The Sentinel Mage (55 page)

“For all of one second. Fithians won’t run screaming from lions, they’ll attack. While you’re ripping out one’s throat, the others will be slicing you up for steak.”

“Yes, but—”

“Less than a minute, we’d both be dead. And most of them would still be alive.”

Petrus closed his mouth.

“We need to get them out of the cave. Split them up.” Gerit crouched and began to draw in the sand with swift, jabbing strokes of his forefinger. “Here’s where they are. And this—” he drew several shapes, “—is what they can see. I’ll walk past, right here.” He gouged deep into the sand, marking it. “Let them see me.”

“But a throwing star—”

“It’s too far. Out of range.” His tone was curt, authoritative. Petrus heard the unspoken message:
I’m senior to you. Don’t challenge my leadership in this.

Petrus nodded, his face carefully neutral.

“They see me,” Gerit said. “They rush down. But all they’ll find are footprints. I reckon they’ll split up to look for me.”

“And we attack them.”

“Once they’ve separated, yes. We can hunt them down one by one.”

Petrus frowned down at the drawing in the sand. “What if they leave a guard in the cave?”

Gerit shrugged. “Throw him out, like we did the other one.”

Petrus studied the marks in the sand.
We need more of us to make this work.
“We could thin their numbers first. Wait until one of them leaves to take a piss or—”

“You got water to drink while we wait?”

Petrus was silent. He was abruptly aware of how dry his throat was. Gerit was right; if they waited much longer, they’d need water.

“Our task is to kill as many of them as we can,” Gerit said brusquely. “And this—” he jabbed his finger into the sand, “is the best way.”

P
ETRUS WATCHED THE
assassins from less than three yards away, his lizard’s body pressed flat to the sandstone. One was on sentry duty, a sword laid over his knees, looking outwards. The others played a game with small pebbles.

The sentry stiffened. “Hsst!” He pointed west.

All six men watched intently as Gerit crossed a stretch of sand, perhaps a hundred yards distant. He was shading his eyes with his hand, stumbling as he walked.

“Shapeshifter?” one of them said, when Gerit had disappeared from sight. “He’s naked.”

No other words were spoken between the men. They seemed to understand each other by curt gestures. The five who’d been at ease snatched up their weapons and clambered out of the cave, passing within a few feet of Petrus, pulling themselves up onto the top of the outcrop and then running soundlessly in their soft leather boots down the long sloping ridge to the sand. The sentry remained behind, his attention fixed unwaveringly on the view of rock and sand in front of him.

Petrus waited until the five men had vanished from sight, then he scuttled up behind the lone assassin. He paused for a moment, filling his mind with what he had to do: shift into himself, toss the man out of the cave, fly down, become a lion and finish him off.

Easy
, he told himself, trying to believe it. He took a deep breath and gathered his magic. The cave shrank around him as he shifted.

The man must have sensed his presence. He half-turned, his mouth opening in surprise.

Petrus tackled the assassin, grabbing him around the chest, heaving him out of the cave.

One moment he was teetering in the cave mouth, wrestling with the Fithian, the next he was falling. He grabbed for his magic, but before he could shift, he hit the ground. The assassin’s weight drove him hard into the sand. Petrus distinctly felt his left thighbone snap.

The assassin rolled off him and sprang to his feet. A throwing star appeared in his hand.

Petrus shifted blindly, without any thought of what he’d become. The spinning blades sliced through the air a foot above him.

What am I?

The answer came as he huddled in the sand: a lizard.

The assassin towered above him. Petrus saw the man’s foot lift, saw the sole of a boot stamping down on him.

Again, he shifted in panic, without thought, swelling in size, knocking the man off his feet. Sharp, curving tusks thrust out on either side of his face, a long trunk hung where his nose had been.

An oliphant.

The assassin scrambled backwards, scuttling like a crab on the sand. Petrus lurched forward, raised his right foot and stamped down, crushing the man’s ribcage. Bones splintered and snapped beneath his weight. The man’s mouth opened. He uttered a sound of agony. With it came blood.

Petrus raised his foot again. The assassin didn’t move. He lay crushed on the sand.

Petrus lowered his foot. He swayed, steadying himself with his trunk. Pain and dizziness washed over him. He sank down on the sand. For a moment he lay panting, then he shifted back to his own shape.

By the All-Mother
. His leg—

He gritted his teeth in agony and reached for his magic, placing his hands on his left thigh, letting the magic run from his fingers and burrow under his skin, through flesh and muscle, along bone and blood vessel.

There: a jagged break in his thighbone. The sharp edges of bone had speared deep into his muscles and sliced his artery. Blood spurted with each beat of his heart.

Petrus hastily pinched the artery closed with his magic. He glanced around. Nothing moved except sand blown in eddies by the wind. The only sound was a muted wailing coming from the rock.

Hurry!

It took magic to persuade the spasming muscles to release their grip, and brute strength to pull the bone into place. Petrus was sweating, close to vomiting, by the time the edges of bone slid gratingly together. Panting, he glanced around again. No assassins, no Gerit.

With the bone back in place, he was able to patch the artery more effectively. It was a crude repair, thick and clumsy, but it would keep him alive. His leg needed more—the bone was still broken, the muscles still deeply sliced—but there was no time.

He turned his head at the sound of running footsteps. A man burst around the end of an outcrop, some twenty yards distant. Not Gerit; one of the assassins.

