Son of Thunder - Murray J. D. Leeder [30]
"I suppose I'd leap down there and save him," said Ardeth. Valkin didn't doubt that she would.
It was quite a spectacle. Wolf after wolf tried to ram its way through the barbarian line and was slaughtered in the process. Valkin's magic willed the creatures toward the center of the camp-the beasts had nothing in their heads except a desire to get there and to kill anything in their way. Ardeth kept her eyes locked on the bearded chief who seemed well prepared to stay alive himself, hacking away at fur and claws.
The dire wolves were not so powerful that the tribe was in danger of destruction, but they served their true purpose well. They had been summoned only as a distraction.
"So when do we do it?" asked Valkin, tugging impatiently on the hippogriff's reins.
"Patience, skymage," said Ardeth, a cool night breeze tousling her hair. "When you have the luxury of choosing when to strike, always strike when the opponent is weakest."
"Did Geildarr teach you that?" asked Valkin.
Ardeth ignored him. "Barbarians are strongest when they rage. We wait till that subsides-after all their foes are killed."
"You mean," said Valkin, "we wait until they think they're triumphant, then hand them an awful defeat? A delicious idea."
"Why, Valkin," Ardeth replied. "Where did you acquire so cruel a mind as that?"
"Spending some time with you, my dear," Valkin said. "It rubs off."
He felt the squeeze of Ardeth's arms around his waist as she giggled away, so adorably, so madly.
* * * * *
Like waves against rocks, wolf after wolf charged the Thunderbeast lines. Some were skewered by archers, but many broke through. Barbarians were torn apart by vicious claws or snapped in two by massive jaws, and blood, of both wolves and men, ran in streams across the camp. A few torches had been knocked from their staves and several tents had caught fire. Some of the braver children ventured forward to try to extinguish them.
Vell choked back his anger and summoned every fragment of his will to contain the beast inside him. He knew some would call him a coward-Keirkrad would certainly scold him for abandoning his tribe in its time of need-but he did not trust his other self. Vell still feared that if the beast within him were released again, he would not be able to tell friend from foe.
In the chaos and cacophony that consumed Sungar's Camp, and despite his distorted senses, he could hear Kellin's voice pleading with him.
"Trust yourself," she begged. But how could he?
"There's a power in you," she said quickly. "I don't understand it. Not even Keirkrad understands it. But I know what it's like to have something within you that seems on the verge of controlling you. You have to learn to control it instead."
Vell looked at Kellin through his lizardlike eyes, wondering what she was talking about, and he saw that the concern on her face was genuine. He looked back at his hands and realized that they were his again. The scales had receded. He stood uncomfortably and looked her in the eye. He wondered how to thank her, but when he opened his mouth his words were not his own.
"What are you?" he asked.
A strange silence settled over the camp all at once. The clinking of armor and weapons ceased, and the howls ended. The enemy was defeated, and the camp was safe again.
"Victory!" Sungar shouted, thrusting a fist high into the air. All eyes turned to him.
In that moment, something appeared in the darkness above. A tiny point of light fell from the sky over the camp, looking no more dangerous than a shooting star in the distant heavens. But Kellin knew better.
"Turn away!" she shouted as loudly as she could, spinning away from it and slapping her hands over her eyes. But Vell's instincts misled him and he turned to look instead, just in time to stare into the heart of the burst.
The speck exploded into a brilliant wave of light that washed over the camp, a thousand times brighter than the midday sun, before it dissolved back into the dark of night. In that horrid instant Vell saw the night vanish, and