Barbara Hambly - 02 The Walls of Air

The camp boiled into life around him, lean, pale shapes seeming to appear from nowhere in pursuit. Rudy dodged through them at a staggering run, hearing the soft thunk of an arrow and feeling the sting of the barb skim his ankle, still swinging his flaming club at the men who tried to head him off. They fell back from the burning weapon. One of the horse guards grabbed him from the side. Rudy writhed around to knee him in the groin and struggled free to run again. He caught the nose rope of a shying mustang as hands closed on his left arm. Whirling, he laid about him with the stick, and the circle widened for an instant. That instant was all he needed. He scrambled awkwardly aboard the horse's back, thanking God the thing wasn't really tall and slashing at the Raiders on all sides. He saw his chance, turned the mustang's head out toward the open desert, and dug in his heels.

The mustang reared once, dropped its nose, and bucked him

ten feet into the chaparral.

The impact with the ground was unbelievable. It slammed the breath from his body, and the broken ribs stabbed his side like knives. He tried to roll to his feet, but a stone-headed spear drove into the ground beside him, pinning the slack of his dark tunic to the earth. The shadows of the Raiders fell across him, and the next spear came down straight at his chest.

It missed. Thrown at a distance of less than ten feet, it swerved suddenly, impossibly, in midair, wobbled, and smacked him harmlessly broadside. The Raiders froze, pointing past him with whispers of alarm at something far out in the brown distances of the desert.

It's the ghost, Rudy thought in despair, twisting his head around to look. But he saw only a dark robed figure that seemed to melt out of the wind and the silence, a fierce-eyed and familiar old vagabond who came striding toward the camp as if he owned the place. One Raider, the man who had shot the charging mammoth in the eye, fired an arrow at him, It missed by yards. Rudy almost wept with relief.

Ingold stopped beside him and jerked loose the spear that pinned him. A scarred, blunt-fingered hand reached down to drag him to his feet, and a familiar voice rasped, 'What did you turn yourself into?'

'A stinkbug, for Chrissake!' Rudy sobbed. 'How the hell were they suspicious of a lousy stinkbug?'

In the shadows of his hood, Ingold's eyes had a dry glitter. 'Have you seen any stinkbugs since you've come to this world?'

Rudy was silent.

Ingold went on. 'There are none - as you would have known, had you been paying attention to what goes on around you.' He glanced from Rudy to the White Raiders, who were fanning into a circle around them, spears pointing, as they would surround a cave bear. He held the spear he'd pulled slackly in his hand,

point- down, and made no move toward sword or weapon of any kind. 'And even so,' he continued, as if they were alone and safe, 'you could have used a simple cloaking-spell to leave the camp by the back way and head out into the brush, without a fireworks display like the one you just put on. You didn't need the horse, Rudy. And now, of course, since we've made ourselves as conspicuous as we possibly can without actually murdering someone, that is out of the question.'

The circle tightened around them, a bristling hedge of stone and steel points, like the teeth of a shark. Ingold watched the warriors without making a move.

'I'm sorry,' Rudy mumbled.

The wizard's voice grated. 'You and I may be a great deal sorrier before all is said and done.'

A slight sound made Ingold focus his attention behind him. Several of the Raiders fell hastily back. Rudy could feel the tension in the wizard, the leashed power, the blazing potential that customarily hid behind that mild, unassuming facade. The Raiders seemed to feel it, too. At least none of them appeared prepared to try to rush him.

Then the circle shifted, and a tall Raider stepped into the centre of the ring, raising his hands to show himself unarmed.

He was a magnificent Viking of a man in his forties, pale braided moustaches hanging down to the pit of his throat. His eyebrows were tufted like those of a lynx, curling upward and outward; beneath them, his eyes were as cold as frozen amber. The bleached grey-gold of his cougar hide garments was unrelieved by any mark of rank; but without question, he was the chief of the Raiders. He wore that majesty like a cloak.

Chill eyes that deduced the coming of herds or the threat of a storm in the bend of a single grass blade studied Ingold and Rudy for a moment in silence, pale in the white fans of wrinkles that scored the dark-dyed skin. When he spoke, his voice was a foghorn bass, and he spoke with a sonorous accent in the tongue

of the Wath.

'You are wise men?'

'I am a wise man,' Ingold replied drily. "He merely knows spells.'

The cool eyes shifted briefly to Rudy, evaluated the distinction, and dismissed him. Rudy felt his face grow hot and wished he could truly disappear or return to his stinkbug shape and trundle off into the desert, never to be seen again.

'I thought that so it might be,' the Raider said. 'Seldom does Yobshikithos the Arrow-Dancer miss his aim, but it is said that wise men are sometimes difficult to hit. ZyagarnalhotepamI, Hoofprint of the Wind, and you are come among the Twisted Hills People, out of the land among the White Lakes.'

'You are far from your homes,' Ingold said gravely. 'Do the mammoth then leave the northern plains, to draw you this far to the south?'

The foghorn voice rumbled, 'Where we ride, we ride. The lands of all the plains and of the desert are ours, ours to use without leave of mud diggers from the river, wise though they may be. But you,' he went on, with a gesture of one scar-creased hand, 'you read our magic-post on the road these ten nights gone, not merely to see it and flee away, as do the people of the Straight Roads. Are you, then, that wise man whose name was known in the south many years ago, the Desert Walker, who was friend to the White Bird and his tribe?'

Ingold was silent for a moment, as if the name, like the stones of the desert or the shackle-gall on his wrist, brought back the taste of another life and another self. 'I am that Desert Walker,' he said at last. 'But I must tell you, Hoofprint of the Wind, that the White Bird died of knowing me.'

'I was a friend to that White Bird,' the chieftain said quietly. 'And men die, whether known by you or not, Desert Walker.' Bleached lashes veiled the glint of his eyes. 'But if you are that same one and the White Bird spoke truly unto me, good it is for us all that my people did not kill you, but only waited for me to come.'

'Fortunate it is for your people,' Ingold returned gently, 'that they did not try.'

The gold eyes met the blue in arrogant challenge, but after a moment the mouth beneath the braided moustache curled in appreciation. 'Yes,' he said softly. 'Yes, truly you are that same Desert Walker who stole the White Bird's horses...'

'I never did!' Ingold protested in quick indignation.

'... and made a certain bet regarding the horrible birds...'

That wasn't me.'

'... and lost?'

'I won. And besides,' Ingold went on smoothly, 'it was all many years gone, and I

was a most young and foolish Desert Walker in those days.'

'You who are old and wise enough now to come striding into the camps of war, in the time when there are evil ghosts abroad upon the land?'

As if summoned by the speaking of the name, winds rattled in the glass and feathers of the magic-post, the white sunlight winked from the spinning metal, and the wild rose petals tore loose to lie in the grass like sacrificial blood. There was a stirring among the Raiders; a head or two turned, not toward the post, but toward the emptiness of the desert. Yet there was nothing there, nothing but the arctic cold.