The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [177]
“…not a silly bitch like…” she muttered as she used her other hand to rip off the blindfold and the gag.
Gairloch wheeled away from the two captives. While I would have liked to run like hell, unless I kept the wizard busy there was nothing to keep him from frying the captives.
So we charged, as much as a mountain pony and an idiot woodcrafter with a little ability with order-magic and a good staff could charge.
Whhhssstttt…
The heat and force nearly collapsed my shields in on me, somehow drawn to the staff before me.
Thumpedy…thump…Gairloch’s hooves actually drummed on the meadow turf, and I grabbed for my staff again, hoping my trembling knees could hold me in place on the suddenly very unsteady Gairloch.
“They’re escaping!”
“Who’s escaping?”
Whhhsttttt!
The staff deflected the fire, but that was all it would do, gathering some and letting the rest sheet off, almost as if I were fighting with it, rather than with the other wizard.
Whhhssttttt!
“You see that?”
“Forget the wizards! Get the captives!”
“Where are they?”
Whhhstttt!
Gairloch and I half-tumbled, half-thundered downhill toward the wizard on his white horse.
Whhhstttt!
“Just keep going…”
I got the staff ready.
EEEiiiii!..
The white horse turned.
WHHHHSSSSTTTTTTTTT!
“Aeeeeeiiii…”
“Ouuufffff…”
Staff and firebolt had met at the white wizard’s fingertips.
For a long instant, I sat there, momentarily near-deaf with the hissing still crackling in my ears…shaking my head…before realizing that the white horse had reared, and that a dead man lay on the turf, still dressed in white. Even as I watched, his face turned to ashes and bones, and then the bones began to disintegrate…
“There he is! Another wizard! A black one!”
My shields had gone with the clash, leaving me in full sight of too damned many Gallian soldiers.
“Jernan! The captives!”
Shaking, head splitting, guts turning, I nudged Gairloch past the heap of ashes that had been a white wizard, and back toward the road.
“Use your bows!” bellowed the heavy-set officer. “Your bows, idiots!”
Somehow I gathered enough of a light shield around us, just enough to cloak us for a while as we both staggered away.
“He’s gone!”
“Guess where he is!”
I don’t know what they did—except that if they shot at us, they missed. I did know that I was now in big trouble. Antonin wasn’t about to overlook the killing of another white wizard, however accidental it might have been.
And the autarch’s troops, assuming the captives made it back safely, wouldn’t be thrilled about a black wizard running around loose, either. While I wasn’t a black wizard, that was bound to be the way I would be described.
My head ached. My buttocks ached. My eyes burned. My ears kept chiming in discordant minor keys, and there was a taste of bile in my throat. I’d played hero, and rescued two whole captives—maybe—and alerted every white wizard in Candar.
Whheeee…eeee…
“Yeah…I know…”
Somehow we tottered along through the afternoon, at least long enough that the simmering disorder that represented Antonin and the mess I had made disappeared behind us.
In the meantime, the clouds from the west rolled in.
Thurrrummmm…
The hills became more than hills and less than the Easthorns, and the road stopped rising and falling and turned into a near-steady grade.
Long before sunset, I turned Gairloch up a deserted arroyo that had tufts of grass and a clean, if narrow stream. There was an overhang sheltered from both the road and overhead observation.
Then I unsaddled Gairloch, stacked the saddlebags, unpacked the bedroll, and collapsed. I did manage some silent wards, and a type of shield I’d read about but never tried. It didn’t make us invisible, just reduced the level of order that escaped from around us, something not very useful in hiding from bandits, but very useful in hiding from Antonin. The problem was that you