Hand of Fire - Ed Greenwood [81]
The guard beside Voldovan took one in the throat, threw up his arms, and pitched over backward, falling from his saddle like a felled tree.
The caravan master snarled out an oath and grabbed at the shield bouncing on its hooks on the dead man's saddle, trying to get it free. The next quarrel took him through the arm and sent the frightened horse with the empty saddle leaping away from his roar of pain. Quarrels were thudding into Narm's shield and piercing half through it, burning into his ribs, and he was too busy scrambling and flinching away and gasping out curses of his own to see more.
Shandril took one look at the chaos of archery and dying horses and men and shouted, "Take my legs!
Hold me up!"
Letting his shield slide and hang from its straps, Narm scrambled to obey her. Shandril stood up on the perch, flung her arms wide, and gathered spellfire around herself in a great snarling cloak of rushing flames.
Crossbow bolts leaped into those flames and hissed away to ashes, one of them crumbling and falling away inches from Narm's nose. He yelped but clung grimly to his lady's thighs, hooking his feet around the edges of the wagon-perch door, trying as best he could to brace her against the jarring and bouncing.
The horses reared and tossed their heads and snorted, reins swung slack like wild ribbons in the air… and Shandril's spellfire roared out over their heads, lashing the rocks on either side of the road with leaping, scorching flame.
The firing was becoming more ragged as Thoadrin's men ran out of cocked and loaded crossbows to snatch up and aim, but Orthil Voldovan's run seemed ruined indeed. A wagon had crashed onto its side, ahead, dead horses were dragging in harness everywhere, and there were more guards sprawled lifeless on the ground under maddened hooves than were still running about swinging futile swords and shouting.
Shandril saw Arauntar grimly scrambling up the rocks, sword in hand. Above him were the helmed heads of grinning warriors who'd gathered to stab him in the face the moment he climbed within reach.
She sent spellfire roaring at those faces, and through the rock cleft where they'd been crouching. Letting anger take her, she poured on flames in a white, devouring roar that broke that line of rocks away and sent them spraying and tumbling into the wilderlands beyond.
Men were hurled away as broken, boneless things amid those shards of rock. More fled headlong from behind other rocks before her flames could reach them, so she turned and served the rocks on the far side of the road the same way.
About half of that second line of rocks were gone when the fires surging inside Shandril faltered for the first time. She shuddered and held back her spellfire, crouching down into Narm's embrace.
A head popped up around the side of an unscathed rock almost immediately, lowering a loaded crossbow to aim right at her. Shandril blasted the stone and all into nothingness ere the bolt could be fired. Beside her, Narm wrestled with the reins as their wagon slowed almost to a stop. One horse dragged limply in harness, and the others, for all their snorting terror, seeing nowhere to flee in the tangle ahead, turned in opposite directions, rocking the wagon wildly.
"They're fleeing for their lives!" someone shouted excitedly from behind Shandril – a moment before a splintering crash announced the arrival of the shouting merchant's wagon into the rear of Narm and Shandril's ready-wagon. Horses screamed, reared, and fell heavily. In the shouting, pitching confusion Shandril stood up to blast another