The mercenaries, arranged in a wide column, were gaining. Stormweather's horses were bred for strength and endurance, not speed. It was only a matter of time before Tamlin and the house guards were caught. They needed to find favorable terrain to make a stand. Meanwhile, Cale was gaining on the mercenaries, slowly but inexorably.
He saw Ren shouting orders to his men and gesturing, and they cleared out from behind Tamlin. Tamlin turned in his saddle and pointed a finger back at the mercenaries. A bolt of lightning tore through their ranks. Two men and horses fell in tumbling, smoking heaps. The rest veered around the fallen, as did Cale, and continued the pursuit.
"Hyah!" Cale called to his horse, and spurred it harder. It snorted and found a reserve of speed. Cale closed more of the distance.
Shouted orders passed through the mercenary ranks and the group of archers, in the rear of the column, drew their bows.
A flight of arrows arced up and rained down on the Selgauntans. A horse went down and its rider tumbled. Another arrow sank into the shoulder of a house guard. He sagged but held his seat with one hand.
Cale gained a few more strides and figured he was close enough to walk the shadows. He eyed one of the last men in the formation, an archer. He leaned forward and moved through the darkness from his saddle to that of the archer. He appeared behind the man, on the horse's backside. Cale did not even try to stay atop the horse. He drove both daggers through the mercenary's mail and into his kidneys. The man gave an aborted shout and the horse's motion threw him and Cale.
Cale hit the ground in a roll. The impact drove the air from his lungs and displaced his shoulder. He ignored the pain, jumped to his feet, and started sprinting after the mercenaries. His regenerative flesh popped his shoulder back into its socket as he ran.
Cale ran a handful of steps, picked another man at the end of the formation, jumped into the air, and stepped through the shadows to the darkness behind the archer. Cale appeared in midair and wrapped his arms around the throat of the rider. The mercenary uttered a muffled scream for aid as he and Cale fell from the horse. Both grunted as they hit the ground and tumbled. Cale felt a bone crack in his ankle and forearm, but his body quelled the pain as it repaired the break. He gained his feet, located the groaning mercenary, and drove a dagger into his chest and another into his throat.
He stood, prepared to repeat the process, and saw that two of the mercenaries must have heard their comrade shout. They peeled off the formation and charged at Cale, blades high.
Cale held up his shadowhand and intoned a prayer to Mask. An arc of dark energy went forth from his palm and struck both men. Wounds opened in their exposed skin-gashes like mouths spitting blood. Their bones twisted and shattered. Both screamed and fell from their horses. One snapped his neck on impact. Cale drew Weaveshear, bounded forward, and drove the blade through the second rider's chest.
He grabbed the reins of one of the neighing horses, calmed it, swung himself up, and started after the mercenaries once more. He was not close enough to shadowstep, so he spurred the horse on.
He gritted his teeth as another volley of arrows from the mercenaries killed another house guard. The mercenaries' horses stomped his fallen body into the ground as they pursued. Cale saw five glowing magical darts shoot from the fingers of the wizard riding near Malkur and slam into Tamlin's back. He arched with pain but held his saddle. Tamlin turned to look back on the mercenaries, moved his hand through a series of intricate gestures, and pointed.
A blinding cloud of sleet and ice formed and swirled around the mercenaries' center, affecting fully a third of the force. The icy ground sent half a dozen horses down and their riders with them. Men shouted, cursed, railed. Horses neighed, whinnied, bucked.
Cale grinned, thinking the Selgauntans had just improved the odds and might yet escape.
The mercenaries' wizard answered Tamlin's spell with one of his own, and a thicket of fat black tentacles squirmed up from the plains in the Selgauntans' midst. Their horses reared and bucked, and many fell. The house guards shouted, hacked at the tentacles with their blades, all to no avail. The squirming limbs grabbed at everything that moved. Some plucked riders from their mounts, others plucked mount and rider together and lifted them off the earth. In the span of three heartbeats, every Selgauntan was wrapped in a black tentacle. The limbs began to squeeze and the Selgauntans began to scream.
The mercenaries slowed and approached at a more leisurely pace. Cale cursed. He would have to kill the wizard.
He sheathed his daggers and intoned a prayer to Mask. When he finished, dangerous energy charged his hands. He closed the distance to the mercenaries until he was less than a bowshot behind them. He checked the darkness behind the mage and rode the night onto the wizard's horse.
The moment he appeared, he clamped both hands onto either side of the wizard's head and discharged the baleful energy. Wounds erupted all over the wizard's face. Blood spurted from his ears, eyes, and mouth. Cale felt the man's skull crack under his fingertips. The wizard managed only a choked, gurgling scream before Cale let him fall, dead, from his horse.
Malkur's horse and others near Cale whinnied and reared in surprise. The men near him cursed, tried to turn their mounts and bring their blades to bear.
Cale met Malkur's eyes for a moment before he pulled the shadows around him and stepped through them to the edge of the tentacles, ahead of the mercenaries.
The thick limbs entwined men and horses and both screamed as the tentacles continued to constrict. The glowing dust that had covered the Selgauntans no longer shone. Cale held up his hand and intoned a prayer to Mask, pitting the power of his magic against that of the wizard, attempting to undo the wizard's constricting magic.
He felt resistance when his magic met the wizard's spell but Cale's abjuration prevailed. The tentacles vanished in a blink and the men and their mounts fell to the ground, groaning. The bray of a battle horn sounded behind Cale and he turned to receive the mercenaries' charge. The Selgauntans were all going to die, but he would take Malkur and as many mercenaries with him as he could.
But instead of facing the charging mercenaries, Cale saw a second force of spear-armed horsemen streaking across the plains from his right, directly at the attackers. Cale guessed their number to be about double that of Malkur's men.
A rosy glow illuminated the riders and they looked almost celestial galloping through the high grass on their leather-barded warhorses. The glow emanated from the upraised blade of an armored figure who rode at their head-a sandy-haired man in a mail hauberk, helm, and enameled breastplate. He alone bore a blade rather than a horse spear. In his left hand he carried a standard and it billowed straight out behind him: a silver horse rampant on a violet field, the heraldry of Saerb. The rider beside him blew a note on his horn and the Saerbians spread into a line.
"For Saerb!" the riders shouted in unison.
Cale saw a nervous ripple make its way through the mercenary ranks as horses turned circles and men sought orders. Malkur and his sergeants issued commands and the mercenaries formed a makeshift line. The archers let fly a disorganized volley of arrows that found no targets in the onrushing Saerbians.
A few of the house guards behind Cale recovered themselves enough to let out a cheer.
"Huzzah!" shouted one.
Cale thought the mercenaries might make a stand. He considered shadowstepping into their ranks to kill Malkur but did not want to get caught in the Saerbian's charge.