I shouldn’t have worried. I’ve never seen him fire one before, but Dad is a master at the crossbow.
It was about midday. We were making good time. The flatlands were slowly turning greener as we got closer to the river. There was a rise ahead of us, and on the plains we could just make out the haze in the sky where towns and rivers were hidden. The town was perhaps an hour away. The wind on the abandoned plains was dusty and hot. I didn’t notice anything was wrong until Dad shouted at us to hide in the hay.
I looked around. I couldn’t see far because of all the dust in the wind. Ahead of us, there were great big clouds of it. And above it, something else on the wind. It was the smell of fire. I asked Dad what was happening. He pushed the horses harder, cracking the reins with one hand while reaching for the bow with the other. I reached over and handed it to him. It was much heavier than I expected. There was a black silk strap fastened to it. In the folds of it, the bright, sharp points of bolts caught the light. Dad slung it over his shoulder.
“Bandits,” he said simply, and turned back to the horses. I ducked back into the hay. Next to me, Gloria had nestled herself down. She was already half hidden, and was absorbed in reading her book. She seemed completely lost in it, and was reading to herself, so low that I couldn’t make out the words. Bandits, I thought. Part of me was terrified, and part of me was really excited. I clutched my dagger, in case one of them tried to get at us.
Grandfather was a mighty slayer of bandits, in his day, bringing order where order could not bring itself. He was fond of saying, although always out of earshot of the authorities, that much of his business was founded by liberating the gold that had been taken from the innocent. He was a hero to these sorts of little villages, the kind that could only afford to give him bread. He said that other, more stuck up adventurers turned down that kind of offer, but he’d always snap it up. The bandits, he said, always had extra gold.
When they emerged from the wall of smoke and dust, they weren’t anything like the romantic images I got from Grandfather. From somewhere ahead of us there was the sound of a horn, then, more sounds. A thundering ran through the ground, and the plains shook with the force and the echoing sounds of hooves, paws, and claws. Then, the debris parted, and they were riding out towards us.
They were a filthy and entirely mismatched band. They wore rags and whatever bits of old leather or rusty metal they could find for armor. Most of them were human, but there were others: gnomes on snarling war dogs and dwarves on shaggy ponies. There were even a few orcs on their monstrous, goat-like mountain beasts, and goblins, renegades of the swampy north riding wolves that howled and snarled as they came. Some of them had bundles of stolen goods on their saddles, and others, mainly the orcs and men, were dragging women and children stumbling behind their chargers. These weren’t bandits at all, but slavers!
Rag-tag though they were, the slavers were well armed, at least, and each rider brandished a club or sword as they rode across the plain towards us. Father wasted no time, but fired his first shot before they were within a hundred feet of us. The bolt shot from the bow impossibly fast, and left a trail of silver sparks behind it. There was a bright flash, like a lightning strike, where the bolt came to rest. It struck one of the horses in the neck. The beast threw its rider and trampled him, but the horde, if they took notice of their comrade at all, kept coming. They were a great number, at least fifteen riders coming closer with every second. Dad reloaded, and I hunkered down in the cart and tried to hide myself some more. I shook Gloria’s shoulder, and tried to warn her of the danger, but she just looked at me sharply and kept reading from that leather-bound book of hers. It was sized for a human, and seemed almost comically huge in her delicate, doll hands. But this was no laughing matter.
I couldn’t see them coming from where I was hidden, but I heard the noises of ratchet, line, and bolt as Dad reloaded the crossbow again and again. But the sound of hooves got closer anyway, until we were surrounded. I peeked my head up from my hiding place. There were ten of them left, and they circled the cart, occasionally striking at my father when they were close enough, trying to batter him down before he could reload. He used the heavy ironwood stock of the bow as a club, and knocked one of them off his pony, but he got back up, and swung at Dad with his short sword. I thin stream of red blood appeared on his leg, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from crying out.
Dad couldn’t hold them off forever, and what could Gloria do to help? It was up to me. My heart was pounding like a jackhammer, but I breathed deep and thought about the fire. Fear and pain had brought out those spells in me before, but I could barely remember them. They were like a dream I could recall parts of, or a song whose melody I knew, but had lost the words to. I was sure that my fear would be the key. It had come to me before, when Dad was conscripted, and beneath the hill in Shadyborough. It wasn’t there. I was powerless.
