The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [119]
Hawkril covered that distance in one long lunge, plucked up Craer's body as if the procurer was a child's rag doll, caught hold of a bruised jaw, and stared into the little man's bloody, unconscious face. Then he turned his head and peered keenly, for all the world like a falcon glaring down at prey, into the face of the moaning healer… just as Sarasper's head lolled back, his eyes rolled to their whites, and his discomfort fell silent.
"Alive, both of them," Hawkril said gravely to Embra, as she knelt beside him, panting from her hard run over broken, smoke-shrouded ground. "This is probably not a good time to enter yon portal."
She smiled almost impishly at him. "So what're we waiting for?"
After a startled moment, he grinned wolfishly back.
"Horns!" Klamantle swore, breaking into a clumsy run that ended in a stumble and sprawl. Arrows hummed past him and on out over the waters of Lake Lassabra.
Markoun stiffened as a shaft cut bloodily along one of his arms, and whatever magic he'd been struggling to hurl collapsed into a gout of winking, swift-dying lights.
Klamantle snarled out something through the dirt on his face, and without trying to rise lifted both of his arms like gliding wings. They tingled as they poured forth thousands of racing blades, glittering needles of force that hissed out in a silvery cloud.
A dozen or more archers shrieked or shouted in vain alarm ere they died, and when the spell-fangs had all boiled away into smoke and the twitching bodies had slumped down amid shredded leaves, Klamantle rose, wiped himself off, and gave Markoun a disgusted look. "My best battle spell, gone already," he growled.
Markoun looked up from the healing vial he'd just sipped a careful few drops from, and shrugged. The gesture made him wince and clutch at his half-healed arm. "At least we're alive to see you cast your second-best battle spell."
The older wizard's face split in a wide, mirthless mockery of a smile. "Most amusing," he snapped. "Let's get away from this shore before someone else sees us. Come!"
"Yes, master," the younger mage muttered, dropping his voice below audibility on the second word. He followed Klamantle across blood-drenched ground. "Who were these men anyw-what're you doing?"
"Collecting weapons," Klamantle said, lips tight with revulsion as he bent to his second gory bundle and tugged at a scabbard still under a spray of fountaining blood. "With swords and knives enough, we can turn a whirldance spell into a wall of slicing swords. Besides, 'tis always wise to seize what you can't borrow. Hasten!"
"Indeed," Markoun almost snarled, bending to take up a sword that spasming hands had thankfully hurled a good distance from its owner. If haste good Klamantle desired, haste he would get. He glanced up at the thick forest around and shuddered. If dark found them still creeping around this, getting stabbed at by arrows shot by unseen lurking foes, then he was all for a running charge into the ruins, and to the Three's dung midden with stealth and slow, cautious advances!
"Faster," Klamantle grunted, from somewhere ahead. Markoun didn't bother to look up, but merely waggled his fingers in an appropriately rude gesture.
The top of a wall nearby suddenly exploded in flames, and from somewhere in the distance in quite another direction, a short, choked-off scream rang out. Embra looked up at the armaragor bending grimly over her, his scorched and bloody war sword back in his hand, and said, "T-this is going to be dangerous."
Hawkril glanced around as the clash of steel arose from behind a building on their left, and the burning wall slumped to the ground, a limp dark-robed body tumbling amid its rubble. "This concerns me," he replied, not bothering to smile. "Deeply."
Embra smiled for him, and shook her head in warm mirth as she bent to her task in the armaragor's protective shadow. She rose from her knees