A horn’s cry rose shrill and clear, and a great shout as from a host of soldiers shattered the night on the turnpike ahead. Horses whinnied, hooves pounded, and a whistle pierced the air.
“Move,” said Andevai in a hoarse whisper. “I can’t hold this long.”
He lurched on up the rutted lane at an awkward lope, as if his limbs were not truly under the command of his mind. I followed a step behind, and once I had to grab his elbow to stop him from tumbling headlong when he stumbled over a rut. As I steadied him, I saw, on the road ahead where it crossed in front of our dark lane, a company of stern soldiers armed in the House style: The soldiers carried crossbows and spears and wore quilted coats; their horses were caparisoned in the bold designs favored by the Houses, manes braided and stiffened, legs ornamented with bracelets woven of falling threads of fabric that shimmered as the horses paced forward in a stately measure. A House standard hung with amulets stabbed the air within the ranks.
Andevai stumbled again, and I caught him as he winced. “Blacksmith… fire’s mage… powerful. Fighting me.”
The soldiers shouted in unison and pushed forward.
“Aren’t those House soldiers?” I demanded. “Shouldn’t we call to them?”
“Illusion,” he hissed. “Must move, get to the inn ruins. Hold them off there until the carriage reaches us.”
Two figures darted into the lane behind us. By the way they moved, I knew at once that they carried weapons. Yet it seemed they had not yet seen us within the darkness; they were, perhaps, looking beyond us toward the turnpike where the House soldiers still rode past in a seamless illusion.
“Stay here,” I said to Andevai. I broke into a run, grateful for the excellent cut of my riding clothes, which did not impede my strides or my reach.
Too late they registered my approach. I parried a clumsy thrust from the closer one, then shifted sideways to strike a blow upward with the hilt alongside his head that dropped him to his knees. I spun with a backhand sweep that caught low on my blade a staff blow aimed at my head by the other man. Grappling, I kicked him as hard as I could in the knee. He shrieked and collapsed backward. I bolted back the way I had come. Andevai had staggered to a halt; the cursed fool was pulling a useless knife from under his jacket.
“Move!” I barely forced out the word. Sweat broke over my body, and I heaved once but nothing came up.
Andevai moved. He ran down the lane and I pelted after, glancing back once, but I’d laid them down well enough; obviously they were not trained soldiers but rather crude, angry men without much more experience than fistfights outside an inn after an evening’s wallow in ale. We reached the junction of lane and wide turnpike. To our left, red fire burned in the square where the doors of the smithy were laid open, white sparks blazing as they showered out of the door and spat onto the vanguard of the House soldiers, but amazingly the illusion held under this rain of sparks. I ran after Andevai toward the ruins.
Men shouted in confusion, their shattered cries of disorder and fear like a counter-rhythm to the patter of drums that fluttered at the edge of my hearing. Was the djeli still singing? Music is its own spell. Who knows what power it wields?
We dashed along the road, the confrontation falling away behind us. Andevai fell onto his knees in the char and ashes of the burned inn, hacking as he bent double. I halted between the stone pillars that had once marked the gate into the inn yard. The lintel slashed a black line above my head. The gates had been smashed and hauled into the courtyard. A harsh light glowed above the temple square; I had an awful premonition that the smithy had caught fire.
Far away, across the river, I heard a bell ringing.
The rain had stopped, but I shivered as the chill seeped into my bones. The sound of footfalls brought me spinning around, my hand so cold it was hard to grasp the hilt. I groaned. There came my assailants, one limping behind and the other jogging ahead. I could not suck in enough air. I didn’t think I could kill. And if I couldn’t, what would they do to us?
Andevai appeared beside me. “Give me the sword,” he said.
The two men closed inexorably on us, big, burly, unstoppable men who held their weapons like they knew how to kill with them. In another six steps they would cut us down.
I recalled words scrawled in one of my father’s journals:
My thanks to the gods that fortune has spared me from that most terrible act, that I have never taken another person’s life.
“It is yours for this one act.” I pressed the sword into Andevai’s right hand.
Cold steel in the hand of a cold mage is a wicked thing.