To Wield the Wind by Remi Black

Author:Remi Black [Black, Remi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Writers Ink Books
Published: 2019-05-04T22:00:00+00:00

~ 10 ~

`Ware attack!

The words rang her awake. She woke to a horse’s terrified neigh and the warning still rolling through her head.

Throwing back her blanket, she sprang up. “Grim!”

“Here.” Back to her, he stood with the horses on the fire’s other side. He held Ghost’s reins. Eyes rolling, the dappled grey strained at the reins. He kicked back, throwing dirt into the darkness. The chestnut’s jug head arched forward, big teeth bared, like a snarl at something beyond the ever-shifting light.

She scrambled into her boots then rushed to Grim’s side. “What is it?”

“Don’t know. The horses alerted. That woke me. Then something tested the wards.”

Nothing moved in the smothering dark beyond the sphere of firelight. Ghost made too much noise to hear anything. “Did you use the symbol of chaos that Lady Bone reminded us of?”

“Do you want to be in the Lady’s debt?”

“If I use it, since she gave it to me through her knight, we would risk that. She did not give it to you. Can you not use it?”

“You’ve parsed a fine distinction. She, however, would sense any disturbance in the element and interpret it however she wished. There.”

For a half-second, twin shards of silvery light shined in the darkness. Then it vanished.

“Wyre?” she whispered. “The whole pack of them?”

“Doesn’t smell like that.”

She sniffed. An acrid tang pierced her nostrils. The smell reminded her—no, memory eluded her. “You should have called me earlier.”

“I didn’t call you.”

“You didn’t shout `Ware attack? Look!” Again she saw the twin gleam, joined by another pair. She flashed light.

In the brief seconds of the bright spell, two stunted creatures stood frozen. Open mouths revealed fangs. One gripped a broken branch like a club. The other twisted a coil of rope. Even in the spell’s warm yellow light, their eyes had a silvered glow, like the partially-shifted wyre. Sickly green rimmed their eyes, obvious sorcery in use.

Her spell faded. Leaves rustled as the gobbers shifted position.

“How long can you hold that spell?”

Her power might not be great, her hoard of spells might be few, but what she did have, she knew how to use. “As long as you need it.” And she re-lit the bright spell.

He thrust Ghost’s reins at her and drew his sword. In his left hand, he shaped a sphere, ghostly pale, swirling with the energy of controlled Air. “Be ready.”

She remembered the gobber fleeing her camp. “It’s only two. They won’t attack.”

“More than two. Be ready, Orielle.” On the word, he whirled and jumped behind her.

She heard a high-pitched squeal, pig-shrill, and saw a trio of the creatures dodging back from the swing of Grim’s sword.

A fourth gobber flung dirt on the fire. The flames sputtered. More dirt landed on the fire.

Ghost tried to rear. She jerked his head down. “Not now.”

A hard thwack hit her leg. The branch-wielding gobber swung again. She arced the bright spell at it. The creature screeched and dropped the branch to cover its round eyes. It stumbled away, into another, the one with the coil of rope.

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