The man skidded to a halt. He reached for something at his waist.

Petrus shifted into the shape of a hawk and lifted clumsily up from the sand. His left leg trailed, making him list. A throwing star whistled past, clanging as it struck sandstone, almost hitting him on its rebound. He clawed at the air with his wings, hauling himself higher. Another throwing star sliced towards him. He veered—too slow—the whirling blades touched him, shearing feathers from his right wing—a puff of white—making him lurch in the air. And then he was out of range.

Five men stood on the sand looking up at him. His feathers drifted down towards them, spinning in the breeze.

H
E FOUND
G
ERIT
lying on a ledge twenty yards up an outcrop of sandstone, a bloody slash down his hip, another across his chest.

Petrus landed awkwardly. He waited for a wave of pain to pass before he shifted. Something warm trickled down his right arm: blood. He had a shallow wound from shoulder to elbow where the throwing star had sheared the feathers from his wing.

He ignored it, leaning forward to examine Gerit’s chest. The gash was so deep he could see white rib bones. “What happened?”

Gerit grunted. “I almost had one,
ouch
—”

“Sorry.” He touched the edges of the wound again, exploring with his magic. It looked much worse than it was: messy, but not life-threatening.

“One of them must have doubled back. I only just got away. My hand...” Gerit grimaced. “If you could do something—”

Petrus turned his attention from the chest wound. Gerit’s right arm lay at an awkward angle, his hand half-hidden in shadow. “What—?” And then he saw: a throwing star was embedded in Gerit’s hand. “By the All-Mother, how did you fly with that?”

“Didn’t,” Gerit said, through gritted teeth. “Bastard got me when I was up here.”

He’d heard Fithians could throw their stars around corners, that they could hit targets they couldn’t even see—but he hadn’t believed it until now. Petrus shuffled closer. The throwing star pinned Gerit’s hand to the sandstone; one of the blades was buried in the rock.

A sound made him cock his head. Hoofbeats, echoing among the forest of sandstone.
We should have set loose their horses before we did anything else.

“How many did you kill?” Gerit asked.

“One.”

“Five left.” Gerit pushed up on his left elbow. “Tomas’s men haven’t a chance! Get me loose. Hurry!”

Petrus took hold of the throwing star with one hand and Gerit’s wrist with the other. A quick wrench and both blade and hand came free. Gerit grunted, his face twisting in pain.

Petrus examined the wound quickly. One blade of the throwing star was embedded to the hilt in Gerit’s palm, the razor-sharp point protruding bloodily from the back of his hand. The other four blades fanned out like grotesque metal fingers.

“Take it out! Hurry! We have to—”

“It’s not that simple.” Bones and nerves and tendons were sheared, not just blood vessels.

“But—”

“You won’t be able to fight. I doubt you’ll be able to fly. Not unless I spend a lot of time fixing the damage.”

Gerit stared at him grimly. “How much time?”

“Hours.”

Gerit’s jaw clenched, then he jerked his head north, towards the desert. “Leave it, then,” he said. “Go!”

Petrus nodded. He released Gerit’s hand. He reached for his magic again, not the gentle magic of healing, but the more vigorous magic he needed for shapeshifting. It came slowly, grudgingly.

“Hurry!” Gerit said.

Shifting was a strain. Everything went gray for a moment. Petrus blinked and shook his head, taking a moment to orient himself. Then he hopped awkwardly to the edge of the ledge and spread his wings.

“Be careful!”

Petrus launched himself from the ledge, catching the updraft. For a few seconds he glided, and then he began to flap his wings.

The broken leg, the missing feathers, made him list drunkenly. He headed for the desert, crawling through the air, barely making headway, his muscles straining.
I’m going to be too late.

CHAPTER SEVENTY

B
Y THE TIME
they were halfway across the desert, the wailing was no longer audible. Silence surrounded them. Silence, and the muffled sound of horses’ hooves on sand. Harkeld watched the sandstone mount loom larger and larger. A strange sensation grew in his chest, as if he was holding his breath.
You’re afraid
, he accused himself.

Ahead, the dark hawk reached the outcrop. He saw it soar up, a tiny shape outlined against the blue sky, and then swoop and vanish inside the dark gash of the cave.

Harkeld unslung his waterskin and gulped a mouthful of lukewarm water. What was there to fear? Nothing. All he had to do was place his hand on a stone, spill a little blood.

He glanced to his left, where Justen usually rode, recalling the armsman’s words:
I don’t care whether you’re a mage or not, sire. You’re the one who cares.

Justen wouldn’t be so imperturbable, so cheerfully indifferent, if
he
were found to be a witch.

The remembered sensation of flames licking over his skin, under his skin, made panic spurt inside him.
It will never happen again
, Harkeld vowed silently.
Ever.

But it had happened once—fire bursting from him—and he’d had no control over it. No control at all.

Harkeld re-stoppered the waterskin. If he could cut out the part of him that was diseased with witchcraft, he would. Anything, to avoid the feeling that flames ate him from the inside out, that he was burning alive.

An idea burst into his mind, so bright, so dazzling, that he was momentarily blinded by it. He blinked. The desert came into focus again—the orange drifts of sand, the outcrop looming ahead, the slash of darkness at its base—but behind those things was memory: a campfire in the forest, rain dripping from trees.
We strip them of their magic
, Dareus had said.
It’s one of the tasks we’re charged with.