Mercedes Lackey - Owlflight

More heavy steps, a shadow passed over Dalian’s hiding place, and the man stepped into Darian’s line-of-sight. He blocked about half of Darian’s view, but Darian had a very good view of him. Tall, a bit less muscular than the barbarian fighters, but just as shaggy and bearded, he wore an outlandish reddish-brown robe, with a design pieced into it in dark brown leather. It appeared to be the stylized head and forequarters of some beast, but what, Darian couldn’t tell. There was a pendant around his neck that swung into view as he turned; a sun-disk, with the rays in metal but the disk in black. An eclipse?

All his attention was centered outside, which was a very good thing, as Darian was in plain sight from where he stood if he chose to look in that direction.

Is this the mage? It must be. What’s that pendant mean?

Is it magic? Darian tentatively stretched his new “magic-sense” toward the man.

And he was all but “blinded.” He shielded himself again, as he’d been taught, and lay there, dazed. I think this is the mage, all right.

And the man was doing something; he had his hands cupped in front of him, and he was muttering. And from a point just below them, Darian heard an ominous, deep sound of growling, and the noise of very heavy feet shuffling away.

He’s - he’s got monsters! He’s turning monsters loose! The Hawkbrothers had no warning of this - bad enough that they were facing half an army, but no one had thought about facing monsters, too!

He had to do something. He had to! He couldn’t let Snowfire down, the way he’d failed Justyn! The man was still muttering, probably calling up another monster. Darian couldn’t wait any longer.

With a yell, he leaped out of the hay, pulling his knife at the same time.

The man turned, quick as a thought, but only in time to keep from getting knocked out of the loft door. Darian hit him with a shock, his right shoulder nearly wrenched out of its socket as the man deflected it. They both went down in the hay, with Darian on top; he tried to bring up his knife to finish things, but the man seized his wrist, and rolled to the right. Now Darian was underneath; the man tried to get the knife away from him, bashing his hand down uselessly into the soft hay, his knees digging into Darian’s stomach. Darian squirmed, trying to break his hold and get away, and the man held off Darian’s knife hand with his right and got his left around Darian’s throat and began to squeeze.

He couldn’t breathe. His throat was agony, his chest fek as if it were going to burst, his blood pounded in his ears. He writhed and twisted, clawed for the man with his free hand, kicked and thrashed, while the man held him down and throttled him.

Dalian’s mouth opened, but nothing eame out; his eyes felt as if they were going to pop out of his head, his ears and face burned, and he couldn’t hear anything but a roaring. His vision went red, then began to tunnel, until all he could see was the man’s impassive, bearded face, and that was starting to black out.

Then, with no warning, the man let him go and flung himself backward.

Darian rolled out of the way, coughing and gasping, and looked up to see Huur attached to the man’s scalp, flapping her wings furiously and digging bloody furrows along his forehead with her talons.

She must have come in the hayloft door - she saved me!

The man was screaming at the top of his lungs and flailing at the bird with his fists; she in her turn battered him with powerful strokes of her wings, disorienting him. Belatedly, Darian realized he had to get out of there. She hadn’t managed a killing hold, she couldn’t hang onto him forever, and once she let go, he was free to go after Darian again. Darian scrambled for the ladder and slid down it, with his feet braced on the outside of the uprights and his hands slowing him. He had lost his knife somewhere - he didn’t know where, but right now all he wanted was to get away.

But the door was closed, and the bar was down across it. The mage-light dropped down into the stable, and the man stopped screaming; Huur must have let him go.

Please, please, don’t let her be hurt!

The horses were all frantically stomping and neighing, upset by the commotion and wanting to take their agitation out on something or someone. The mage would be down there any moment -

Where can I hide that he can’t find me?

There wasn’t much room in the tiny stable - and with the horses ready to kick anything that stood in their path -

The horses! Yes!

He darted along the center aisle, throwing open the doors to the stalls as he went. The horses hadn’t been tied, and once they felt space behind them, they kicked and backed out into the aisle, then proceeded to fight with each other, milling and squealing, and providing a barrier of large and angry bodies between Darian and the ladder. Just as he opened the last stall, he spotted the mage’s feet on the ladder, and he saw a pitchfork leaning against the back wall. He seized it, and darted into the last stall, dangerously close to the horse that was vacating it. Fortunately, the horse was more interested in getting a piece of one of his rivals than in stomping Darian into the straw.

This stall had no half-door at the back, and neither did the one opposite it. There would be no escape that way.

As he cowered in the back of the stall, pitchfork clutched in his trembling hands, he heard the mage’s voice roaring over the squealing and bugling of the fighting horses, and the thud of hooves on wood. He heard the louder sound of the stable doors slamming open, and then the noise of a riding whip on flesh and the thunder of hooves receding. The mage had opened the stable doors and was driving out the horses. Soon he would come looking for Darian.

I ’ ll only get one chance at this - Darian broke out into a cold sweat, shaking all over, but his mind seemed strangely sharp and clear, and as he watched the lighted space of the open stall door, he saw the last of the bulky shadows vanish, leaving only the long shadow of a man.

The mage-light’s behind him.

He watched the shadow, and listened to the footsteps, waiting for the moment when the mage would be’just around the corner of his stall.

The man was thorough; he checked every stall, while Darian’s heart pounded and his gut churned. He’s looking at the opposite ones first. When he first gets up here, I’ll have just that long while he checks the other one -

He saw the shadow’s legs, the body silhouetted on the wall; he braced himself, and with the next step, the mage himself appeared framed in the stall door.

Darian charged, screaming.

This time he caught the mage entirely by surprise, driving him into the wall and pinning him there. He looked terrible, with great gouges bleeding down into his face and his robe wet with his own blood - but he was obviously far from finished. One tine of the pitchfork held an arm pinned between it and the next tine, one pierced the man’s clothing at his side, although Darian couldn’t tell if it had caught flesh, and one was buried in the wood of the back of the stall.

But the mage wasn’t dead - and he wasn’t done with Darian yet.

There was an insane rage in the man’s eyes; he foamed at the mouth, and he clawed at Darian with his free hand. Failing to reach Darian, he grappled with the shaft of the pitchfork, and tried to wrench it away, while at the same time, he pushed away from the wall. There was blood seeping into the mage’s clothing, but this was obviously not a fatal wound.

If he could get off the wall, he could free himself.

Darian panted, bracing his feet in the dirt of the stall floor, and hung on with the strength of desperation. Why wouldn’t this man die?