Hand of Fire - Ed Greenwood [124]
The guard glared at the mage with the knife and bellowed, "Attack! Voldovaaaan!"
The Red Wizard sprang back, snapped out a hasty incantation as the guard's sword rang out, and was gone, back beside his own wagon before he'd even had time to curse. He made up for that now.
"Beshaba spit on all!" he roared, charging up its steps and inside. The camp was in an uproar, the guard couldn't have failed to recognize him. The thud of pounding, running feet was rising in his ears already. He had to get his spellbooks and begone, before – A sword slashed open the cloth across the wagon windows, and a furious voice shouted, "There he is!"
Men in the worn leather and rusty chain of caravan guards came boiling through the mouth of the wagon, and the Red Wizard turned with a snarl on his lips and a wand in his hand and gave them death.
The front of the wagon burst forth in a bright flood of flame and broken bodies that brought Arauntar running, and other men, too, with drawn swords in their hands. "Magic!" someone shouted. "Always bloody magic!"
Another merchant who was also a wizard saw his chance and hurled lightning, but Arauntar wore more leather than steel, and one of Voldovan's recent hires took the crackling bolt instead. That guard staggered, clawed the air, and went over on his back, outlined in spitting blue-white sparks.
The Zhentarim cursed and threw up his hands to cast another spell, but Arauntar ducked behind a snorting group of hobbled, frightened horses, and bellowed,
"Guards! To me! That wagon – have the man out of it, and down dead! 'Ware spells!"
Men were shouting all over the camp now, and running with swords and daggers out. Shandril Shessair came to the mouth of Voldovan's wagon white to the lips and fire-eyed in fury.
Another Zhentarim hurled a fireball at her from his own wagon. Shandril saw the tiny streak of flame hurtling toward her and smashed it back with spellfire.
A great burst of flame shot up into the night where spell and spellfire met, spitting streamers in all directions like a Lantanna firework, and billowed up in a plume of brilliance that lit the tilted field as bright as day.
In its radiance the Red Wizard could be seen fleeing the smoldering wreck of his wagon, trotting away downslope.
Shandril set her lips in a thin line and sent him spellfire.
In all the shouting and waving of blades, no one saw a thin cloud, like a cloak of shadows, descending silently out of the night, but everyone noticed when the plume of flame suddenly went dark and dwindled. No eye failed to see when something dimmed the spellfire that was clawing at a screaming Thayan.
Darkness roiled silently, as if in pain, spellflames whirling away in all directions. Shandril's streamer of spellfire faded, and shrank back.
Shandril's eyes widened in astonishment as she watched, and from the Zhent's wagon came a harsh laugh and another spell.
Lightning spat across the trampled sward, seeking the life of Shandril Shessair, but the shadow swooped, and the bolt darkened, sank, and died… as if something had devoured it.
"Get to that god-rotting wagon!" Arauntar roared, and the Zhentarim burst out of his door and fled away across the field, just as the Red Wizard had.
Arauntar cursed, flung his sword, and watched it bounce far short. The wizard looked back and laughed. He was still laughing as he came to a crashing halt with Beldimarr's blade through him, and the fiercely grinning Harper at the other end of it.
"Ho!" he called, as the dying wizard gurgled and slid down his dark, wet steel, clawing vainly at it, "I don't know what's drinking magic, but 'tis a night for sword-swingers at last! Where's that murdering mage?"
"Gone that way!" Arauntar called, pointing with his dagger, as he came running to scoop up his sword.
"You go after him, an' I'll see to the lass!"
All around them, the fighting was getting personal and bloody. Some merchants had fear or temper