw on my tunic, grabbed my gear, and tore off for the road.

When I got there it didn’t look like trouble. The only ones there were Kit and a large, round man I recognized as Sherrol when I got close enough. Kit was as cheerful as usual, but Sherrol was in a state. He looked both frightened and angry.

“Tell Tamarick what you told me,” Kit said to him.

“Tell it again!” cried Sherrol. “Bad enough you take your own drops of blood every time I pass by here, but now I’m bled dry! A whole shipment gone, and me barely escaping with my life! And you want to stand here and pass the time of day!”

Behind Sherrol, Kit rolled his eyes before explaining, “It seems we have some bandits in the area. They made off with his pack animal and everything it was carrying.”

Sherrol’s mule was indeed nowhere to be seen. “Where’d this happen?” I said.

“That way, you idiot!” He pointed to the east, the upstream direction. “Where do you think? Which way am I always going through these woods? I take the old imperial road on the way back. I should have been taking it both directions all along! Costly, yes, but at least I’d not be ruined now!” He started to quiver. It looked like he was on the verge of a breakdown.

“What were you carrying?” said Kit.

“What business is it of yours?”

“When we go to get it back, it might help to know what we’re looking for.”

“Get it back?” Sherrol looked from me, to Kit, and back again. “There’s more than a dozen of them! Get it back. Bah!”

I didn’t like the prospect of going against more than a dozen bandits all at once. Kit was good, but was he that good? I doubted I was. But I did promise, and something told me Kit would disregard the numerical odds and hold me to it. And then there was what I’d said to Crispian on the subject. With much more confidence than I actually felt, I said, “What do you think you’ve been paying for all this time? This wasn’t supposed to happen, and now we’ve got to make it good. Right, Kitaro?”

“Yup. So how far back was it?”

“You’re mad,” said Sherrol. “You haven’t a chance.”

“Every job has risks,” said Kit.

“Risks...” Sherrol shook his head in disbelief. “About two hours at a fast walk, but―”

“Right!” Kit broke in. “Our camp’s along the riverbank so you might as well wait there. You’ll see the cave. Our supplies are in it if you get hungry. What do you think, Tam? How long will this take?”

As if I had any idea. “If all goes well we’ll be back before sunset,” I said. “But give us until morning just in case.”

Kit and I set off down the path at a run. I thought Kit was going so fast just to put some distance between us and Sherrol so we didn’t have to hear him anymore, but he never slowed down. The pace was brutal. After about a mile I was breathing in gasps, and there was a stitch in my side.

“Wait!” I panted. He was a good fifty yards ahead of me at that point, and had to double back. “Can... can we take it slower?”

“That’s strange,” he said. “You should be able to...” He trailed off as he looked me over with his thousand-mile stare. “Ah, here it is. You’re all blocked up.”

He jabbed a couple of fingers into the flesh below my breastbone, pressing them in painfully deep. There was an odd sensation of something flowing into me from them, and then it was like a cord loosened from around my chest and ribs. The stitch vanished, and my breath steadied and deepened.

“Good? Then let’s go.”

I had never run like this before. The wind of our speed was in my face and the miles flew by with almost no effort. Even at that pace, I felt like I could go on forever, and I was enjoying it as I didn’t know I could.

A little more than a half hour after we set out, I heard rough laughter, and loud voices all trying to talk over each other at once. Kit heard it about the same time, and we halted. The noise was coming from the direction of the river, which at this point was about a half mile away from the road.

“What do you think?” said Kit.

I considered for a few moments. “It would be nice to know how many there are, if they have a watch set, and things like that.”

“We can find that out. Just keep very still for a bit.”

He searched around us and fixed on a spot somewhere up and to our right, then held out a finger. It was all I could do to not jump at the flutter of wings sounding right next to my head. A swallow alighted on Kit’s finger. He stared at it for a short time, keeping still except for the movement of his eyes and maybe a slight tilt of his head. Then the sparrow flew off.

It would have been a stupid question to ask anyone else. “Kit, were you just talking to that bird?”

“Yeah. He’s going to check it out for us.”

A short time later the swallow reappeared and settled back onto Kit’s finger. It gave out a series of excited chirps while ruffling its feathers with a kind of waggle to its tail. It went on for some time, and then without warning it flew away again.

“So? What did it say?”

