Roland Green: The Wayward Knights

They were not. But four arrows apiece still did enough work to earn victory in moments. By the time Gerik's people had shot that many, they had killed, wounded, or dismounted a good half of their opponents. At least ten had died before they could have fully realized they were in danger.

The quivers were half-empty when a sell-sword Gerik recognized as one of the horse-holders ran out of the trees. He had an arrow through his forearm, and ran first to Bertsa Wylum, who pointed at Gerik.

The man came up to Gerik and said bluntly, "We're for it, young lord. They had a second band behind us. The kender sprang that trap, but they've ridden off."

"Are the horses safe?" Gerik asked, and felt a fool the next moment, knowing he should have asked about the kender.

"Aye. The other fellows were too hot to be off on the trail of our folk, when they knew they'd been heard."

Gerik slammed his fist against a tree. From behind her own tree, Wylum shot another arrow, then called, "Hoy, good sir. Don't break your sword hand. We're not even finished with these fellows yet, let alone chasing down the others."

Finishing the House Dirivan band at Forge Vale proved swifter than Gerik had dared hope. A few more arrows were all it took to start the men holding up swords hilt-first or unstringing their bows. Bertsa Wylum led five of her band down, to collect weapons, take oaths of neutrality from those sell-swords willing to swear, and bind those of the House Dirivan fighters who would not.

Wylum returned, wearing a grim smile and carrying an armful of captured weapons. "I left five daggers and a sword for the lot of them. If any of them change their minds, it won't do them much good until they rearm."

"They'll still be at our backs," Gerik said. In his mind a single dark thought thudded like a drum.

The enemy was between him and Ellysta. They would not have been if he had been alert or listened to Elderdrake.

"Perhaps, but a long way off and with no horses," Wylum said. "We're taking all the ones fit to ride to mount more of our people. Besides, if they break the oath of neutrality, they're dead meat if we see them again today, and no sell-sword company will have them."

"I suppose that's something."

"It's the whole cursed band off House Dirivan's roster, without our having to kill them all," Wylum snapped. "That could be half the battle right there."

She looked at Gerik sideways, then started to tousle his hair. She snatched her hand back when he all but bared his teeth at her.

"All right," she growled. "Have it your way. But don't fret yourself into uselessness. You've made one mistake today, but it's one every captain makes a few times. A nice fat target is hard to resist."

She was right, and too much worrying would be a second, less forgivable mistake. But Bertsa Wylum hadn't held Ellysta during her mercifully-few nightmares.

Gerik drew a deep breath and said, "Then let's go take another. Is anyone hurt past riding, but able to get about?"

"Two."

"Good. Let them find the kender's bodies and hide them. Everyone else, mount up."

Whatever Lujimar had done or left undone, he took Lady Revella at her word. He turned, lifted his staff, pointed it at the chamber's ceiling, and bellowed what might have been words.

He bellowed them loud enough to make Pirvan clap his hands over his ears. The bellow was a hush, though, compared to the sound of the rock splitting apart, then bulging and finally erupting outward.

Wind blew out of nowhere, into the chamber, and out through the ship-sized hole in the roof. It carried with it the charred remnants of web, spiders, and victims, half-melted weapons and unidentifiable bits of debris, enough ashes to turn the air black for a moment, and anything that anyone had set down on the floor and not retrieved or tied down.

Revella Laschaar might have gone with the wreckage, if her two minotaur bearers had not come up and each taken a firm grip on one arm. Pirvan saw her try to shake them off once, then seemingly resign herself to their help.

A few bits of rock, too heavy for the wind or the spells to lift, fell into the chamber, but struck no one. When the wind finally died, they could breathe in the chamber without feeling that they would choke to death in the next moment.

"Let us be off," Lujimar said, the moment even a minotaur's voice could be heard by half-deafened ears. "Wilthur is not far. Lady Revella, stand well behind me hereafter. This battle-"

"This battle needs both of us, and you know it, bull-brained oaf," Revella snapped. "I cannot-"

Zeskuk gave a wordless bellow, then shouted, "If you can't offer more than insults, old woman, then save your breath!"

"Yessss," a voice said. It was a voice that could not have belonged to anybody, even the giant serpent it suggested. It was a voice from beyond any realm where life had bodies; from everywhere and nowhere.

From Wilthur the Brown, Pirvan judged-and then saw his judgment confirmed by the looks on the magicworkers' faces. Human and minotaur both looked as if they faced having a tooth pulled with no healer's sleep spell or even a brimming cup of dwarf spirits to ease the pain.

In the next moment, Pirvan saw Lady Revella's face contort with-surprise? Horror? Something for which there was not a word? He did not know. He only saw her contorted face, the unchangeable impassivity of Lujimar's, and the sudden snap of the minotaur priest's arm as he threw his staff like a spear to the far end of the chamber.

Rock crashed. A throat neither human nor animal gave forth a scream that some who heard it would have given years of life to forget. The staff returned, wound like a vine or a constricting snake around a slight form in a faded brown robe.

The figure's face was hidden at first, inside the hood of the robe. Then the wind of the staff's passage tore the hood back. Pirvan was not the only seasoned warrior who swayed or cried out at the sight of what Wilthur had become. Some fainted outright.

Lujimar's staff carried its prey all the way back to its master. He reached for the free end, Wilthur spat in his face, and those who saw Lujimar swore that his eyes turned red.

Then the wind from nowhere blew again. This time it actually knocked minotaurs off their feet and flung humans against stone walls hard enough to crack bones. Two fighters who struck headfirst would have died had they not been wearing helmets.

Pirvan himself forgot knightly dignity and clung desperately to an outcropping of stone that he hoped was strong enough to save him. He would have been more ashamed had he not seen Zeskuk curling himself into a ball of hide and armor-except for one arm that clutched a human warrior's ankle to keep him from taking flight.

Curled up as he was, however, Zeskuk could not see what Pirvan was doing. He saw Lujimar and his opponent rise from the floor, blue fire crackling around them as Wilthur tried to fight free of the staff. He saw them soar toward the hole in the chamber ceiling, now moving faster than the wind itself. He saw them vanish skyward. In the same moment, he felt the rock under his feet quiver, almost innocently, like a stout tavern table against which a minotaur has quite innocently bumped.

The word "innocent," however, had no meaning in this place. Not now.

From elsewhere on Suivinari Island, and from the fleets offshore, it seemed that the Smoker had started to erupt. First stones spewed outward, to fall as the dead birds had, but with rather more impact where they landed. Man or minotaur needed both hands and perhaps one foot, to count those killed or maimed by the falling stones.

Then, moments later, what seemed to be a shooting star soared from the flank of the mountain. It leaped upward toward the zenith, and it blazed a shade of blue that no one had ever seen, or at least would admit to remembering.