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The Gauntlet
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Chapter Four
So much for my knight errant,
Gillian thought, watching her rescuer getting beaten up by a
half-roasted bird. She was about to go rescue the creature when
one of the war mages dove off the side of the ramparts, flinging a
curse in front of him. She acted on instinct, dropping her
all-but-useless shields and throwing up a declive
instead. It took most of her remaining strength, but it worked;
the protection spell acted like a mirror, reflecting the caster’s magic
right back at him.
It caught him
in the middle of his leap, popping his shields and sending him crashing
headfirst into the cart. The vampire had landed on the other end,
and the two hundred pound mage smashing down at the edge of the cart
caused him to go flying, chicken and all. And then she didn’t see
any more, because strong arms clapped around both of hers from behind,
lifting her completely off the ground.
She tried to mutter a curse, but found she couldn’t draw
a breath. The guard—and it had to be a guard, because she was
still alive--was doing his best to squeeze her in two. She
couldn’t aim the staff with him behind her, so she brought it down on
his foot instead, as hard as she could. The man bellowed and
dropped her, and Gillian scrambled away, only to be dragged back by the
ankle.
She rolled over to
try to free herself, and then had to roll again as a knife flashed
down, ripping through her gown and missing her by inches. As he
wrenched it out of the ground, she caught a glimpse of Elinor behind
him, her face pale and her eyes huge. And then the guard dropped
his knife and started screaming.
Gillian scrambled to her feet, ready to grab her daughter and
bolt, assuming he’d been hit by a stray spell. And then she
realized—it was a spell, but it hadn’t gone astray. A coiling
ribbon of reddish gold flame had snaked out of a burning hut and hit
the man square in the back.
At first she thought Elinor must have done it, despite the fact
that it was years too early for that. But a searing pain in her
arm caused her to look down, and she saw the fire glyph on the staff
glowing bright red. She stared at it in disbelief, because she
couldn’t call Fire.
All
coven witches had to specialize in one of the three great
elements—Wind, Fire or Earth—when they came of age, and hers was
Wind. She’d never been able to summon more than one; no one could
except the coven Mothers, who could harness the collective power of all
the witches under their control. But she could feel the drain as
her magic pulled the element through the air, as she called it to
her.
She just didn’t know how she was doing it.
And she didn’t have time to figure it
out. The guard had made the same assumption she had and spun,
snarling, on Elinor. Gillian had a second to see him start for
her daughter, to see his fist lash out—
And then she was looking at the hilt of a knife
protruding from the burnt material of his shirt.
The smell of the charnel houses curled out
into the air, mixing with the tang of gunpowder and the raw-lightning
scent of spent magic. The guard fell to his knees, the blood gushing
hot and sticky from a wound in his side, wetting her hand on the hilt
of his blade. She let go and he collapsed, a surprised look on his face
and blood on his lips. And then Elinor was tugging her away,
shock and pride warring on her small face.
Gillian didn’t feel pride; she felt sick. She wiped
her sticky hand on her skirts, feeling it tremble, like her the breath
in her lungs, like her roiling gut. But the guard’s death wasn’t
the cause. She pulled her daughter into her arms and hugged the
precious body against her, her heart beating frantically in her
chest. She’d almost lost her; she’d almost lost Elinor.
She crouched down beside a nearby well, the
only cover she could find that wasn’t burning, and stared around
desperately for some opening in the crowd. Panic was making it
hard to think, but she shoved it away angrily. She couldn’t
afford weakness now. Weakness would get them killed.
A group of nearby witches was attacking the
stables, but Gillian couldn’t see the point. The horses’ faster
pace might get them beyond range of the archers before their shields
gave out, but that was assuming they made it out at all. And
while the portcullis wasn’t completely down, a mob of guards and
who-knew-how-many protection spells stood in their way.
No. No one was getting through that.
But they might cause a great deal of commotion trying.
She blinked, her heart drumming with sudden
hope. She stared from the battlefield to the high, gray walls
surrounding it. And then she scooped up Elinor and took off,
weaving through the remaining sheds and outbuildings that hugged the
castle walls.
She stopped
when they reached the far side of the castle, squatting beside a wagon
piled with empty barrels and breathing hard. She didn’t think
they’d been seen, but she couldn’t be sure. There were guards
here, too, although not as many. Most had joined the fight and
the rest were staring at it, as if watching her people be slaughtered
was great entertainment.
She probably had a few minutes, at least.
She tugged Elinor behind the wagon and
started working on the ropes holding the barrels, tearing her nails on
the tight knots. “What are you doing?” Elinor was looking at her
strangely.
“Getting us out of this place!”
“There’s no door here,” Elinor said, staring past her at the carnage.
“Don’t look at it,” Gillian told her harshly. “And no door doesn’t mean no exit.”
But not getting one of these barrels loose
might. The knots must have been tied before the previous night’s
rain and they’d shrunk. Try as she might, she couldn’t get them loose,
and while it would be easy with magic, she didn’t have it to
spare. She was ready to scream from frustration when she spied a
little barrel on one edge of the cart that no one had bothered to strap
down.
