Jim Butcher - Captain's Fury

"Yes, dear." Bernard sighed, a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth. "You were right."

Amara peered at the falling sun. "I want to hit them and take two of their horses. Mounted, in the dark, we can get farther."

"And the horses will know their way back to their stables," Bernard said. He glanced toward the First Lord's stretcher. "He can't ride. And in the dark, on this terrain, there's no way we can sling the stretcher between our mounts."

"We don't need to," Amara said. "Remember how you pulled me, back at Second Calderon?"

Bernard grinned suddenly. Amara had been too weary for full flight, and the skies had been heavily patrolled by the enemy. To catch a group of men they'd been pursuing, he'd used his intimate knowledge of the valley's furies to travel on a ripple of moving earth, a feat that only someone with such knowledge could manage. Amara could never have kept the pace, and so she had crafted a cushion of air to lift her from the ground and had held on to a tether fastened to Bernards belt.

"Might work," he said. "But it will be loud."

"Not as much as you'd think. I can suppress some of it."

"How long can you sustain it?" Bernard asked.

"As long as I need to."

Horns sounded again, upslope, and were answered distantly from behind them. This time, Amara actually caught a flash of movement in the trees.

"All right," she said quietly. "This is what I want to do."

The first rider to come plunging down the trail never had a chance. Amara dropped her veil when he was twenty feet away, and by the time he saw Bernard standing with his great bow drawn tight, it was too late for him to avoid the shot. The Count of Calderon's arrow took him in the bridge of his nose and lifted him from the back of his horse as if struck with a lance. A flash of silver collar proclaimed the man one of the Immortals.

The second rider shouted and lifted his spear, but could do no more before Amara settled a veil around him , blotting him from sight and half-blinding him. The man hesitated, slowing, and the horse of the rider immediately behind him crashed into him, screaming in sudden fear at the scent of hot blood.

Horses and men went sprawling, and the equine screams abruptly rose in pitch and volume. Animals bucked and thrashed in pure panic, under Bernards earthcrafting, sending some of the Immortals sprawling to the ground while others clung to their inexplicably hysterical mounts and were carried in every direction.

Bernard wasted no time. A dismounted Immortal rose, weapon in hand, his eyes gleaming with exaltation as he turned toward his prey. Another arrow slammed into his head, felling him instantly. A third Immortal raised a circular steel shield to protect his face as he charged. Bernard shot him through the thigh, breaking the bone that supported it, and the Immortal went down in a sprawl. Before he could recover, Bernard put a second arrow through his neck in a fountain of gore. The man staggered to his feet despite the horrible wounds, took two wobbling steps forward, and then sank to the earth and was still.

Amara did not dare close with the remaining Immortal on the ground. She was not entirely unskilled at swordplay, but she was no match for one of Kalare's manufactured madmen and doubted she could kill him without being slain or badly injured herself.

So with a flick of her hand, she dropped the veil that was hampering him and sent Cirrus surging around the Immortal's face and head to cut off his air.

The man staggered forward, sword raised, and Amara kept her own weapon in hand-but she circled away from him nimbly, carefully keeping the distance between them open. The Immortal's face turned pink. Then red. His steps began to falter. His face went purple. At the last, his lips were blue, his chest heaving desperately. Amara could feel him, through Cirrus, struggling vainly to draw a breath.

Then he simply dropped, eyes staring sightlessly, and struggled to breathe no more.

Amara stared at him blankly for a moment.

Then she retched onto the ground in front of her.

She remained there, head bowed forward, hands resting on her knees, and tried to get herself under control.

Bernard's hand touched her shoulder.

"I've…" she gasped. "I've never… I mean, I learned how, but I've never… I thought he would black out, and I could let him go, but he just kept fighting …"

His fingers tightened on her arm, gentle.

"Bloody crows," she whispered. "That's an ugly way to kill a man."

Bernard withdrew his hand and offered her his water flask. "Love," he said quietly. "Time."

The hunting horns behind them sounded again.

Amara squeezed her eyes shut, nodded once, and straightened. She took the flask, washed the horrible taste out of her mouth, and then drank. As she did, Bernard moved slowly forward, toward the two horses he'd excluded from his crafting-the two lead horses, who were presumably the fastest of the group. Bernard spoke gently, and once again Amara felt the slow, steady pulse of a soothing earthcrafting. Within a minute, he had the reins of both animals, and led them to her.

Amara mounted up while Bernard drew' Gaius's stretcher out of its concealment, then tied one end of a line to it, the other to the saddle of Amara's mount.

Amara turned, focusing on the stretcher, murmuring wordlessly as she willed Cirrus to lift it from the ground. Within seconds, a small whirlwind had gathered beneath Gaius's stretcher, lifting it perhaps eighteen inches above the earth.

This time Bernard took the lead, veiling them as they rode through the darkening wood. Amara followed, dragging the stretcher on its miniature cyclone behind them to wipe away whatever trail they left behind. It wouldn't prevent Kalarus's men from tracking them, but it would conceal their numbers and the pace they set, denying the enemy information that might help them make intelligent choices in the pursuit. It would also force them to slow down if they wanted to keep the trail, especially after night fell.

Shadows began to fall as Bernard led the horses north, off the trail and into the thickening forest. He turned east, toward the mountains, in a gradual arc, and all the while the horns of the Immortals sounded in the gloom around them.

Evening turned to dusk turned to twilight. Terrain that had been difficult in dim light became treacherous in the dark, and Bernard slowed them down, allowing the horses to pick their way forward. The night began to turn cold. The strain of all the travel, of the run, of her ongoing furycraft to support the stretcher began to tell on Amara, and she found herself shuddering with cold and exhaustion.

She very badly wanted to sleep. She very badly wanted to fall off the horse and lie still. But she clung grimly to the saddle and stayed upright for what felt like a week. Then a month. Then a year.

And then the horses emerged from the pines, and Bernard let out a grunt of satisfaction.

Amara lifted her eyes. In the starlight, she could see very little, despite the hours her eyes had been given to adjust. It was as if half the stars were simply blotted away-or, she realized, overcast with clouds. She wearily hoped that it wasn't about to start raining, too.

Then she realized what she was looking at, and her heart leapt.

The Kalare Mountains. They rose above them in silent, stark majesty, their enormous peaks casting a shadow over half the starry sky.

Bernard murmured in the darkness, "There's not enough flora for me to veil us along that trail. From here on out, if we're seen, we're out of options. You want to do this fast or slow?"

Amara's teeth were chattering, but she managed to say, "Fast. I'm almost done."

Bernard took a deep breath, nodded once, and said, "Here we go."

Then he kicked his weary horse forward into a listless canter, and Amara followed suit. They hurried up the trail in the dark, and Amara began to feel nervous again. It took her several moments, until they were riding over a level patch of trail that must have been the first pass through the mountains, to realize why.