The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [172]
Rori circled once, then deliberately dropped his prey. With one long scream, the rakzan fell toward the center of his army. Warriors and servants alike yelled in panic and ran back and forth to get clear as he plunged onto the ground. The frightened mob blocked Salamander’s view of the corpse, for which he felt nothing but gratitude.
Rori flew back and landed on the rocks directly above him. “I’m going to fly a little ways away to lead them off,” he called down. “I don’t want them coming up here and finding you. I’ll be nearby, though.”
Once again, the dragon took flight. He glided above the milling, shouting army but kept just out of arrow range. He flew off to the north only to turn abruptly west and disappear between two hills. None of the Horsekin followed him. Apparently Rori had misjudged his enemy’s courage, not that Salamander could blame them for their reluctance to chase a murderous wyrm.
Salamander sat down in the shade of the boulders and rummaged through his saddlebags until he found his leather water bottle. He could easily have drunk every drop in it, warm though it was, but he forced himself to save a third of the water for later. As he watched, the army far below regained control of itself. It took several hours, by his reckoning, but eventually the riders formed up in a marching order, the servants and slaves fell in behind, and with the priestesses leading the way, the army began to move, riding slowly and with some dignity toward the south.
Once the last of them had disappeared, and the cloud of dust they’d raised had settled, Rori returned to the outcrop. Salamander gathered up his gear and climbed back up to his brother’s scaly side.
“I was hoping they’d stay here,” Salamander said. “These rocks make a perfect watchtower.”
“There are other spots like it farther south,” Rori said. “We’ll follow them and see where they make their night’s camp.”
Not far off, as it turned out. Some six miles to the south the Horsekin halted their column under steep and rocky cliffs on the west side of the valley. As they spread out to pitch tents and hobble horses, Rori and Salamander landed some hundreds of feet above them in the shelter of a scraggly growth of trees that reminded Salamander of the dark and twisted Cerrgonney pines. Some ways back from the cliff edge Salamander found a stream big enough to quench both their thirsts, though Rori had to push through and trample undergrowth to reach it.
“What now?” the dragon said when he’d drunk his fill. “Do you want to wait till morning for another strike?”
“I’m not sure.” Salamander debated briefly with his own natural caution. “I think I’ll make a feint at twilight. If that goes well, I’ll make my main strike on the morrow.”
“I’ll leave them be for now, then. I don’t want to spoil your thrust.”
The thrust Salamander had in mind was dangerous enough without a dragon interfering with his concentration. The only way he could control the image adequately, he decided, was to turn it into a body of light and ride inside it, as it were, out on the etheric plane. The operation would drain his own life force, but if the worshipers below responded as they’d done earlier, he would have their power to absorb and replenish it. Perhaps. He’d never heard of any dweomermaster attempting this particular working. If any had, they’d not lived to record the knowledge they’d gained.
Just at sunset, when the astral tide of Water was just beginning to run in, Salamander created his image again, though this time he equipped her with a Horsekin-style falcata instead of a bow and arrow. When he slipped into the deeper trance, he banished his usual body of light. He held the Alshandra image steady in front of him, then imagined looking out of its eyes, imagined moving its arms as if they were his own arms. Suddenly, he heard a rushy click like a metal sword striking a wicker shield. He was no longer imagining