Robert Asprin - Wartorn - Resurrection

It couldn't be true. It couldn't.

With a great effort, Raven shoved the entire matter out of her mind. She looked down, seeing a big, black bug crawling across the canvas floor of her tent. She stared hard at it, concentrating. A moment later it burst into a little ball of fire.

SOON ENOUGH, GENERAL Weisel did call for her. She approached him where he stood outside his tent and made her report. He didn't seem too bothered by the missing scout party.

When he asked if something else was troubling her, Raven opted from among her choices to tell him about the incident with the portals. Weisel listened, patiently.

Yet all the while Raven felt a budding excitement. She tried to repress it, but being so near the general was inflaming. She felt her breath quickening. What would it be like, she wondered, to touch him?

Then something truly astonishing happened. After General Weisel ordered his aide to assemble the senior staff officers, he lifted a hand and brushed her cheek. It felt as if sparks followed the path his fingertips had traced. Raven's face heated, flushing. She felt faint.

Luckily, she regained herself as the officers gathered, along with a Far Speak wizard, one who hadn't been at the campfire earlier. Weisel was about to give the order that would be relayed to the scouts. The portals were going to be opened. Weisel had told Raven what might follow: it would surely be spectacular.

A new stage of this war was set to begin but all Raven could think of was the thrill, very strong now, of being in the general's presence.

Then, something was wrong.

Raven peered, frowning, at Weisel. The general suddenly looked like he was ... struggling. She couldn't explain it, but she knew in a flash that something had happened to him.

Weisel was trying to move his lips. None of the other officers was yet aware that something was wrong. Raven felt a surge of protectiveness. Whatever was happening to the General, she had to help.

She lunged toward him. As she did, she saw a small, fast movement out of the corner of her eye,

something passing overhead and falling earthward. Still reaching out toward the general, she was suddenly shoved very hard. She landed face first, the impact knocking the air out of her lungs.

Who had done this? But she ignored the thought. It wasn't important. She had to reach Weisel. She scrambled back onto her feet. Only, she couldn't manage it. Her legs kicked uselessly behind her. Her hands dug at the ground, trying to leverage her weight, but it was no good. Her limbs weren't doing what they should. She could barely move her right arm at all.

Something was very wrong indeed.

Time appeared to be slowing, in some impossible way. She could feel her heart beating, but it was an eternity between the beats. She watched a boot step near her out-stretched hand. The dusty leather crinkled as the boot's owner put weight onto it.

Godsdamnit! Raven tried again to stand, her fingers clawing at the dirt now. The place where she had been shoved was at the base of her neck, just above her right shoulder. When she tried to flex that shoulder it wouldn't move right. There was no pain, but she was beginning to think there ought to be. It felt like something was lodged there.

In the distance, voices were rising in an agitated clamor. She saw more booted feet going by, but no one stopped for her. Everything remained eerily slow. She had heard that time could warp itself like this in moments of mortal jeopardy.

Where was General Weisel?

The commotion grew but Raven realized it wasn't in the distance at all. It was going on all around her. She felt cold suddenly, very cold. The light seemed to be fading, as if dusk had come all at once. She strained to make out individual voices from the babble around her.

"Crossbow bolt!"

"An assassin!"

Her struggling limbs were even weaker now than they'd been just an instant ago. She could barely lift her head to keep her face out of the dirt.

"The girl, the young magician—she stepped in front of it!"

"She saved the general!"

Her dimming thoughts were becoming a jumble, and she knew she was ebbing toward something that might be unconsciousness, or might be something more drastic. Even so, she heard and understood that last shouted comment, and it provided the last warmth she would probably ever know.

She found, in the strange stretching of time, that she had the time to reflect on her life. She saw herself as a frightened and awkward child, a disappointment to her mother. She saw herself at the Academy, determined to become the best wizard she could be.

It had all led to this. She liked herself much more as she was now, an adult, with important responsibilities.

She had saved the general. She had stepped in front of the bolt of a crossbow, fired either by accident or intentionally. He would continue to expand the boundaries of the Felk Empire, until all the Isthmus was under one rule. It was an admirable cause. It was the grand vision of Lord Matokin, her father. She wondered if he had ever suspected, for even an instant, that she was his daughter. Maybe her mother would get word to him some day. Maybe he would know, and be proud of her sacrifice.

She had saved Weisel, who had helped to make her own life worthwhile. That made her sacrifice truly meaningful.

Still, she wondered why someone didn't help her. Why didn't... why didn't Weisel pick her up from the ground, hold her, comfort her? She was so cold now.

She found the time for one last coherent thought. Raven wondered if Weisel had given the signal to open the portals and let the dead loose into this world.