Part 41 (1/2)
The soldiers had fallen back, leaving a barricade of dead and dying in front of the gryphon. Dewar fell back, jostled and shoved by the crowd of prisoners, who were running into Prospero's fire, most supporting one or two weaker others.
”I will kill you!” screamed someone nearby, and two of Prospero's men were knocked down by Otto, leaping forward toward Dewar as he retreated toward Freia and Trixie. Freia wasn't visible to him, but he was sure she was there.
Otto swung at him, a two-handed skull-crus.h.i.+ng swing with a mace, and Dewar ducked and heard it sing in the air. He cut at Otto's arm and nicked him as he brought the mace around again; a crossbow bolt sprouted from Otto's mailed shoulder, though, and he lost control of the mace swing.
”Hurry!” Prospero shouted. ”To me! Argylle!”
Prisoners echoed his shout. ”Argylle!” came back from => 'E&zað.
the quarters of the courtyard. The melee increased in speed and desperation.
Dewar tripped on a body and rolled frantically away as Otto brought the iron mace down at his head, thumping the stone pavement instead. More prisoners were fighting hand-to-hand with the garrison soldiers, but all were falling back toward the fire.
”Hey!” Freia yelled, and tripped Otto, who punched her in the ribs and sent her sprawling over the gore and dead.
Trixie screamed and pecked at him. Otto swung the mace, smas.h.i.+ng the gryphon in the beak and twisting the back-swing toward Dewar, who dodged it again.
Never again, Dewar vowed, would he venture .within sixty-four miles of a battlefield without a comprehensive and impermeable collection of protective spells.
”Argylle!” shouted Prospero.
Freia got up, stumbling and holding her side, and staggered over the disordered corpses toward the fire where Prospero stood fighting two guardsmen. An uncoordinated mob of Imperial soldiers at one side were being held off by prisoners with scavenged weapons while their fellows ran with closed eyes and clenched teeth into Prospero's fiery Way. Dewar caught a glimpse of this as he dove away from Otto's mace, rolling behind Trixie, who raked Otto's mail s.h.i.+rt with her hind claws and lurched after Freia but was distracted by an arrow striking beside her left eye. With another scream, the gryphon set into a retreating group of royal soldiers, wildly stabbing and biting, pursuing them around the tower, away from Prospero, into a dark corner.
The Way in the fire was closing; the vortex of sorcery was drawing in on itself. All the prisoners in the yard were through save the group with Prospero, holding the Way secure and backing toward it. Dewar ran forward, not wanting to lose this chance. Otto pursued Dewar, then pa.s.sed him, lunging toward Prospero with a knife. Freia tripped Otto again; he grabbed her ankle and brought her down with him.
”Argylle! Away!” Prospero cried hoa.r.s.ely, killing a man Sorcerer and a Qentteman 341.
with a swift in-and-out thrust; his gory blade was black in the unnaturally white Way-fire light. He kicked the corpse away, into another soldier's feet so that he stumbled onto Prospero's ready sword.
Prospero's men backed toward the whirling, narrowing Way in the fire. He gestured them through, shouting, ”Go! Go!” and stepped back into it himself. The Way was shrinking as it closed. Otto was nearly there; Dewar caught up to him and yanked him back, punching him ineffectively in his mailed stomach. Otto turned and struck him along the head, but Dewar twisted and caught himself and fell, tumbling into the Way with Prospero's dark cloak whirling above him.
As he fell, he heard Freia shriek ”Paaaapaaaaa!” in a long keening wail.
The Way closed with a thunderous, sky-breaking bang and sent sparks and ashes flying in an acrid cloud.
Dewar landed on sand and fire, thrashed out of the fire, and brushed singeing coals off himself.
He was on a beach, near a crowd of men, Prospero's men. There were long boats in the low surf, ferrying the freed prisoners-of-war to furled-sailed s.h.i.+ps waiting out in the bay, black silhouettes. It was cool, but not cold. No one paid attention to Dewar as he stood, shaking white sand and black cinders out of his clothes. The sky was overcast, the air mild, circulated by a velvety offsh.o.r.e breeze. A glow at the horizon might be dawn or sunset, brightening the purply twilight.
The men, rejoicing, shouted and called in their own language, which he could not understand, and he tried to find Prospero, who had vanished among them.
”You!” cried someone suddenly, and seized Dewar's arm.
They stared at one another.
”You're Utrachet,” Dewar said to the rangy, yellow-bearded man who faced him.
”You're none of ours,” Utrachet replied with a lilting accent Dewar had heard recently on Freia's tongue, and 342.
l&zattetfi Dewar found himself being hustled over to a collection of long torches driven into the sand where an argument proceeded hotly.
It was suspended. Prospero and four other men looked expectantly at Dewar.
Utrachet addressed them in that incomprehensible speech.
”Nay, 'tis not possible; 'twas but some illusion of his stressed mind's desire: I say 'tis so,” Prospero said. ”Leave this one to me a moment. Carry on the evacuation.”
The men muttered and left them staring at one another.
”What wouldst thou here?” Prospero asked finally.
”We have unfinished business. I didn't appreciate being chucked in a ditch in a blizzard,” Dewar said. It came out less elegantly than he had intended.
”Go to. 'Twas not I cast thee to Herne,” Prospero said. ”Thy hands loosed and thou didst take rude leave of me.”
”I pa.s.sed out from being hit on the head,” Dewar replied. ”I didn't want to go with you; you insisted and then dumped me. I'll not forget it.”
Prospero stared at him, incensed. ”That's thy message? Wilt challenge me, spratling? I warrant thee, thou'lt not find it healthful exercise.”
”I'm not continuing in this farce. I've been trailing you all over the Well-be-scorched countryside to settle-”