PART 6
Life continued without any further exceptional developments for the next six weeks. Then there came a warm summer’s evening that found the twins relaxing in the grass beside the chicken pen. They were six and a half months old, and were playing vlah; a basic war game they’d learned from the unicorns, played on a hexagonal board covered with triangles on which three kinds of markers were moved in turn to capture territory. The moves on the board were only half the competition, since they each had to block the other from their mind enough to conceal their moves, which was exceedingly difficult for both of them. As each of their turns came and they considered their next move, the other would be probing their mental barriers and offering ingenious distractions.
Then Reggie’s barriers slipped, and Helemia saw his entire strategy.
“Ha! I’ve got you now!” she crowed as she prepared to counter his forces.
“Wait. Check Stripe.” Reggie told her.
Their barriers dissolved, and they thought almost as one again.
Reggie had psionicly ‘heard’ what sounded like Stripe growling in the distance. When they checked his rudimentary thoughts, they found that he was stalking, and that he hated his prey because his quarry meant harm to Helemia and Reggie. And there were more than one of them. Furthermore, he hated them because he couldn’t see, hear, or smell them, though he knew that they were there with his psionic sensitivity. The discrepancy irritated him to no end.
The two pets hadn’t been back to the house for weeks. They’d hunted for food, while patrolling for the Sylvan scouts who’d occasionally approached the settlement. Now there were more than scouts; there was a force of enemies moving into position.
“Stripe, wait.” Reggie commanded, and the cat froze.
play their
he’s brought a lot of
big domed Shield over this whole valley. A really strong one, psionic as well as Force, I bet. I don’t know if we can break through it to call for help. There really is a lot of them. And they’ve found a way to get past Father’s Wards. We’ve all underestimated these Sylvan. They’ve had a very long time with nothing to do but get better at being dangerous in every
watching. A bunch of them are on the top of the cliffs on either side of the pass. They’re probably waiting to ambush us when we go home. The rest are scattered along the ridge around the valley. They’re probably going to try to scare us into running home, and make sure they herd us the right way. They’ll
thinking. He’s gotten a lot better at Shielding, and he has a couple of the others helping him with it. He sure hates me though. I’m
scary.
mental Shielding. We’ll have to be careful to make sure they don’t know
we are! They’re scared of Vanakit ‘cause they think he’s crazy and he hurts them a lot, they’re scared their god will be mad at them for attacking us, and they’re scared of… Something unseen that they
too, especially the dragons.” Helemia pointed out. “Vanakit has them convinced that it was our parents that attacked him. They think he’s attacking us to get revenge on our parents. Because he’s ashamed to admit he got taken by me before I was born, I bet! And they actually think that
them for the next two hours, at most. Mother and Father and Aunt Alilia will be done with the exercise in an hour and a half. When they get
get ‘em ourselves! We’ve got Stripe and Scout
know. It’s pretty risky.” Reggie countered. “We still couldn’t win a physical fight against even one half-grown Sylvan, even working together. And we still don’t have
try to get a count of them. I’ll take the ones above the pass, you
need a plan. And it’ll be dark in about a half hour, they’ll probably come after us then. We should move before then. We’re right out in the
I count a hundred and five of ‘em on each
of them along the ridge.” Reggie reported.