Robert Asprin - Wings of Omen

"Don't move, lady," Zip said harshly through gritted teeth. "Just call your watchdog off."

Kama gagged and struggled.

Gayle took a half-dozen running strides, then halted, frowning, sword drawn but fists upon his hips.

Zip did something to Kama that made her writhe, then stand up very straight. "Tell him," he said, "to back off. I just want to give your bedmates a message. Tell him!"

"Gayle!" Kama's voice was thick, gutteral; her chin, in the crook of Zip's muscular arm, quivered. "You heard him. Stand down."

The Stepson, uttering a stream of profanity built around a single word, hunkered down, his sword across his knees.

"That's better," Zip whispered. "Now, listen close. You too, tale-spinner: Roxane's got Sync. He asked me to set up a meeting, and I did that. But what happened after- that's no fault of mine. It might not be too late to save his soul, if any of you care."

"Where?" Kama croaked. "Where has she got him?"

"Down by the White Foal-she's got a place there, south of Ischade's. The vets will know where it is. But you tell 'em I told you-that it's not my fault. And that if they don't get to him fast, it'll be too late. Hit the place in the daytime-there's no undeads around then, just some watchmen and a few snakes. Understand, lady?"

Again, he tightened his arm and Kama's head snapped back. Then he pushed her from him and jumped high, grabbed the rope on the bales behind him, swung up and over, and was gone, as far as Hakiem could tell.

Hakiem reached Kama first, coughing and trembling on the dockside. He was trying to get her up, while she shrugged off his aid and tried to catch her breath, when he realized that the Stepson, Gayle, wasn't helping him.

Hakiem looked around just in time to see Gayle vault the bales after Zip, throwing-stars in hand, and let fly.

Kama saw it too, and screamed brokenly: "No! Gayle, no! He's trying to help us...!"

"Pork help!" Gayle called back, just before he disappeared. "I hit him. He won't get far-and if he does, the porker's done for, anyhow." Then Gayle too disappeared.

"Done for?" Hakiem repeated dumbly. "What does he mean, Kama?"

"The stars." Kama got to her knees, her lips puffy, her expression unreadable. When she saw that Hakiem didn't understand, she added: "Those stars are what the Bandarans call 'blossoms.' They're painted with poison." And, hands on her knees, bent over, she retched.

Hakiem was still digesting all of that when Kama straightened up, took a handful of sharp-edged metal from her bag, and started climbing the bales.

"Where are you going, woman? What about the message?"

"Message?" Kama looked down at him from atop the bales. "Right. Message. You take it-tell Strat. He'll know what to do."

"But-"

"Don't 'but' me, old man. That boy's dead if I can't rein Gayle in and get to him in time. We don't kill those who help us."

Like a doused flame, she was gone.

Strat would rather have been anywhere else than in the brush surrounding Roxane's Foalside haunt. He'd had experience with the Nisibisi witch before.

If he hadn't known that Hakiem was trustworthy, that Kama had disappeared, chasing after the street tough who'd brought the message, and that the success of the Stepson/3rd Commando mission into Sanctuary hinged on proving that Roxane couldn't send them running with their tails between their legs, he'd have passed on this particular frontal assault.

As it was, he had no choice.

And he had a good chance of succeeding: he'd asked Ischade to come alone-she had her own bones to pick with Roxane; he'd requisitioned enough incendiaries from Marc's illicit store to send all of Sanctuary up in flames. And his men knew how to use them. The trick was getting Sync out of there before firing up the witchy-roast.

Randal, their Tysian wizard, was sneaking around in mongoose form, right now, taking care of Roxane's snakes and reconnoitering the premises.

When they saw a hawk fly over, right to left, they'd light the horseshoe-shaped fire they'd prepared and rush the place: twenty mounted fighters ought to be able to do the job.

The horses were hooded, their blinders soaked with soda water. The men had bladders of it on their saddles, to wet bandanas if the smoke got too thick.

Ischade was still beside him, in a meditative pose, whatever magic she was going to field unrevealed.

She just waited, tiny and delicate and too pale in the light of day, her claret robe pulled tight about her like a child in her mother's clothes.

"You can still walk away from this," Strat assured her with a gallantry he didn't really feel. "It's not your fight."

"Is it not? It's yours, then?" Up rose Ischade, and suddenly she was terrifying, not small any longer, not the petite, sensual creature he'd brought here.

Her eyes were hellish and growing so large he thought he might be sucked inside them; he recalled their first encounter, long ago, on a dark slum street, when he'd been with Crit and they'd seen those eyes floating over a teenage corpse.

He found he couldn't answer; he just shook his head.

The power that was Ischade bared its teeth at him, the kill-fervor there as sharp as any Stepson's-or any night-mad wolf's. "I'll bring you your man. All of this"-Ischade spread a robed arm, and it was as if night split the day- "that you do is unnecessary. She owes me a person, and more. Wait here, you, and soon you'll see."

"Sure thing, Ischade." Strat found himself squatting down, digging in the sod with his brush-cutting knife. "I'll be right here."

He must have blinked, or looked away, or something- the next he knew, she was gone, and a hawk's baby-cry resounded overhead, and men set their fires and ran for their horses.

Vaulting up on his bay, he wondered if Ischade was right-if he didn't need to risk all this manpower, if magic- hers and Randal's-alone could win the day.

He didn't like to think that way; he was used to letting Crit do his tactical thinking for him; in times like this, a man who was half a Sacred Band pair sorely missed his partner.

And so, thinking more about who was absent than who was present, he urged his horse into a lope and sought the firegate, not realizing until a shape hovered in midair beside him that Randal, on a cloud-effigy of a horse, had drawn alongside.

"In her witching room, he is!" Randal shouted, his face white beneath its blanket of freckles. "And he's yet salvageable, if we can get him out. But it won't be easy- he's totally entranced. I couldn't rouse him in my mongoose form. I'll seek my power globe now and do my best. Fare well, Straton! May the Writ protect us all!"

And his nonhorse thundered away on unhooves.

Craziest damn way to run a war! Strat had come back to Sanctuary to get away from just this sort of thing.

The firewall, around him hot and snapping, gave matters the immediacy of battle, the plain-and-simple truth of life and death.

The fire was just a little out of control, and his horse had to leap hot flames. Within, sod was beginning to smoke and combust, sparks flew, men yelled and squirted water on themselves and their mounts as they let fly with flaming arrows and urged skittish horses toward Roxane's front door.

Strat's plan was to ride roughshod right into Roxane's house, snatch Sync, and get out before she could bewitch them.

It wasn't a plan such as his partner might have made, and he was aware that he might rescue one soldier only to lose another-or others-to Roxane, but he had to do something.

Just as he'd finally convinced his horse of this, and was ready to lead his reformed group up her smoking stairs, an apparition appeared in the doorway: Ischade stood there, with Sync, his arm over her shoulder, and they walked calmly out onto the veranda and down the steps, onto a lawn spurting sparks and young flames.