Richard Byers - The Shattered Mask

Tamlin was just tugging the leather stopper out of the wineskin, the action made a trifle more difficult by Honey-lass's weight on his wrist, when a barrier of glistening ice, its edges momentarily nickering with blue and violet light, sprang up to bar the way. It materialized just in front of the greyhounds, who yelped and recoiled, while the horses whinnied and shied. Brom's mount reared, and the spell-caster nearly fell off. The tiercel on his arm screamed and spread its wings.

"Watch out!" Escevar shouted.

Dropping the wineskin, Tamlin wheeled his dappled gelding around and perceived that he and his companions had ridden into an ambuscade, with the barricade of ice conjured to hold them in the killing box. Men with crossbows were leaning out of upper-story windows, while others with naked blades scrambled from doorways and the mouths of alleys. The other innocent folk unfortunate enough to be trapped on this particular stretch of street at this particular time scurried to get out of the waylayers' path.

Though Tamlin had no particular love of fighting, either for sport or in deadly earnest, every nobleman was schooled in the martial arts, and his training now took over. Guiding his steed with his knees, he dropped the wineskin and reached for his sword, remembering only as he grasped the hilt that it was a blunt, fragile ornament of glass. He wouldn't even be able to wield it unless he freed it from the loops that secured it to his belt, and then it would almost certainly break into pieces on the first swing. Useless!

A crossbow bolt whizzed past his head.

As a ragged child who seldom had a penny in his pocket, Brom Selwick had loved the puppeteers, storytellers, and itinerant players who provided free entertainment in the plazas and markets of Selgaunt. And in the tales of high adventure and bloodcurdling terror the young Brom had relished most, wizards, whether good or evil, had all been of a certain type. Keen of eye, aquiline of countenance, and luxuriant of beard, the mages uniformly possessed an imperious manner, even as they fairly reeked of awesome powers and secret knowledge.

Brom knew full well that he did not measure up to this popular stereotype. Most people saw him as bookish, awkward, and diffident, and he had to admit that in many situations, it was all true. But if casual acquaintances inferred from his mild demeanor that he was useless in a fight, in that they were very much mistaken.

Upon completing his apprenticeship in the mystic arts, Brom had taken service as a ship's mage, and as he sailed about the Sea of Fallen Stars, honed his battle sorcery in numerous clashes with corsairs from the Pirate Isles and later the savage sea creatures called sahuagin, when they waged their war upon mankind. He most certainly could acquit himself well in combat.

Ordinarily, that was. When he didn't have a wild killer bird screeching and flapping on his wrist, and a frightened mare shifting and heaving beneath him more treacherously than, it seemed to him now, any storm-tossed cog ever had.

The horse tried to lurch into a gallop, though Mystra only knew where it thought there was to escape to. Nearly thrown from the saddle, Brom heaved on the reins with all his strength and forced the animal to stand. The wretched tiercel screeched again, and clutched his wrist so tightly that it hurt despite his thick falconer's glove.

Brom surveyed the battlefield and spied swordsmen and their ilk charging up the snowy street, crossbowmen in windows, and, perched high above the action atop a roof, a masked figure in dark blue clothing with a vague, murky shape crouched at his side. No doubt it was the wizard who'd produced the wall of ice, attended by some sort of familiar.

Brom decided he must trust Vox and Escevar to fend off the attackers on the ground, for only his magic could reach the others. And since the masked wizard didn't appear to be conjuring at the moment, the crossbowmen posed the more immediate threat.

Wishing he'd brought his staff-it had no magical attributes, but he always felt more wizardly when he had it in his hands-Brom shouted a word of power and thrust out his fist, springing his fingers open as his arm became fully extended. Though the tiercel's weight hampered him, the gesture nonetheless adhered to the proper form. Shafts of scarlet light leaped from his fingertips, and, their trajectories diverging, struck five of the crossbowmen. Two of the bullies fell from their windows and slammed down on the ground. The others were thrown backward out of sight.

Brom needed the materials tucked away in his pockets to work most of the rest of his spells, and he couldn't take them out, juggle the hawk, and control the agitated palfrey at the same time. He abruptly remembered Master Cletus explaining that if he unhooded the tiercel and flipped his arm, the bird would fly. He hastily released it to go wherever it wanted, and then one of the surviving crossbowmen shot his mare in the head.

The animal dropped. Brom frantically kicked free of the stirrups, and, thanks more to luck than athleticism, a quality of which he had little, flung himself clear of the falling carcass.

Even though the greater portion of his body lacked grace, his hands were deft enough. Even as he floundered in the cold, much-trodden snow, he snatched a wisp of cobweb from a pocket, recited an incantation, and used the gossamer to trace a mystic symbol on the air.

A thick swatch of meshed gray cables materialized across the row of windows from which attackers were still shooting. Suddenly trapped amid the sticky strands, the crossbowmen struggled vainly to extricate themselves, then called to the mage on the roof for help.

Ah yes, thought Brom, his teeth bared in a fierce grin that would have amazed any acquaintance who had never seen him in the heat of battle, our friend on the roof. He glanced about, making sure he was in no immediate danger from any of the enemy swordsmen, then began sending the masked wizard a little token of his regard. He snatched out a tiny ball composed of sulfur and guano, murmured a couplet, and tossed the orb into the air. The ball hurtled up at the spellcaster in blue, and as it did so, swelled in size and burst into crackling yellow flame, so it resembled a missile of blazing naphtha hurled from a catapult.

Brom expected that the other mage would die in the impending blast, but the detonation never happened. Evidently the masked man had warded himself with some manner of defensive enchantment, for the burning missile winked out of existence a yard or so before it struck its target. Brom couldn't be sure at such a distance, but he thought he saw the shadow creature leer at him.

It seemed to Tamlin that with the crossbowmen out of commission, the enemy was having a harder time of it. Then Tamlin saw his bodyguard. His black braid streaming out behind him, revealing the ugly scar on his neck, Vox rode among the bravos like an avenging fury. His bastard sword flashed up and down, up and down, and it seemed that every time it descended, a foeman perished. His huge mount was scarcely less formidable, kicking, biting, and trampling the fallen beneath its hooves.

Escevar lacked the advantage of a trained war-horse, but he was a skilled rider, and evidently his chestnut palfrey was game, for its master seemed to have no difficulty guiding it amongst the bravos. Whooping as if the fight were nothing more than some sort of roughhousing game, the redhead hacked and slashed with a will, and while he was scarcely the warrior Vox was, something, his sheer audacity perhaps, had thus far kept him safe from harm.

After a futile attempt at slaying the masked wizard, Brom too had turned his attention to neutralizing the attackers on the ground, blinding some with a handful of sparkling golden powder and choking others with a vile-smelling greenish vapor. Tamlin suspected that if one of the bravos could only close with Brom, he could put an end to the unarmed mage and his troublesome spells in a trice, but so far, none of them had managed it.