The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [9]
Was it ever soon enough to die?
The ground shook beneath their desperate boots; the stone knight was gaining on them. Just a stride or two more, though, and…
They were out, gasping, into the moonlight, with the tattered leaves of a last bush whirling around them, and a tranquil fountain ahead. Craer caught at Hawkril's arm as the armaragor staggered sideways, cursing, and risked a look back-just as the knight took a step out into the open.
It did not freeze, as he'd hoped it would. Soon they'd be close enough to the palace for even snoring servant-maids to hear its lumbering progress, and then it really wouldn't matter if that heavy stone sword chopped them down-or if they died by guards' blades or wizards' spells.
Dead was dead.
"And not a gown to show for it," he muttered, as the stone knight loomed up over them and swept its blade up, heedless of snapping, dancing branches.
"Hawkril," he hissed, "there's a statue yonder! Get around the other side of it-use it as a shield!"
The armaragor lifted a face that was tight with pain, and nodded. "And you?"
"I'll be busy doing something clever," Craer told him, and was rewarded with the ghost of a smile. It vanished as the thundering fall of the stone blade turned into a scream of stone clawing stone, and an ornamental paving-it might have been a gravestone-burst up in shards from the ground…
Stone shards that kissed the heels of the staggering armaragor, goading him into a stumbling run, and almost beheaded a desperately diving procurer. Craer rolled, spitting out dirt and carefully groomed grasses, finding his feet again with the patiently striding stone knight close behind him.
He did a little dance for it, weaving away from the statue he'd seen-some Lord Silvertree waving his sword at the stars to make the stallion beneath him rear, a pose that by the looks of things vastly impressed all the incontinent birds on the island-to be sure it didn't follow Hawkril yet. The stone face never looked at him, and the stone eyes stayed blank, but its shoulders turned toward the procurer who hated to be called Longfingers, and its blade rose again to smite.
A seeking spell, then, and not some wizard awake in a room of the Castle directing it to smite thus and so… thank the Three at least for that!
Craer caught his breath, watching it loom up over him, and cast another glance at the statue. Yes, 'twas tall enough, and Hawkril was safely in its shadow, gasping loudly enough to be heard from here.
This would be a slim, deadly chance-but slim, deadly chances were all they had just now… were all they'd had for some time.
"Come on, then," he murmured. "Hew down the hero."
The stone knight's blade rose again and fell. It didn't have to be fast, if a foe couldn't flee. One strike of that stone sword-as large and as heavy as a horse-would kill even someone as large as Hawkril. It would probably reduce Craer Delnbone to bloody pulp, not even worth the bother of burial.
Stone whistled down, and Craer leaped for his life.
The ground trembled dully behind him-very close behind him-and then he was sprinting through the moonlight, racing across the neatly trimmed sward as if there were more wolves plunging after him.
Perhaps there were, in some distant glade of the garden. A worry for later; he had worries enough to keep him busy now. The procurer swarmed up the stone statue, his wet hands slipping all too often, and thanked the Three for sculptors whose flowing tails and high-backed saddles made easy footholds for desperate climbers. He saw Hawkril peering up at him as he reached the horse's head, kicked a bird nest from its mouth, and saw the stone knight bearing down on him.
Its sword was rising, and its head was tilting back as if it could see him. If there wasn't some way to knock its head off, they were probably doomed-unless Craer could get it to fall over the statue somehow. He stood above it on his sculpted perch, waiting tensely. He'd have only one chance to leap.
Its sword swept around in a chop that rang off the statue's sword, turning