Лайон Спрэг Де Камп Array - The Incomplete Enchanter

They reached a stretch of drier ground where the glades expanded to continuous meadow and the forest shrank to clumps of trees. They left one of these clumps and were swishing through the long grass, when a leathery rustle made them look up.

Overhead swooped a nightmarish reptile the size of an observation plane. It had two legs and a pair of huge bat-wings. On its back rode Busyrane, all clad in armour, but his face, which was smiling benignly. «Well met, dear friends!» he called down. «What a pleasing thought! Both at once!»

Twunk! went Belphebe’s bow. The arrow soared through one wing membrane. The beast hissed a little and banked for a turn.

«Into the woods!» cried Belphebe and set the example. «The wivern cannot fly among the trees.»

«What did you call it? Looks like some kind of a long-trailed pterodactyl to me.» Shea craned his neck as the sinister shadow wove to and fro above the leaves.

Belphebe led the way to the opposite side of the grove. When Busyrane circled above the segment away from them, they dashed across the open space and into the next clump. A shrill hiss behind and above warned them that they had been spotted.

They worked their way through this grove. From under the trees they could see Busyrane silhouetted against the sky, while he couldn’t see them.

«Now!» said Belphebe, and ran like an antelope through the long grass. Shea pounded after. This was a longer run than the first, a hundred yards or more. Halfway across he heard the hiss of cloven air behind and drove himself for all his strained lungs were worth. The shadow of the monster unblurred in front of him. It was too far, too far — and then he was under the friendly trees. He caught a glimpse of the reptile, horribly close, pulling up in a stall to avoid the branches.

Shea leaned against a trunk, puffing. «How much more of this is there?»

Belphebe’s face had a frown. «Woe’s me; I fear this forest thins ere it thickens. But let’s see.»

They worked round the edges of the grove, but it was small, and the distance to all others, but the one they had come from, prohibitively great.

«Looks like we have to go back,» said Shea.

«Aye. I like not that. Assuredly he will not have pursued us alone.»

«True for you. I think I see something there.» He pointed to a group of distant figures, pink in the rising sun.

Belphebe gave a little squeak of dismay. «Alack, now we are undone, for they are a numerous company. If we stay, they surround us. If we flee, Busyrane follows on that grim mount — What are you doing?»

Shea had gotten out his knife and was whittling the base of a tall sapling. He replied: «You’ll see. This worked once and ought to again. You’re good at tree climbing; see if you can find a bird’s nest. I need a fistful of feathers.»

She went, puzzled but obedient. When she returned with the feathers, Shea was rigging up a contraption of sapling trunk and twigs, tied together with ivy vine. He hoped it wasn’t poison ivy. It bore some resemblance to an enormous broom. As Shea lashed a couple of crosspieces to the stick he explained: «The other one I made a single-seater. This’ll have to carry tandem. Let’s see the feathers, kid.»

He tossed one aloft, repeating the dimly remembered spell he had used once before, and then shoved it in among the twigs.

«Now,» he said, «I’m the pilot and you’re the gunner. Get astride here. Think you can handle your bow while riding this thing?»

«What will it do?» she asked, looking at Shea with new respect.

«We’re going up to tackle Busyrane in his own element. Say, look at that mob! We better get going!» As the pursuers came nearer, thrashing the brushes of the near-by groves in their hunt, Shea could see that they were a fine collection of monsters: men with animal heads, horrors with three or four arms, bodies and faces rearing from the legless bottoms of snakes.

They straddled the broom. Shea chanted:

«By oak, ash, and yew,

The high air through,

To slay this vile caitiff,

Fly swiftly and true!»

The broom started with a rush, up a long slant. As it shot out of the grove and over the heads of the nearest of the pursuit, they broke into a chorus of shouts, barks, roars, meows, screams, hisses, bellows, chirps, squawks, snarls, brays, growls and whinnies. The effect was astounding.

But Shea’s mind was occupied. He was pleased to observe that this homemade broom seemed fairly steady though slower than the one he had hexed in the land of Scandinavian myth. He remembered vaguely that in aerial dogfighting the first step is to gain an advantage in altitude.

Up they went in a spiral. Busyrane came into view on his wivern, bearing towards them. The enchanter had his sword out, but as the wivern climbed after them Shea was relieved to see that he was gaining.

A couple of hundred feet above the enemy he swung the broom around. Over his shoulder he said; «Get ready; we’re going to dive on them.» Then he noticed that Bephebe was gripping the stick with both hands, her knuckles white.

«Ever been off the ground before?» he asked.

«N-nay. Oh, Squire Harold, this is a new and very fearsome thing. When I look down —» She shuddered and blinked.

«Don’t let a little acrophobia throw you. Look at your target, not the ground.»

«I essay.»

«Good girl!» Shea nosed the broom down. The wivern glared up and opened its fanged jaws He aimed straight for the red-lined maw. At the last minute he swerved aside; heard the jaws clomp vainly and the bowstring snap.

«Missed,» said Belphebe. She was looking positively green under her freckles. Shea, no roller-coaster addict, guessed how she felt.

«Steady,» he said, nosing up and then dodging as the wivern flapped towards them with surprising speed. «We’ll try a little shallower dive.»

She came down again. The wivern turned, too. Shea didn’t bank far enough, and he was almost swept into the jaws by the centrifugal force of his own turn. They went clomp a yard from the tail of the bottom «Whew,» said Shea on the climb. «Hit anything?»

«Busyrane, but it hurt him not. He bears armour of proof and belike some magic garment as well.»

«Try to wing the wivern, then.» They shot past the beast, well beyond reach of the scaly neck. Twunk! An arrow fixed itself among the plates behind the head. But the wivern, appearing unhurt, put on another burst of speed and Shea barely climbed over its rush, with Busyrane yelling beneath him.

Belphebe had her acrophobia under control now. She leaned over and let go three more arrows in rapid succession. One bounced off the reptile’s back plates. One went through a wing membrane. The third stuck in its tail. None of them bothered it.

«I know,» said Shea. «We aren’t penetrating its armour at this range. Hold on; I’m going to try something.»

They climbed. When they had good altitude, Shea dove past the wivern. It snapped at them, missed, and dived in pursuit.

The wind whistled in Shea’s ears and blurred his vision.

Forest and glade opened out below; little dots expanded to the pursuers on foot. Shea glanced back; the wivern hung in space behind, its wings half furled. He levelled out, then jerked the broom’s nose up sharply. The universe did a colossal somersault and they straightened away behind the wivern. In the seconds the loop had taken, the beast had lost sight of them. Shea nosed down and they glided in under the right wing, so close they could feel the air go fuff with the wing beat.

Shea got one glimpse of Busyrane’s astonished face before the wing hid it. The scale skin pulsed over the immense flying muscles for one beat. «Now!» he barked.

Twunk! Twunk! Belphebe had drawn the bow hard home, and the arrows tore into the beast’s brisket.