Strat heeled the bay horse around as if it were a sunny day on the parade ground, then launched it at the only stand of trees in sight. Walegrin watched the bobbing lantern for a few moments before it disappeared.
"Move in. We haven't been hit yet," he yelled to the garrison men who, like himself, held the strange green-cast steel of Enlibar in their fists and were somewhat insulated from whatever assaulted them. "Well, do something, Randal!" he added for the benefit of the mage who had vanished back into the darkness. "Use that bloody ball of yours!"
As abruptly as it had begun, the droning ceased. Except for the one in the field, the horses quieted and got back to their feet. One of the men slogged through the mud groping for a torch, but Walegrin called him back to the circle.
"It's not over," he warned in a soft voice. "Randal?"
He crouched down by the window, expecting to see the freckled mage bathed in the glow of his magic. Instead he walloped his chin on Randal's helmet.
"Shouldn't you be doing something with that globe? Raising some sort of defense for us?"
"I don't have the globe," the mage admitted slowly. "We never intended to move it or the Stormchildren. Sorry. But there's no one out there, no one watching us in any way."
Walegrin grabbed the mage by his helmet and twisted it around until Randal was facing him. "There bloody well better be someone watching us-a whole damned estate full of some-ones watching us."
"Of course there is," Randal sighed as he freed himself. "But no one, well, magically inclined."
"What happened, then? The horses just decided to panic? The oxen just felt like sinking into the mud? I imagined there was a swarm of bees in my head?"
"No, no one's saying that," a familiar voice, Molin's voice, called from the nearby darkness. "We don't know what happened any more than you do." He swung down from his horse, handing the reins to one of the five garrison men who'd accompanied him down from the abandoned estate.
For once Walegrin was not about to be mollified by his patron's soothing phrases. His men had been endangered for nothing. A horse, no easy thing for the garrison to replace, was this very moment being put out of its misery. His complaints and opinions were still flowing freely when a lantern was seen to emerge from the trees.
"Strat?" Walegrin yelled.
There was no reply heard above the sound of the pelting rain. Each man silently put his hands back on his sword and waited until the bay was an arm's length from the ox-cart and Strat's grim, torchlit face could be seen clearly.
"Haught."
"What?"
"Haught," Strat repeated, throwing a piece of dark cloth onto the drover's bench. "And someone else-maybe Moria, maybe dead."
"Haught?" Randal poked his head out. "Not Haught. He's got Ischade's mark on him. I'd have recognized-"
"I'd recognize him before you would," Strat interrupted, and there was no one in the group who could gainsay that claim.
"Does that mean Ischade?" Molin asked nervously. They accepted the necromant as the lesser of the two witches, but even so neither was a force that any man. except Straton, was comfortable with.
"It means Haught. It means he wants the globe. It means he wants to be Roxane, Datan, or some other bloody magician. You can take the Nisi away from Wizardwall but you can't boil the treachery out of their blood."
Molin stood silent for a moment after Strat had finished. "At least, then, it wasn't Roxane. Tempus will be glad to hear that."
The other groups Tempus had assigned to guard the oxcart's progress were beginning to appear. Crit came up with a half-dozen Stepsons, most of whom appeared to have heard Strat's accusations or at least had no desire to look their erstwhile field commander full in the face. The 3rd Commando, or a good sized part of it, rode up from behind. Whatever Tempus's opinion of the operation, he'd made certain it didn't lack for manpower.
"I think we've found out what we wanted to know," Molin said, not quite takingcommand away from Strat, Crit, and Walegrin, but eliminating the need for them to decide who was in command. "Randal, borrow a horse. We'll head back for the palace. They'll want to know what's happened. Straton- you should probably come along. The rest of the Stepsons can lend a shoulder to the garrison men in getting this cart turned around and back to the palace. I'll leave it to you two," he nodded toward Critias and Walegrin, "to decide if you need the Third's help. I've arranged for brandy and roast meat to be waiting at the palace barracks: Be sure that everyone- regulars. Stepsons, and the Third if they want it-gets a share."
Molin waited until Randal had directed a docile-looking horse toward Straton before turning his own gelding away from the men gathered around the ox-cart. Critias had ridden down to talk to the 3rd and Walegrin was proving himself quite capable of getting the oxen to turn the cart around. A few riders from the 3rd split off toward Strat and Randal but most of them headed back toward the General's Road and whatever billets they had Downwind or near the Bazaar.
He held the gelding to a slow walk a good number of paces behind them. They were all Rankan people, allied in one way or another to the Emperor or the remnants of the Vashankan priesthood he was no longer on good terms with. They were probably as uncomfortable around him as he was around them but here they had him outnumbered.
The riders were well beyond the ox-cart and still a good distance from the walls when Molin felt the first twinges of divine curiosity. Blood-red auroras rose from the horizon; the ground heaved and stretched, moving him further apart from the others. Despite the rain soaking through every garment he wore, the priest felt a cold, nauseous sweat break out on his forehead and spread, quickly, until it reached his weak, suddenly numb knees.
Stormbringer.
Gathering every mote and shred of determination, Molin concentrated on weaving his fingers around the saddle hom. Not there. Not on a rain-swept field with Tempus's men all around him. His heart pounded wildly. He heard, but could not feel, the loose stirrups clanking against the lace-studs of his boot.
One step. One more step. The longest journey is made of single-
The red auroras rose until they touched the zenith. Molin felt the scream trapped in his throat as the god reached out and pulled him from his body, mind and soul.
"Lord Stormbringer," he said, though he had no proper voice in the featureless, ruddy universe where he met with the primal storm god.
You tremble before me, little mortal.
The roaring came from everywhere and nowhere. Molin knew it well enough to know it could be louder, more painful, and that the present modulation revealed a certain, dangerous, humor.
"Only a foolish mortal would fail to tremble before you, Lord Stormbringer."
A foolish mortal who seeks to elude me? I do not have time to waste searching for foolish mortals.
Here, in the god's universe or perhaps within the god, there was no place for hidden thoughts or verbal gymnastics. There was only nothingness and the raw, awesome power of Stormbringer himself.
"I have been such a foolish mortal," Torchholder acknowledged.
You trouble yourself with the opinions of those not sworn to me or the children. You know that all Stormgods are but shadows of me-as Vashanka is a shadow I have abandoned, the llsig god a shadow I have forgotten, and the one they call "Father Enlil" a shadow which shall not fall across Sanctuary.