Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [152]
The white horse shimmered by, heading to the rear; with a sun glitter, a sword spun into the wagon and clanged on the floorboards. Arhys kicked it over to the barefoot manservant, who snatched it up gratefully and took up a guard position on the wagon’s end. A few minutes later, the white horse overtook them at a gallop on the other side, and Illvin leaned in to toss yet another sword aboard. His grin flashed past like a streak of light as he brandished the pitchfork and hurtled onward once more.
From the driver’s box, Goram cried out. Arhys plunged forward. Ista could see only the back of Arhys’s legs as he braced himself and swung at some unseen assailant riding alongside. He moved with power, speed, and utmost sureness. But the white line of soul-fire pouring out of Cattilara and into him seemed to have doubled in speed and density. Too fast, thought Ista frantically. She cannot sustain this rate for long. It will empty her . . .
The wagon rumbled around a tight curve. Ista slid across the rough boards on hands and knees, collecting splinters in her palms, tumbling into Cattilara on her pallet. The waiting girl’s tear-streaked face was mottled red and white with heat and terror. Beyond Liss, one of the men of the Daughter’s Order fell back along the roadside, bleeding and toppling from his saddle, his horse limping and slowing. Ista tried to spin around and mark his fate, but she was bounced again as a wheel smacked through a pothole, and by the time she found her balance and looked up again, he was lost to her view. A galloping Jokonan was poking his sword rather clumsily through the space between the wagon’s side and the half-rolled-up canvas top, and being parried equally clumsily by Arhys’s page, fighting from his knees with Illvin’s captured sword.
Louder cries and curses came from ahead, in two languages. A flash of red-violet demon light seared across Ista’s inner vision as she crouched, staring downward. A scream of tortured metal sounded from beneath the wagon. The wagon wobbled, then jerked down on the left rear side. The three women slithered across the wagon bed in a heap; even Ista yelped. She heard the snap of the rear axle, then the back end dropped altogether and began dragging. With a cry, the manservant fell out. Arhys slid back in from the driver’s box, barely avoiding spearing the weeping waiting woman on the point of his blade.
Arhys stared around wildly. “Liss!” he called.
“Here!” The palomino had held to its position on the wagon’s right side and was now slowing with them.
More cries rose from up ahead, along with crashing noises and a scream of a horse. The lurching wagon slewed off the crown of the road and grated to a tilted stop. Arhys dropped his sword and snatched up his wife’s limp body, heaving her out and across into startled Liss’s arms. “Take her, take her! Ride, if you can. On to Porifors.”
“Yes, yes!” Ista endorsed this. Foix’s horse flashed into Ista’s view, sliding to a rearing halt. Ista pointed downward. “Foix, did your demon do that?”
“No, Royina!” He leaned over his pommel to stare in at her; his eyes were very wide. The bear shadow was not curled tight within him, but on its seeming-feet, its head swinging dizzily from side to side.
“Royina . . . ?” Liss’s hoarse voice called uncertainly, as she struggled to get a better grip on her limp load.
“Yes, take Cattilara and ride, or all are lost together! Foix, go with her, get them through!”
“Royina, I can’t—”
“Go!” Ista’s scream nearly burst her lungs. Both horses wheeled away. Foix’s sword, swinging past, shed a spatter of dark wet drops. Cries, scraping metal, the twang of a crossbow, and the thunk of a heavy blade biting flesh—whose?—echoed back to Ista’s ears. But the dual echo of their horses’ hooves dwindled in the distance without slowing or diverting.
Ista climbed forward