The Warlock Enraged by Christopher Stasheff

Author:Christopher Stasheff
Language: eng
Format: epub

9

The sun was low, ahead and to the left, bathing the road, and the dusty leaves that bordered it, in an orange glow that made the whole world seem somewhat better than it really wasâ”nd Rod began to relax as he gazed at it. It was a magical road, somehow, twisting away through gilded leaves to some unguessable, wonderful faery world ahead.

Around the turn, a man cried out in alarm, and a chorus of bellowing shouts answered him. Quarterstaves cracked wood on wood, and clanked on iron.

Rod stared, snapping out of his reverie. Then he barked "Charge!" and Fess sprang into a gallop. The cart rattled and bumped behind him, melons and cabbages bouncing out into the roadway. Rod swerved into the turn with one wheel off the groundâ”nd saw a gray-haired man whirling a quarterstaff high, low, from side to side, blocking the furious blows of three thick-bodied, shag-haired thugs with five-day beards. Two of them had iron capsâ”hich was just as well, since they weren't very good with their staves. Even as Rod watched, the gray-head managed to crack his staff down on one of their skulls. The man howled and flinched back, pressing a hand to his head; then, reassured that he wasn't injured, he roared and leaped back into the fight, flailing a huge, windmilling arc of a blow that would have pulverized anything in its way. But the older man's staff snapped out at an angle, blocking the blowâ”nd the thug's stick shot down the smooth wood, straight toward the victim's knuckles. The traveller's staff pushed farther, though, coming around in a half circle, and the thug's stick plowed into the ground. By that time, the other end of the older man's staff was swinging up to block a short, vicious blow from the thug on the other side.

Anger flared in Rod, the smoldering resentment of injustice. "Anybody that good has earned help!" Rod snapped. "We can't let him be killed just because he's outnumbered! Never!"

Fess's hooves whipped into a blur that no real horse could have managed. Rod swung his whip back, fighting against his own anger to withhold the blow until the right moment.

A handful of soldiers broke through the screen of brush at the roadside, riding into view from a woodland track.

Rod hauled on Fess's reins—not that the horse needed it; but it helped Rod to force down his anger, contain the frustration at not striking out. "Hold it, Fess! Company's coming. Maybe we'd better leave this goodman to natural processes."

The sergeant saw the fracas, swung his arm in an overhand circle that ended pointing toward the thugs, and shouted as he kicked his mount into a gallop. His troopers bellowed an answer, and their horses leaped into a charge.

The thugs were making too much noise to hear, until the soldiers were only thirty feet away. Then one of them looked up and shouted. The other two turned, stared for one moment of panic, then whirled and plunged into the underbrush with howls of dismay.

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