Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [137]
The mage flew low over a patch of brush. It was important that the fliers didn't fall too great a distance when they fell into their torpor. The wand's cold might kill their possessing vines and leave them unharmed, but they couldn't survive a crash to the earth from any great height. With a sudden twist, Akabar faced the fliers coming at him and hovered in place.
The lead flier was only five yards from Akabar when the mage pointed the wand of frost at it, and only three when he gave the whistle that approximated the saurial word to trigger the wand. Motes of white crystalline ice blasted out of the tip of the wand in a cone sixty feet long. The flying saurial in the lead was immediately covered in a rime of frost and dropped to the ground. Another eight, also whitened by the wand's magical cold, fell after him.
Two fliers had been beyond the reach of the wand's cone, however. Now they dived down upon Akabar with their sharp beaks open.
Akabar headed for a higher altitude to evade the attackers, but one managed to tear through his robe and leave a gash in his side. The mage cried out and clutched at his side.
Alias flew to the side of the injured mage. As the two remaining fliers turned and swooped down on them, Alias drew her sword. One creature called out in saurial, "Look out! She has a weapon!" and pulled up, but the other couldn't stop its dive in time. Alias's blade tore through the saurial's wing, and the creature spun helplessly to the earth. Alias chased the remaining flying saurial as Akabar flew down toward the injured one.
Grypht had told Alias that the flying saurials could fly with the grace and speed of eagles. Alias might never have caught up with this one in ordinary circumstances, but the creature was exhausted from its day's labor and had lost much of its maneuverability because of Moander's possessive vines. Since Alias's flight was magical, the swordswoman was not in the least winded by her chase.
She swooped down on the last winged saurial, grabbing it by the vines that grew from its back and wrapped about its waist.
The creature struggled frantically, and its vines began wrapping around Alias's arm. The swordswoman soared earthward and landed beside Akabar. Quickly the mage sliced the vines off near the saurial's back. The little saurial began to slash at Akabar's arms with its beak, but the mage grabbed it by its throat and held it fast while Alias tied its wings behind its back with a length of rope. Then they laid the trussed flier alongside the injured one by the side of the trail leading west out of the vale. Finally they stood and waited for the saurials who were coming up the trail on foot. It had been Akabar's idea to drive the saurials eastward, so they would have to climb uphill, slowing them down so it would be easier to cast magic on them.
Alias could hear the approaching saurials shouting, and she could smell the violet scent of their fear rising up the vale with the smoke of the fires. "Are you all right?" she asked the mage beside her. He was bleeding from the gashes in his side and his arm.
Akabar nodded and held out Grypht's wand. "It'll hurt more later, when I have time to think about it," he said.
The approaching saurials were somewhat larger than the fliers, and Akabar didn't wait till the last minute to fire the wand at them. When they were twenty feet away, he whistled the wand's command word. The lead creatures were struck by the blast of freezing ice, but they kept coining for several seconds before they were stopped by the cold. At least twenty fell to the ground, but others behind them kept coming.
Akabar flew over the fallen saurials and fired off another blast from the wand.
Many more saurials dropped. A few, too large to be affected quickly by the cold or with some resistance to magic, ran on up the hill. Alias