The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [100]
The fleeing forester never slowed to stand with his fellows but plunged on into the trees now, and Craer saw the danger an escaped foe could bring down on them.
"Take care of this!" he shouted to Hawkril, and bounded after the man, the crashings of his running feet in the leaves fading swiftly into the distance.
The last forester was backing away, swinging his blade in a defensive wall to keep Hawkril and the last spellblade at bay. Patiently the hulking armaragor and the flying sword pressed the man, driving him in retreat around trees and up slopes, deadwood, and stumps.
As the spellblade moved out of sight, Sarasper grew increasingly pale and clutched at his temples with fingers that soon became steely claws. The healer trembled, blundered to his knees, and then collapsed with a gasp, sweating profusely; somewhere in the forest his awareness sank into a yellow fog of bedazement as his last spellblade dissolved. He'd sent it voyaging farther than many a worker of spells, but there were no prizes for such things, and he had one more task to do, to cling to life…
On hands and knees, almost overwhelmed by weakness and waves of utter exhaustion, Sarasper crawled back to where Embra lay.
"Lady," he murmured, when he got there. "Lady Silvertree! Lady Embra, hear me!" Falling on his face beside her with a groan, the aging healer reached out and slapped her cheeks gently, calling out her name over and over with what little energy he had left. He must revive her before fainting himself, lest the other war band from the lakeshore should come upon them, and find two senseless, helpless victims, suitable slaying for but a single careless dagger thrust each…
On a hillock between two gigantic gnarled trees, the looping, thrusting spellblade shimmered and was gone. The forester barked out a single guffaw of triumph-in the instant before Hawkril smashed their blades together, used his grander size and weight to force both locked weapons upward, and charged forward until their bodies met and the armaragor could bear them both to the ground.
They landed hard, and the breath whooshed out of the grunting, writhing forester, but this was to the death, and two strong sets of hands grappled each other and snatched at sheathed daggers with equal enthusiasm. Hawkril had chosen his ground well: two moss-covered stones small enough to use lay near at hand, where he'd espied them before making his takedown. He plucked one up as they twisted and strained against each other and brought it down with vicious force. The first blow mashed the dagger-holding fingers of his foe, and the forester's nose broke under the second. Armaragors won no victories with gallantry-and to true fighting men, with no courtiers' ransoms to claim, victory meant life, and so was everything.
The forester flinched, blinded by his own blood, and Hawkril backhanded the gurgling man across the face, wrested away the man's sword, and snatched up his own blade to bring its pommel crashing down on the forester's temple. His foe sagged back, senseless.
The armaragor retrieved all the weapons he could see, hoisted his foe onto his shoulder, and brought him, dangling, back to Sarasper and Embra.
He found them both sprawled unconscious on the ground and dropped his burden none too gently in his haste to make sure neither the healer nor the sorceress lacked breath or sported wounds that he could see. He was relieved to find that they both seemed peacefully asleep.
"Fine guardian you are," he grumbled to the gently snoring Sarasper, and set about making his foe helpless. An indecently thorough search for weapons yielded a needle knife from the forester's boot and another that had been hidden down the back of his sword scabbard. These were foresters' weapons?
Shaking his head, Hawkril removed the man's boots and belt, wrapped the belt around one hairy ankle, and then used it, by