Hand of Fire - Ed Greenwood [38]
Shandril snatched at them, grabbing her rail again just in time to avoid being plucked from her perch by the one rein she had managed to snag – then realized it was futile. The horses were screaming and plunging in terror, and she'd have to be stronger and heavier than they to haul back their heads and be noticed at all. They were on a wild ride that wouldn't end until they smashed into something, tipped over, or the horses calmed, fell, or faltered in exhaustion.
"Shandril!" Thorst shouted. "Help me!"
Ruined shoulder, jouncing ride, and all, the guard was still trying to get his bowgun loaded and aimed at something – and something else was banging against his knee: a full-sized crossbow that he'd unstrapped from its stowage but now lacked the strength to do anything with. Its windlass was clinking wildly in his lap as he struggled with his bowgun, teeth clenched in pain.
Shandril bent to help him and nearly pitched face first onto the churning hooves of the horses. Clawing at the perch and the rails and Thorst for support, she sat down hastily beside the drover.
There were shoulder-straps, she saw now – and not surprisingly, Thorst, like every other drover Shandril could remember seeing, disdained their use. Getting one arm through a strap, she threw her other around Thorst's shoulders and cradled him, steadying him as he gasped and whimpered and fought with the bow.
Sweat was running down his pale face in streams, and his eyes stared around at the world wildly, barely seeing her.
A lance tip bit into wood right beside Thorst's head, and Shandril glimpsed the rider who'd put it there reeling in his saddle, letting go of his weapon to avoid being dragged from his mount as the snorting horse plunged past, tossing its head in fear.
Somewhere behind them, a man and a horse screamed in unison, raw and loud, as if each was trying to drown out the other.
"This is madness!" Shandril shouted to the wounded guard. "We've got to get the horses stopped, before we – "
Fire burst into being off to the left – Narm's doing? – and by its light the ready-wagon's horses saw the rugged stone wall of the cleft rising up in front of them, very near and growing nearer as each plunging hoof came down. They swerved away from the fire, almost spilling Thorst and Shandril from the perch and dragging a raw roar of pain from the drover that rose almost into a shriek as the wagon tipped alarmingly… then crashed back to earth with bonenumbing force.
Along the widening cleft and out into the gathering night the horses ran, the wagon rumbling more slowly and heavily now. It felt as if something had half-fallen from it and was being dragged. Perhaps that, or perhaps simply training and long habit, made the horses turn again to stay on the road rather than running across it to plunge into the trees.
They were past the cleft, and – as the horses swerved around a smashed and splintered wagon that had overturned, then been dragged until its harness broke and its beasts had fled – out beyond the fray, into the deepening night.
Crossbow bolts came humming out of the trees at them. Thorst gasped as one smashed his fingers and drove his bowgun right out of his hand. Others slammed into the boards around him with loud thocking sounds.
Shandril crouched low and brought one hand up under her breasts to drive her collection of rusting armor plates up in front of her nose like a wall. She ducked her head just as a bolt shattered against the boards and showered her with its tumbling splinters.
Another glanced off the perch beside her boots and numbed her arm from fingertips to shoulder, and she heard one of the horses scream.
They were going to die here, shot down like carttargets paraded slowly before archers, unless – unless she – Shandril Shessair sprang to her feet and slashed out into the night with spellfire, scorching trees on one side of the road, then the other. A bolt speeding toward her exploded in flames, came snarling on – and fell away into ashes in the air right in front of her as she frantically poured flame at it.