Ronan knew inside fifty meters that he was not going to catch mounted scouts on a borrowed horse, so he stopped trying.
"The ground!" he shouted. "Not the men!"
Cillian stopped aiming at riders.
His first bolt hit the track twenty meters ahead of the leading horse and blew a crater of dirt and stone up into the animal's face, and both horses threw their heads and slewed sideways.
His second split a pine across the narrowest point of the path. It came down in a tearing crack, and a wall of green and broken timber dropped across the road east.
Both riders fought their mounts around, and both made a decision in the same second, and they made different ones.
The first went back along the ridge toward Greybridge, flat to the neck, riding for the alarm.