She rolled it onto
the ground and stood it on its end, glancing about. She didn’t
know if she could do this once, but she certainly couldn’t manage it
twice. The moment had to be perfect.
It came an instant later, when the guards on the
ramparts above them reached the farthest end of their patrol. It
left a brief window with no one on the walls directly overhead. Gillian
stepped back, pointed the staff at the barrel and cast the strongest
levitation spell she could manage.
For a long moment, nothing happened, the small container
merely sat there like a stone. But then, as she watched with her
heart in her throat, it quivered, wobbled slightly and sluggishly
lifted off the ground. She breathed a brief sigh of relief and
jerked the staff towards her. The barrel followed the movement,
but slowly, as though it weighed much more than empty wood
should. But she didn’t start to worry until it began to shake as
if caught in a high gale.
And then to start cursing.
A stumpy little leg suddenly poked out the
bottom, with a big toe sticking out of a pair of dirty, torn
hose. Then a plump arm pushed through the side and a head topped
by wild red curls appeared where, a moment before, the round wooden lid
had been. The head was facing away from her, but the barrel was
slowly rotating, so it wasn’t but a second before a small, furious face
came into view.
It had so
many freckles that it was almost impossible to see skin, but the
militant glint in the hard green eyes was clear enough. “Goddess’
teeth! I’ll curse you into oblivion, I’ll gouge out yer eyes,
I’ll cut off that bald-headed hermit twixt yer laigs and feed him to—”
She paused, getting a good look at the woman standing in front of
her. “Gillian?” Her gaze narrowed and her head
tilted. “Wot’s this, then?”
“Winnie,” Gillian said hoarsely, her brief moment of hope
collapsing as the barrel resolved itself into a stout, four-foot-tall
woman in a green Irish kirtle. “I didn’t recognize—”
“I should demmed well hope not,” Winnie
said, flexing her small limbs. She gently floated to the ground
while rooting around in her voluminous skirts. “’Ere. You
sound like you need this mor’n I do.”
Gillian took the small bottle her friend proffered and
downed a sizeable swallow before realizing it wasn’t water. Now
she couldn’t talk and she couldn’t breathe. “What?” she gasped.
“Me special brew.”
“Didn’t they take it from you, when you
came in?” Elinor asked suddenly. Seeing a familiar face seemed to
have done her good, and she had always liked Winnie.
“Naw. Made it look like a growth on my
thigh, I did. Hairy.” She nodded archly. “Lots o’
moles. The guards din’ want ter get too close.”
Elinor looked suitably impressed.
Gillian gave Winnie back her “brew”--her
wits were addled enough as it was—and she tucked the possibly lethal
concoction away. “Right, then. Wot’s the plan?”
“The plan was to levitate one of these and
ride it out of here!” Gillian croaked.
“There’s about to be an assault on the front gate. If it draws
enough attention, we might be able to slip away while the guards are—”
“Don’t matter,” Winnie broke in, shaking
her head. “The Circle’s got charms on the walls, don’t
they? Try ter go over and poof,” she gestured expressively. “The
spell breaks and ye fall to yer death. Saw a witch try it a
minute ago.”
So much for that
idea, Gillian thought, swallowing. But Winnie’s wouldn’t work,
either. “They’ll check for those in hiding,” she said, trying to
keep the panic out of her voice. “As soon as they’ve rounded up
those who chose to fight!”
“Aye,” Winnie said, imperturbably. “And mebbe they’ll find me and
mebbe they won’t. But fightin’ war mages is nothin’ but a quick
death—if yer lucky.”
“If we had our weapons, they wouldn’t kill us so easily!” Gillian said passionately.
“But we don’t. They’re up there,”
Winnie pointed at a nearby tower. “And ain’t no reaching ‘em.”
“What?” It took a moment for her
friend’s words to sink in. And then Gillian turned her face
upwards, staring at the massive cylinder of stone that loomed above
them, blocking the sun. “They’re right there?”
“Don’t go getting any ideas,” Winnie told
her, watching her face. “I know how ye are about a challenge, but this
one’s a beggar’s chance. There’s a mass o’ guards on the door and
probably more inside. I heard a couple talkin’ about bein’ kept
on duty to help secure the place.”
“That’s never stopped us before,” Gillian murmured, feeling a
little dizzy at the sudden return of hope.
“This ain’t a job, Gil,” Winnie said, starting to look nervous.
Gillian rounded on her, eyes flashing and color high. “No, it’s not a job, Winnie. It’s the job. Our last, if we don’t do this!”
“But we can’t—”
“It’s just another robbery! Only we need this one more than any gold we ever took.”
Winnie put a small hand on her arm. “Gil,
stop for a minute. Stop. Yer’re not gettin’
through that door.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Gillian told her,
staring upwards. “I’m not planning on it.” |
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