title: disengage again
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 14:11:16 -0500
author: teri

Lieh's face went white and then crimson under her helmet as the surrounded
party dissapeared into a flash of light. The soldiers had had the group
surrounded, had begun to engage them in battle, and they had slipped again
from her grasp.  She was stunned still with the concept of yet another
failure.

Her mount pranced under her tense body, drawing her attention back from the
blind surprise she had fallen into. There were the sounds of animals dying
as the men finished off the forest life. Those not engaged looked around
expectantly lest their quarry reappear.

But they were gone, she knew it as finally as she knew the curve of her
sword-hilt.

"Fall back!" she commanded, and the troop began to disengage, retrieve their
mounts and take stock of their losses and gains. She noticed more than one
of her men tying the slain animals to their pommels. They would feast
tonight, on fresh game and an unexpected failure.

What was she up against? As Lieh rode back towards the inn to set up camp,
as her eyes stared icily ahead, her gaze was delicately inward.

She had seen them, these Chosen. She had seen their bumbling movements,
their barely-veiled cowardice, their mediocre horsemanship. She had seen the
youth in their faces, the doubt in their eyes. Against these children just
one of her men should have been enough. Instead, an score of them had failed
to capture even one of them.

Seeing the Chosen up close, almost within arms' length, had struck Lieh with
a curdling confusion. These were the objects of the Ghanril's quest? These
were the glorious, the revered, the powerful the lengends spoke of?

She could not reconcile her own sight with all she had been told. Yet this
was nothing.

She could not reconcile her own sight with the fact that despite their
obvious mediocre power levels... they had escaped her yet again.

What was she up against? What was she missing?

Lieh reigned her horse to a halt at the edge of the clearing. She knew the
upcoming days would be bitter ones to swallow.
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"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The
second is to look things in the face and know them
for what they are." -Marcus Aurelius

Teri Champ
Vassar College, Box 1763
Poughkeepsie, New York 12604-1763
x3089

http://vsa.vassar.edu/~m4m

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