Warrior Priest of Dmon-Li - Brian Pratt [72]
They begin moving toward the river, keeping to the area between the hills. Jiron takes the lead as they move through the hills, keeping his eyes out for anyone in the vicinity.
When they reach the edge of the river, Miko begins watering the horses as Jiron continues keeping a lookout.
James finds a suitable rock and begins to dig out a hole at the river’s edge. Once he has a hole two feet across, he digs a channel to let in some of the water from the river. When he has enough and the ground has saturated to the point where it won’t immediately drain back into the dirt, he closes off the channel so the small pool can maintain a still surface.
He concentrates as the image in the pool shimmers and then sees an aerial view of them at the riverbank. Scrolling the image in a wider arc, he sees the entrapped riders. He grins when he sees several of them have managed to extricate themselves from the goo. It will still be some time before they all get free. Despite what he’d told them, he really doesn’t know how long that stuff will stick around. ‘Stick around’, he lets out a chuckle at his pun.
Getting back to the job at hand, he scrolls to the south and finds the riders they’d seen across the river. Somehow, they’re on this side now and just entering the hills to the south, maybe an hour or two away. He scrolls the image further down but doesn’t see any sort of bridge. Must be a ford in the river.
Scrolling north, he fails to see any sign of the rider that had been riding hard to the north. He scrolls even further but only sees more of the river and plains. The draw of magic to scroll so far is becoming quite strong, seems the farther he scrolls the image away from him, the more magic it takes to sustain it.
He brings it back to the immediate area and sees no one else. Canceling the spell, he gets up and comes over to where Jiron is keeping watch.
“The riders we left in the goop are still stuck,” he says with a slight grin. “Behind us, the riders we saw on the other side of the river managed to cross and are now entering the foothills.”
“How far behind us?” he asks.
“Couple of hours, I would think,” he replies.
“And ahead of us?” Jiron asks.
“It looks clear for quite a ways,” he tells him. “I couldn’t see more than about five miles but didn’t see anyone there.”
“What should we do about the ones behind us?” he asks.
“Someone’s behind us?” asks Miko as he joins the discussion.
“Yeah,” James informs him and then quickly relates what he just told Jiron. “Maybe I need to give them a little surprise when they get here,” he muses. “We have time.”
Ever since leaving the Gathering of the Clans, Sub-leader Ragni of the Grey Wolf Clan has had serious doubts about following these men. After witnessing what had happened back at the camp, he soon realized that maybe they should just let them go.
But Abula-Mazki would not be denied. Their chief was too much under his influence and so when he went after them when they fled, Ragni and several other Sub-leaders took their men with him.
When the pass exploded in front of them, he thought the rage of Abula-Mazki would kill them all. Somehow the warrior priest had survived the rocks. All the men around him had been crushed but none of the rocks had even so much as touched him. Somehow, he’d reined in his rage at those who they were pursuing escaped. When told that the only other way to follow would be to backtrack to the eastern pass, his rage again erupted.
Riding like to kill the horses, he pushed them on until they were through the pass. Once on the other side, Abula-Mazki had sent the Sub-leaders and their groups in different directions in an attempt to locate them, while keeping two of the groups with him. Ragni was glad that his was not one of the groups that had stayed with the unpredictable