Gunther, in his close and careful attention to the four strangers, only became aware at the last instant of the appearance of a large Trogen warrior, mounted upon a Harrak steed in the air overhead.
He recognized their distinctive forms instantly, and he realized their deadly intentions.
Steed and rider crossed through the air slowly overhead, its rider looking down upon the four strangers. It yelled out a cry of warning, before settling into a circling pattern.
Gunther knew what would occur. There would be several others in the vicinity, as the Trogens had been flying over the Saxan forest in substantial patrols during recent days.
That was unnerving enough, as their mere presence was a harbinger of ill-fortune for the Saxan lands. Their hostile posture towards the four strangers, woefully unprepared to deal with the wilderness, much less a Trogen sky patrol, sent a sense of dread racing through Gunther. The quartet was in mortal danger, and now Gunther wished more than ever that the Wanderer had remained with him for a little longer.
The woodsman’s biggest advantage was that the Trogen warriors knew nothing of him, their attentions clearly fixed upon the party that he had been shadowing.
Quickly, he made some frantic calls of his own, sounding again much like a bird, though any of the natural fauna within the area had abruptly gone silent at the invasive disturbance from the sky rider’s shout.
The coded warning resonated to his accompanying Jaghuns, as the creatures halted where they had been edging themselves into positions creating a perimeter around the four strangers. Three methodically worked their way back to Gunther, crouching down in silence near to his side.
Dexterously, Gunther pulled his large hunting bow out from where it was slung over his back. Made of a select length of yew, the sturdy longbow suddenly became an extension of himself as he readied an arrow.
The Trogens were flying unusually low, and were probably gauging their height based upon the range of the common Saxan self-bow. They were not factoring in the larger type of bow that Gunther carried, based upon the kind carried by the hardy fighters that dwelled in the western edges of faraway Norengal.
Gunther’s broad travels had given him a significant advantage this time, even if they had brought him so much darkness. His eyes scanned above in scrutiny as he kept the arrow pulled back, carefully searching out his first target.
As the Harrak circled above the trees, he stepped closer for a better shot. He knew that his Jaghuns would provide plenty enough of a warning if anything threatening to himself were to unexpectedly emerge.
With their eyes and ears applied to warding him, Gunther could afford to concentrate his attentions on the airborne warriors and the four imperiled strangers.
One of the female strangers was currently in a hysterical state, remaining out in the open while the others had taken to a nearby tree for cover. He could not believe her sheer stupidity, aghast at her incompetence.
Showing great bravery and fortitude, the one that Gunther had assumed to be their leader suddenly rushed out and grabbed her, pulling her unceremoniously towards relative safety by a nearby tree. Gunther could see the outrage on the foreign man’s face, and the woodsman certainly could not blame him for his furor, as the girl had put both herself and her rescuer at great, and very unnecessary, risk.
Gunther then flinched inadvertently, as an arrow struck the ground where the female had been standing. Looking at the arrow in the ground, he quickly guessed at the trajectory and looked up to find that a second Trogen warrior had taken up a hovering position under the one marking the area. The Trogen archer was already poising to fire another arrow.
Knowing the Trogens as well as he did, remembering their ways and tendencies, he turned and looked back, behind where the group’s leader had dragged the fear-paralyzed woman. As he had expected, a third Trogen had taken advantage of the tumult, and had quietly gotten itself maneuvered into position behind the humans.
It was silently hovering even closer to the treeline, its bow drawn back with deadly intent. The two humans on the ground had no awareness of its presence, occupied as they were with the other Trogens. Their backs were readily exposed to its line of sight, providing easy targets to a skilled Trogen warrior.
There was no time to wait, as the war cries of other Trogens were filling the skies. Honing his focus upon the third Trogen, Gunther hit that zone within his mind where the Trogen and its steed were the only things that existed in all of the world.
In the flash of a moment, with immaculately steady aim, Gunther let his arrow fly for the thick neck of the Harrak. There was no doubt about the elite skill that Gunther had developed through the years, and that adeptness was demonstrated once again. The arrow penetrated deep, punching through the winged creature’s long fur into the underlying flesh of its neck, as if Gunther had thrust it there from close range with his bare hands.
The Harrak was killed instantly, suddenly becoming dead weight as its lifeless body plunged towards the ground below. It carried its rider towards a doomed fate, though the warrior had remarkable presence of mind as it jerked free from the straps securing it to the saddle, in the desperate hope of avoiding being tied to the beast’s movements.
The hapless rider screamed defiantly as it pitched from the saddle. Gunther watched as the bodies of both steed and rider violently struck the upper tree branches, the sounds of snapping and breaking wood accompanying the fatal descent.
Without further hesitation, Gunther readied another arrow and turned back towards the archer that he had originally seen. The Trogen warrior that had previously been circling had joined the fight, hovering near the first.
Raising his bow, he calculated his next shot.