Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [14]
The outlaws chose their spots, flopped down to kneel in the snows, and dug in. Snow streamed around and past them, and as they settled into stillness, it cloaked them in concealing whiteness, making them mere lumps and billows of snow in the storm.
"Gods damn all wizards!" The voice, borne by the winds, seemed startlingly close.
So did the reply. "None o' that. Ye know better than such talk."
"I might. My frozen feet don't. They'd much prefer to be next to a crackling fire, back in-"
"All of our feet'd rather be there. They will be, gods willing, soon enough. Swording outlaws'll warm ye, if ye're sharp-eyed enough to find any. Now belt up!"
"Perhaps," Elminster commented calmly, knowing the wind would sweep his words behind him, away from the armsmen, "the gods have other plans."
He could just hear an answering chuckle from off to his left: Sargeth. A moment more… Then he heard a sharp query, crunching snow, and the high whinny of a startled horse. The brothers had attacked. Arghel struck first, and then Baerold gave the call-from behind, if he could get there.
It came, a roar as much like the triumph-call of a wolf as Baerold could make it. Horses reared, cried out, and bucked in the deep snows on all sides. The patrol was on top of them.
Elminster rose up out of the snow like a vengeful ghost, sword drawn. To lie still could mean being ridden over and trampled. He saw a flicker of light through the whirling whiteness, as the nearest armsman drew steel.
A moment later, Engarl's awkwardly bobbing lance took the armsman in the throat. He choked, sobbed wetly around blood as the horse under him plunged on, and then he fell, head flopping, taking the lance with him. Elminster wasted no time on the dying man; another armsman off to the right in the swirling storm was trying to spur past him through the cleft.
El ran through the slithery snow as fast as he could, the way the outlaws had shown him, rocking comically from side to side to keep from slipping in the light drifts. All of the outlaws looked like drunken bears when they ran in deep snow. As slow as he was, the horse was even slower; its hooves were slipping in the potholes that marked the trail here, and it danced and stamped for footing, nearly tossing its rider.
The armsman saw Elminster and leaned forward to hack the outlaw. Elminster ducked back, let the blade sing past, and charged in at the man's leg, clawing with one hand as he blocked a return of the man's blade with the edge of his own.
The overbalanced man in armor howled in rising despair, waved his free arm wildly in a vain attempt to find a handhold in empty air-and crashed heavily from his saddle, bouncing in the snow at Elminster's feet. El drove his blade into the man's neck while the spray of snow still shielded the man's face, shuddered as the man spasmed under his steel, and then flopped back into the snow, limp. Four years ago he'd discovered he had no love of killing… and it hadn't grown much easier since.
Yet it was slay or be slain out here in the outlaw-haunted hills; Elminster sprang away from the man, glancing about in the confusion of swirling snows and muffled tumult of churning hooves.
There was a grunt, a roar of pain, and the heavy thudding of body and armor striking snow-cloaked ground off to the left, followed by a wail that ended abruptly. Elminster shuddered again, but kept his blade up warily. This was when outlaws who'd grown tired of their fellows sometimes decided to make a mistake, under the cloak of the storming snow, and bring down someone who was not an armsman of Athalantar.
El expected no such treachery from his companions… but only the gods knew the hearts of men. Like most in the Horn Hills-those who revered Helm Stoneblade and hated the mage-lords, at least-this band made no war on common folk. Not wanting to bring down the wrath of the wizards on farmers whose stable-straw sometimes served as warm beds and whose frozen and forgotten pot roots could be dug up by men near starvation, the outlaws avoided their neighbors