It had been a pretty long day of riding. Fortunately, Casandra was not in a rush so the pace had been leisurely and the stops frequent. The high canopy of trees brought some welcoming shade and the cool breeze on her face felt deightful.
But something felt wrong. Nothing tangible, just a feeling. The kind of feeling that many would dismiss as simple paranoia, but paranoia was known to have saved a few Amberites over the years. The birds still sang but didn't they sound a little nervous? Hoshi seemed a little bit nervous as well. And of course that feeling of being watched. Experience and years of training had taught Casandra to trust her instincts and right now her instincts told her that someone was following her. Actually, they told her that something was following her.
Whatever it was, it was being very careful. Staying up wind and out of sight. Casandra started to focus her full attention on her environment and this mysterious intruder. She allowed Hoshi to find his way along the path without her assistance. Like an astro-physicist looking for a black hole by the effects its gravitational field has on other objects, Casandra started to build up a picture of her stalker by its actions and how it affected its surroundings.
For the next couple of miles she continued to put together a profile. Four legs, low to the ground, quick, quiet, at least human intelligence. Definitely a hunter and a tracker. Next she looked for the perfect place to setup her trap. A little before dark a good place came in sight. She verified the wind direction again to make sure. Yes, this would work out nicely. She scanned the terrain and cover wuth the eyes of a hunter, verifying the most likely attack routes to her proposed campsite.
Casandra led Hoshi off the trail to her campsite. She let Hoshi drink from the small stream downwind of the campsite while she gathered some firewood and checked out the terrain. She built a fire as darkness fell.
Hoshi had drunk his fill, so Casandra tethered him to a tree and removed her gear and packs. Next she setup her tent in the path of one of the two most logical attack routes. Going back to her packs she removed a long iron spit and a mirror. The mirror was sureptitiously placed next to the pack where it could only be seen from where she sat by the fire. The spit was placed over the fire on pairs of crossed logs.
Casandra noted a tree about 15 feet behind where she would be sitting, along the most likely attack path. Taking a couple of trips back and forth between her pack and the fire, to get a small chicken and a number of spices for dinner, she adjusted the mirror so that she could see the tree from where she would be sitting.
When the chicken was cooking and everything else was setup properly, Casandra took a feedbag full of oats over to Hoshi. Then she went back to the fire and sat with her back to the expected attack path and waited. She was careful not to look into the fire, thus dilating her pupils. Instead she kept a a careful watch on the mirror, and prepared herself for combat.
With the smell of cooking chicken in the air she knew that she would not have long to wait. She caught sight of Vyrliix just as he was starting his lunge. She had underestimated his speed a little and consequently got raked down her left side by Vyrliix's claws as she rolled quickly to her right. She did, however, manage to throw the handful of fine white powder into his face, blinding him.
His lunge should have ended with Vyrliix on top of her with his jaws clamped onto the back of her neck, and her in the fire. Instead it ended with him in the fire and his jaws clamped firmly on the chicken. Without hands to clear his eyes he ran for the stream that he knew was straight ahead. He spit out the uncooked bird and managed to find the small brook with a combination of blurry vision and exceptional hearing. As soon as his feet were a couple of inches deep he thrust his head in with his eyes open. He immediately pulled his head back out, shook it and jumped to the side, narrowly avoiding getting chopped in half by Casandra's whirling katana. Instead he escaped with a foot long gash down his right side.
The river bed was covered with slippery rocks that were making manuevering difficult. Casandra stood on the shore circling to Vyrliix's left. Vyrliix cautiously moved back and to his left. As he tried to get his back-left foot onto dry land she quickly lashed out cutting his right-front foot to the bone. With all of his weight there he crumpled forward and attempted to roll to his right. Cassandra's follow-up missed his heart by about an inch, instead puncturing his right lung. He instinctively batted at her with his front-left foot. A move she had apparently anticipated and was able to easily dodge. She finished him off quickly.
When she was done she hauled his body out of the stream and left it near the clearing. Removing her bloodied clothes she took out some antiseptic and clean gauze and dressed her wounds. After burning the bloodied garments she packed the rest of her stuff and walked Hoshi to a new campsite a half mile away. All the while thinking "Who did I piss off this time?"