I wait.
The riders are all chatting, laughing. Horse hooves approach. They hail someone.
“He got all six of you?” Brigitta’s voice. She sighs. “Honestly, pathetic. He doesn’t even have spells.”
“Well, he has muscles,” one of the witches grumbles. I smirk, tensing my biceps. Nice to be appreciated.
“He was in the trees,” the rider I knocked out of the saddle says.
“Hardly an excuse.” Brigitta sounds caught between amusement and exasperation. “He used to be a jäger.”
“Not arealjäger,” one of the riders protests. “He’s on our side.”
I grin silently.
“Still,” Brigitta says, laughing at the others. “You’re all on extra night patrols for failing so spectacularly.”
Some more chatter.
“He rode off,” one of the other riders says. I don’t even peer around the trunk.
I wait.
Footsteps crunch through leaves and forest detritus. Brigitta steps closer to my tree.
She stops. “You three go east. You three go west.”
Horses gallop off, the group splitting up to cover more ground and find me.
“Where are you going?” A male voice. I think that may be Theodar.
Brigitta moves slowly, carefully.
She’s guessed my play.
I hear the sound of heavy pouches thudding. She’s testing the weight of at least one in each hand.
I wait.
“Come,” Brigitta commands Theodar, and they stride into the forest.
Closer.
Closer.
I see the tip of her boot. In another moment, she’ll be beside me.
I scream, the sound raw and jagged, and it works—Theodar shouts, whirling around as I leap in front of them both. I toss one red marker, smacking his panicked face.
Brigitta, however, is not so easily distracted. She raises her hands, both heavy with spell bags, and I dodge, rolling through the leaves and sticks and mud, tossing the red marker up. She ducks, easily avoiding the hit.
I’ve lost my red marker, and she has spell pouches in each hand, still very much my enemy.
“You can just give up,” Brigitta offers. “You don’t have to win.”
“You’re wrong there,” I say.
Brigitta kicks at me; I scramble over the forest floor. One spell bag slams into the back of my thigh, and my whole leg goes numb so abruptly that I stumble again and nearly fall over. Brigitta advances as I struggle.