Kit was smiling affectionately. “His and his mate’s second brood of the season just fledged, and he was so proud he had to tell me all about it. It seems one of the chicks’ flight feathers grew out brindled, and his mate was really worried because they have this old wives’ tale that says―”

“Kit!”

He shook himself. “Ah. Sorry. No watch. He says there’s more than four fours there, but not one more four.”

“Fours?”

“Yeah, they count by fours. But they also have a hard time with numbers higher than about eight, so he’s guessing a little.”

We were relying on a bird that couldn’t count for intelligence. I’d have wondered about how in the dozen hells I got myself into a situation like this, except I knew perfectly well. This was stupid. I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice. “If there’s no watch, we should get a closer look ourselves.” Kit agreed.

We followed the sounds as best we could while staying among the thicker trees and undergrowth. That made it hard to keep quiet, but the bandits were making so much noise on their own that they wouldn’t have heard an entire army marching down on them. Kit was small enough to slip through gaps in the brush without any trouble, but I was pretty scratched up by the time we got close enough to look the situation over.

We found the bandits about a hundred yards off the road within a roughly circular area that wasn’t so much a clearing as a place where the trees and brush were less dense and there was room for them to camp. I counted seventeen, so the bird had been about right. Sherrol’s pack mule, relieved of its burden, was tethered to a tree on the opposite side of the encampment. The canvas sacks it usually carried stood open against a tree near the center of the area, surrounded by a cluster of the bandits. It looked like they were still full. Whatever was in them must have been very valuable, because the bandits were making a rowdy good time for themselves. A half-sized barrel sat in what might have been a small haywagon. It had been tapped and they were drinking deeply, but they didn’t yet look drunk to me. They all wore heavy leather jerkins and had swords hanging at their sides. One who must have been their leader had a jerkin reinforced with bronze plates.

“What do you think?” I asked Kit.

“We can take them.”

“What makes you say that?”

“We have surprise on our side, and I bet we’re both better than any of them. And you’re going to come up with a brilliant plan.”

“I am?”

“I hope so. I don’t know anything about tactics. If it were up to me I’d just rush in and start slicing.”

Regardless of how I might have felt about him other times, right then I wanted to belt him.

With only the two of us our options were limited no matter how brilliant he said I was. In the end, the only thing I could think of was to have Kit flank the encampment while staying out of sight. I’d shoot as many as I could. Sooner or later they’d spot me, and the moment they did Kit would charge in making as much noise as he could. Once he had their attention, I’d charge in myself. With any luck, and Kit’s speed, they’d be too confused to react and we’d cut them down before they knew what was happening.

Without luck we’d be dead. Or worse. I was more afraid of what might happen if I got too pressed than that we might lose. If there was any way I thought I could back out and get away with it, I would have.

While Kit skirted the encampment to take his position, I found myself a place with the best concealment I could hope for that still gave me a clear shot. I strung my bow and set down my quiver, nocked an arrow, and waited for his signal.

Before too long the swallow flew up out of nowhere, landed on my shoulder, and chirped loudly right into my ear. I winced, and it took off again. Only Kit could have come up with a signal that was so astonishing and so annoying at the same time.

I drew, waited until one of them crossed my field of view, and let fly. He fell with my arrow in his throat. The others dropped what they were doing, instantly alert. When the second one fell they got an idea of my location and began stalking in my direction. When I took down my third target, one of them spotted me. They all made for me at a rush.

From far to the left came a flash like lightning. Kit had drawn his sword. With a yell, he leaped into the camp. That got their attention. Most of them turned around to see what was happening, then started to make for him. I dropped my bow, drew my own sword and charged.

The first bandit to reach Kit didn’t even have time to begin an attack. Kit’s blade lashed out so fast it was invisible, cutting upward and across. The bandit’s head dropped away, completely severed from his body.

The headless corpse fell, but Kit stood frozen in position at the end of his stroke. He looked stunned. The bandit leader reached him. It was only when his sword began its descent for a vicious cut that would have split open Kit’s skull that he finally reacted. His position was bad and for some reason he was moving very slowly, so although he brought his sword around to parry there wasn’t time. He raised his other arm in an effort to block.

Desperately I raced toward him, but it was too far and all the rest of the band was between us. My body reacted on its own. I heard my own voice crying out. White fire burst out from the center of my chest and spread to every part of my body. As it rose to overwhelm my vision and with it my reason, I only had time for a single thought.

“Dear Mother of Mercy. Not again.”