Amber and Iron - Margaret Weis [118]
He was in the act of pointing his finger at the Beloved, ready to drop them like he’d dropped that minotaur, when he remembered suddenly his magic wouldn’t work against them. His heart, which had been in his shoes, now scrambled up his innards to seize him by the throat and shake him.
Nightshade had lost precious fleeing time with his almost spell-casting. He made up for it by whipping around and running for all he was worth—and then some.
“Atta, come!” he gasped, and the dog dashed after him.
Nightshade was good at sprinting; he’d had lots of practice outrunning sheriffs, angry housewives, furious farmers, and irate merchants. His sudden burst of speed caught the Beloved off-guard, and he outdistanced them for a bit, but he was already tired from slogging through sand and cutting his hands on boulders. His sprint didn’t have any staying power. His strength began to flag. The ruts in the road and the occasional large clumps of dry weeds, grass, and his pork-slick boots didn’t help.
The Beloved, meanwhile, had picked up speed. Being dead, they could run all month if they wanted to, while Nightshade figured he was good for just a few more moments. He didn’t dare take time to look back, but he didn’t need to—he could hear harsh breathing and thudding footfalls, and he knew they were catching up.
Atta was barking furiously, half-running after Nightshade and half-turning around to threaten the Beloved.
Nightshade’s breath began coming in painful, ragged gasps. His feet lurched and stumbled over the uneven ground. He was about done for.
One of the Beloved seized the kender’s flapping shirttail. Nightshade gave a wrench, trying to free himself, but ended up tumbling head-long into a large patch of weeds. He was ready to fight for his life, when suddenly he was in the middle of what could only be described as an explosion of grasshoppers.
Clouds of the flying, jumping insects whirred into the air. They had been living in the weed patch, and they were furious at being thus rudely disturbed. Grasshoppers were in Nightshade’s eyes, up his nose and crawling down his neck and into his pants. He rolled away from the weed patch, swatting, slapping and squirming. Atta was racing about in circles, snapping and biting at the insects. Nightshade frantically brushed several out of his eyes and then saw, to his astonishment, the hoppers had the Beloved under assault.
The two men were literally crawling with insects. Grasshoppers clung to every part of them. The grasshoppers were inside their mouths and swarming around their eyes and clogging up their nostrils. The buzzing, frantic insects crawled through their hair and festooned their arms and covered their legs, and still more grasshoppers were converging on the Beloved, flying up with angry, whirring sounds from the weeds all along the side the road.
The Beloved flailed their arms and did their own hopping as they fought to drive off the insects but, the more they fought, the more the grasshoppers seemed to take offense and attack them in a frenzy.
The grasshoppers that had been annoying Nightshade seemed to realize they were missing out on all the sport, for they buzzed off to join their fellows. Within moments, the Beloved were lost to sight, trapped inside a whirling cloudburst of insects.
“Golly!” said Nightshade in awe, and then he added, speaking to Atta, “Now’s our chance! Run for it!”
He had one more little burst of energy left in him, and he put his head down, pumped his feet, and went haring off down the road.
He was running, running, running, not watching where he was going, and Atta was panting along beside him when he ran headlong into something—blam!
The kender bounced off and went head over heels to land on his back on the road. Shaking his head groggily, he looked up.
“Golly,” said Nightshade again.
“I am sorry, friend,” said the monk, and he reached down a solicitous hand to assist Nightshade to his feet. “I should have been watching where I was going.”
The monk looked at Nightshade,