“Dad, we have to run! We have to get out of here!” I shouted at him.
“We can’t run, poppet. Even if we could brake from them, they’d just ride us down. And I owe your Grandfather far too much to waste all the training he gave me growing up like that. I may not have been the warrior he wanted me to be, but I’ll be damned if I’ll show this rabble my back. Stay low, and stay quiet!” He managed a shot on one of the Orcs. I would swear that I saw the bolt curve in its path, and the shot that should have missed struck the rider squarely in the back, toppling him in a shower of silver lights.
But there were still too many. One of the bolder ones, a Gnome, brought his riding hound in close, and dismounted with a clipped order in his people’s tongue. The beast meekly lay down, and he stood. He was covered in dust and dirt, and wore a tattered blue cap that was probably blue beneath the grime. His face was covered by a thin and patchy goatee. Swaggering like a lord returning to his manor, he walked over to the cart and hopped into the back. I watched his eyes turn from one corner to the other, and his nose sniff the air, as though testing it for something. He finally caught the site of Gloria and smiled unpleasantly. As he descended upon her, she just closed her book and sighed. She kept mumbling, though and although I couldn’t understand the words, I finally realized that it was a spell. As the brigand got closer and unsheathed a tarnished dagger, she clamped her hand down on his wrist, much to his surprise. Things happened very quickly after that.
“Shocking. Grasp.” She recited the two common words crisply and sharply, with the ring of confidence and satisfaction in her voice. Then there was a pop, and her hand flashed blue, for just a second. The next moment, he was on the ground of the plain, shrieking and shaking. His cap was smoking on his head. Her spell wasn’t very strong, I could somehow tell, but the lightning that gathered in her hand had thrown him from the cart. At the front, Dad was still doing his best, but the noose was tightening on us. A man climbed in and stabbed him in the back with and axe. He cried out in pain, and bent forward. I shouted, and that’s when the lightning appeared.
It cleft out of the sky and forward like a living thing. It leapt from one slaver to the next, arcing and hissing sparks. My hair stood on end, even though it was never closer than five feet from me. For the first second, I thought that I had done it, until I saw the figure descending from the sky.
“That’s Chained lightning,” Gloria whispered to me. “I’ve seen Grandmother Gloriana do it once. It’s highly advanced magic.” We watched the man descend, and to me he seemed to me an angel. He wore white robes, although the hem was stained with dust and ashes, and his hair was long, and silver, not gray, like an aging person’s, but a pure and shining mane. It streamed about and framed his features as he descended. His skin was firm and pale, as though he was carved from white marble, and his eyes were violet and set at an angle in his long face. They rested just below his long and pointed ears. He was no angel, but an Elf!
In the wake of his spell, the riders had broken in chaos. Only a few were still mounted, and those that were scattered. A few who had lost their horses were limping towards what they thought was safety. Now I understood. They weren’t riding towards us, but they were riding away from their pursuer!
A second figure robed in white appeared, with a high cowl blocking the view of his face. The bandits, who had begun to fall into formation again, scattered, but not before he raised his hands and some kind of ray, like a foggy cone of blackest night filled the space between them. The riders and runners fell, and the two figures came together and walked towards us. The second lowered his hood, and together they seemed opposites of one another. The Elf’s companion was a Man, tall where the Elf was short, and muscular where he was slender. He was completely bald, without even eyebrows or lashes, and his skin was very, very dark. He seemed carved of the rare, tropical wood that my father sometimes traded in. As they got closer, I could see that their robes bore, in one tiny corner, a familiar crest. They were of the Carbein Academy of High Magic, where Gloria’s grandmother taught, and we were to be students.
Father could barely sit up, much less stand to meet them. Without a word, the Man checked his pulse, pulled a tiny blue vial from the pocket of his robe, and poured the contents down his throat. Dad coughed, stood up straighter, and rubbed his back. It was the Elf that greeted us warmly, though.
“Good afternoon. I am Magus Celon, of the Carbein Academy of High Magic, and this is my associate, Mr. Kay, of the same. Would I be mistaken in identifying you as the merchant Master Vernes and his charges?”
