Bryan Davis - Eye of the Oracle

“It is enough for the likes of you,” Hannah snapped, using the same dialect.

Devin swiped his sword over Hannah’s palm, slicing through the Ovulum. The top half fell to the ground and spun in the grass. He flashed a mocking smile. “Sorry to crush your hopes, dragoness, but your faith is fatally misplaced.”

As Devin drew back his sword again, the lower part of the Ovulum spewed a towering fountain of scarlet sparks that streamed in every direction. Hannah jerked her hand away, dropping the broken egg. The half shell rocked back and forth and continued gushing until the streams coalesced into two cyclonic columns that spun like crimson tornados between the pairs of opponents.

One of the columns lifted off the ground and soared into the sky, while the other drilled downward and splashed a huge cloud of dust into the dark knights’ faces. Devin and Palin covered their eyes, coughing and gagging as they backed away.

Elam lunged for Palin and threw him down. Wrapping his arms around the knight’s sword hand, he slammed the mail-clad arm against the ground, then pried the sword free and jumped up with the hilt in his grip. Setting his feet, he pointed the blade at the pair of slayers as they continued to cough uncontrollably.

More dust erupted from the lower end of the spinning column, blending russet streaks into the crimson cyclone until it looked like a swirling pinwheel of flesh and blood. The streaks solidified and coiled into a tight cylinder. As the spinning slowed, a man’s body took shape, his hands at his sides and his eyes tightly shut.

The turning stopped. The man gasped a deep breath, then opened his eyes and looked around frantically. Spotting Hannah, he swept her up and began to run.

Still holding Palin’s sword, Elam rushed after them. Hannah thrashed in the man’s arms, screaming, “We can run faster if you will let me go!” She jabbed her elbow into his ribs until he stumbled and dropped her. After toppling over her body, he flopped face first into a patch of dandelions.

Elam hustled to the man and rolled him over. He seemed familiar somehow, and since he had come out of the Ovulum, he likely wasn’t an enemy. “Are you all right?” Elam asked in modern English.

“We have to escape,” the man replied in Old English. “The effects of the gas on the slayers will not last long.”

Elam and Hannah each grabbed one of the man’s arms and helped him to his feet. Elam glanced back at the two knights. The slayers were slowly rising, still coughing, but not as vigorously. “We must make haste,” the man continued. “Are there any rapid conveyances?”

Hannah nodded. “Yes, I have horses.”

“In the pasture down the road!” Elam swept his arm forward. “Come on!”

The trio dashed away from the cottage, scaled a low fence, and sprinted across a grassy field. When the horses came into view, Hannah pulled on Elam’s sleeve, slowing him down. “Careful, or we will frighten them.”

With Palin’s sword still in hand, Elam walked briskly, alternately glancing at several horses grazing about fifty paces in front, then behind him at the slayers who followed at a distance. “Can you ride bareback?” he asked Hannah.

“Yes. Can you?”

“I think so.” Elam turned to the stranger. “Do you ride?”

The man nodded. “Yes, but never in this world.”

Elam propped the sword over his shoulder. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I will explain soon enough.”

“Wait here.” Hannah strode ahead. As she approached the horses, she held out her hand toward a bay mare and spoke as though she were addressing another human. “Legossi,” she said, returning to her Scottish-soaked, modern dialect, “we are in great danger. I need you and Hartanna and Clefspeare to carry us to safety. Will you do it?”

The mare replied with a lengthy bob of her head. Two other horses, a dapple-gray mare and a chestnut stallion, both nodded in the same way. Hannah sidled up to the stallion. “I will take Clefspeare,” she said, switching back to old English. “Elam, you ride the bay mare. You” she pointed at the stranger “you can ride the dapple gray.”

Elam checked the slayers’ progress as they crossed the field. Palin, now brandishing Excalibur and running ahead of his injured master, would be at their throats in seconds. Elam dropped his captured sword and set his hands in a cradle near the ground. “Hannah! Quick! I’ll boost you!”

“No need for boosting!” Taking a running start, Hannah leaped over his hands and vaulted onto the stallion. Then, snatching Elam’s collar, she hauled him to the bay mare and lifted him high. Elam grabbed the horse’s neck, swung his leg over her back, and righted himself. The stranger leaped onto the dapple-gray mare and slid deftly into place.

Now only a dozen paces away, Palin charged toward them, Devin’s sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.

Giving Clefspeare a firm kick, Hannah shouted. “Let us fly!”

The stallion bolted, and the mares galloped after him. Elam squeezed the mare with his knees to steady himself, but sudden pain made him lurch. He clutched his upper arm. Palin’s dagger! The jagged blade had penetrated deeply, probably to the bone. He jerked the dagger out and slung it to the ground. Pain ripped through his neck and down his spine. Blood flowed freely, coating his arm in seconds.

He glanced back. Palin was pointing at the ground with the sword Elam had left behind. Elam grimaced. A blood trail! But he couldn’t stop to make a bandage. Hannah and the stranger were already too far ahead. Leaning forward and hanging on with his good arm, he could only watch the tall grass zip by underneath while blood dripped from his fingers. He might as well make a sign that said, “This way to the dragon!”

He tried to pull the mare to the right, hoping to steer his pursuers away, but she stayed on course behind the pair in front. Closing his eyes and laying his head on the horse’s mane, he focused on enduring the escape. The mare’s hoofbeats rattled his brain, and each jolt brought a new stab of agony.

Soon, the thunder of other hoofbeats grew closer, so close they seemed to hammer the ground in a stride-for-stride gallop next to him. Elam clutched the horse’s mane. Was Devin about to grab him? Too groggy to sit up, he tried to kick his horse, but he lurched to the side and fell. Strong arms caught him, lifted him into the air, and set him in place again on a different mount. A gentle male voice drifted into his ear. “Hang on, young man. Keep your courage. I will let you rest in a moment.”

When the horse finally stopped, another pair of hands grasped his uninjured arm as he slid slowly downward. Hannah’s voice lilted in his ears, her Scottish accent spicing her Old English. “I will lay him down! Move the horses away! Quickly now.”

Elam fluttered his eyelids, catching glimpses of tall blades of grass next to his cheek, Hannah’s worried face on one side of his body and the stranger from the Ovulum on the other. Every image seemed filtered by a dark screen. Even the sun wore a basaltic mask that coated the skies with gray. With pain roaring from arm to arm, he clenched his teeth, unable to put his torment into words.

The man’s voice drifted by, soft as a phantom’s whisper. “Can you stop the bleeding?”

Hannah’s sharp reply drilled into his ears. “Give me your shirt!”

New throbs shot through Elam’s brain, shocking him to a more wakeful state. He peeked through his partially closed eyelids. Hannah, dim and blurry, wrapped a shirt around his injured arm. After tying it in place, she pressed her hand on the wound.

Elam moaned. The pain was worse than the sting of Nabal’s cruelest whippings.

Hannah’s voice returned, now more soothing. “Shhh. I have to put pressure on it or you are likely to bleed to death.”