The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [110]
Its jaws were agape, the hindmost farmer only just ahead of them as he crashed through a blackthorn bush, stumbled on uneven ground, and then staggered on.
Craer sprang from his saddle, right into the wolf's path. The beast blinked at this obliging apparition, shied aside as if to race around it, causing Craer's riderless horse to rear and then bolt, and then whirled in at this new arrival from one side, biting down-onto the procurer's sword, helpfully slammed flat, edge-on, into its jaws. Its strike bowled Craer over, and he rolled over on his shoulders snarling like a wolf himself, putting his boots into the beast's ribs to keep it from pinning him with its weight.
His toe-blades made it yelp-and then Hawkril was there, bounding from his own saddle to pounce on the beast. Wrapping an arm around its neck, he shoved aside Craer's sword and used his weight to roll the beast over on its back, putting an ungentle knee into those same ribs-the wolf yelped again-and then ramming his armored forearm between its jaws.
"Forefather!" he yelled in pain, as it bit down hard enough to crush his bracer deep into his skin. "This one's a right monster!"
Freed from his own rolling on the road, Craer bounded up and reached a hand in to swat the wolf hard on the end of its nose, breaking its bite and sending it into a helpless flurry of mingled sneezing and growling. Hawkril shifted his grip, getting both hands firmly around the shaggy throat, and bent the struggling body back over his knee…
"I can't-" Embra gasped, as Dwaer-light washed over the struggling bodies. "I can't find a man's mind at all, inside that, that… thing…"
"Daughter, that's a real wolf," Blackgult snapped, keeping his own firm hold on the Dwaer, "not a plague-borne monster!"
"Graul!" she gasped in horror, staring down at the wrestling bodies in the road as their horses danced and Blackgult held them back from fleeing by main strength. "What'll I-?"
Her father gave vent to an exasperated growl of his own, and did something to the Dwaer that made it burn in Embra's grasp. She caught her breath and hissed in pain, dropping it-and as it spun out of her hand to hang in midair, linked to the Golden Griffon's fingertips only by tiny crackling tongues of energy, something like a flash of white lightning burst well beyond the fray, spitting bolts back toward them.
A moment later, Craer was hurled back between the horses like a small, ragged ball, voice rising in fear as he spat an endless stream of curses. Hawkril crashed into the ditch by the roots of an everember tree, and the wolf was flung the other way.
"What-?" Tshamarra cried, looking wildly around for Craer as the Stone flickered in midair, raggedly lighting a sudden mist of its own spinning.
"Use the Dwaer to quiet the horses," Blackgult ordered her, "before the pack beasts get all the way back to Stornbridge and Craer's mount finds the next barony or tries to leap the Silverflow and the mountains beyond, hmm?"
Tshamarra gaped at him.
"Use it!" he roared into her face-and she shuddered, gulped, and reached out for the Dwaer… which obligingly drifted toward her hand.
Embra was already scrambling down from her saddle, the Dwaer forgotten. "Hawk? Hawk!"
"That's right," Craer announced sarcastically from behind them all, making Tshamarra gasp in relief and evoking a growl from Blackgult as her Dwaer-guidance wavered, "run to see if the man as big as a horse and covered in armor as thick as a castle door is hurt! Don't bother about the acrobatic and incredibly clever Craer Delnbone, hurled away through the trees in great peril to life and limb! Spare not a thought for the brilliant mind that tricked the Tersept of Launsrar out of four horses and the pay-coach they were hitched to! Or the Seneschal of Mrorn Castle of his beautiful daughter!