MtG 02 - Clayton Emery - Whispering Woods by Whispering Woods (v1.0)

Author:Whispering Woods (v1.0)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

Despite riding hard and clutching the struggling dancing girl, the black rider had seen his comrades fall. He kicked his mount to stay ahead. Gull reckoned him a coward, or else too proud to give battle. Or maybe he wanted to escape with his prize.

Barking commands at his mount, the knight cut Gull's path, slid around a tree too big to die in the fire. The rider then slewed around another tree, making the mount dance. They approached the lip of the star crater. On more open ground, the captain would have the advantage. Pusuing a veteran horseman on a splendid horse, Gull would never catch him.

Unless he threw his only weapon.

He saw no alternative, for his own horse was foundering. The captain, on the better mount, would escape with Lily.

And if man and mount returned to whatever land they'd been summoned from (by this unknown wizard), Lily would go too, and Gull would lose her.

Suddenly Gull didn't want to lose Lily.

Rising in bare feet in the stirrups, bouncing wildly as the horse bounded and slewed, Gull hoisted the long, heavy axe over his shoulder and pitched it. He grunted with the effort, crashed in the saddle so as not to spill off. To lose the chase was to lose Lily.

The axe spun like ball lightning. Too low, haft first, it dinged the horse on the rump, bounced off the captain's back, ricocheted into the black-green undergrowth.

Nothing, thought Gull. His last shot gone.

But it was enough.

Touched in mid-stride, the horse crowhopped in the air. Burdened with a struggling Lily, the black captain tugged the reins, hollered to calm the animal, but confused by commands and the odd touch, it balked.

Or did it shy for some other reason? Gull couldn't see what.

No matter. For a second, the enemy was still.

Gull kept coming. And hit them.

With no weapon save his body, he steered his blowing horse alongside the captain's, plucked feet from the stirrups, hopped one foot to the saddle pad, and leaped.

An awkward leap in darkness from a surging platform toward a moving target. But again, enough.

Gull's right hand batted the captain's shoulder, slipped off, snagged his cloak. His bad shoulder banged the man's back, and Gull growled with pain, for the knights wore a backplate too. Slipping, his ribs slammed the saddle cantle, creaking and winding him. But his left found purchase on the captain's reins, and Gull hung on. He could smell the captain, smoke and manure and garlic and perfume. He heard guttural curses. Lily bleated as Gull's elbow rammed her lower back.

Thumped once more by a strange source, the horse sidestepped.

Thus Gull learned why the beast had balked.

They perched on the very lip of the star crater.

The horse lost its footing.

Three humans and one animal howled as they spilled over the edge in a tangle of arms, legs, horseflesh, black and white clothes.

The dark horizon whirled past Gull's vision. He was head up, then head down. The captain's cloak fluttered around him. Lily's white legs whapped his jaw.

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