To say that Peiter was surprised was an understatement. After she tapped his stomach, he rolled over onto his side and looked at her, confused. He was afraid that his nervous stammering had offended her, and he was not quite sure what to do next. "Wait, are you sure? I didn't, I didn't...mean...to..." 

Peiter cut himself off when he started to notice something on the wind, something that immediately frightened him. Even more quickly than Sabine, he climbed out of the water, but instead of going for his clothing, he grabbed his halberd. "Shh, get down. Do you smell that? On the wind?" He warned. It was the scent of people, mostly Khajiit, coming from the west, and they were not lycans. 

Crouching down, Peiter moved forward towards a small hill which separated the stream from the tree which held the ropes. He laid down, then crawled up the hill just enough so he could peer over. It was difficult to see at first, but to the north and south of the ropes, there were two groups hiding among the bush which would be difficult to see unless one was looking specifically for them. Most were bipedal Khajiit, with a few Bosmer mixed in, and all that he could see were archers. In each group, there were about six of them, so he and Sabine were very outnumbered. 

Looking back, he motioned for Sabine to crawl up beside him. "This is...this is not good. They must have tracked us." He whispered. Fortunately, it did not seem like he or Sabine had been noticed yet, as the stream was out of earshot. "There are so many of them, but...we can't just do nothing. Who knows what they have planned?"

Suddenly, several of the mysterious archers shifted in place and nocked their arrows. At first, Peiter thought they had been spotted, but looking closer, he could see that they were not looking east, but up. Peiter looked up as well and focused on some movement he could see past the branches, along one of the walkways. It was too high for Peiter to make out exactly who it was, but he could tell that whoever it might be was holding two children. 

Peiter looked back to Sabine, now panicked. "We have to do something, quickly. Maybe...maybe we don't have to kill them all, just keep them from doing whatever they're planning. Distract them. We could circle around to the north, then...attack from behind. I could transform and run in, and you can help with magic. Once they're paying attention to us, we can both turn and run away into the forest. There's no way they could catch us." He suggested. It was a desperate plan, quite reliant on their element of surprise, but there was not exactly a lot of time to think.