Trayn was astounded when he found himself continuing to meet her gaze without flinching.
"They must find us quite a bit more than 'annoying' if you've come all this way just to trap a journeyman mage who hasn't even completed his studies yet," he heard his own voice say. "I imagine your 'superiors' would have preferred someone a bit more experienced in the use of his powers. Or perhaps not." He actually managed to bare his teeth at her. "Perhaps they thought it would be . . . safer all round to settle for a journeyman?"
"Rethak," Tremala said. Trayn had prepared himself for the fresh blow, but the sorceress' voice stopped the wizard in mid-swing. She tilted her head to one side, regarding Trayn thoughtfully, then shrugged.
"You've a bit more spunk than I anticipated, Master Aldarfro," she acknowledged. "And for all I know, there may actually be something to your theory. On the other hand, it's not often we're given the name of a specific individual they want to see. And I'm very much afraid," she shook her head in mock sympathy, "that it often ends . . . badly for the individuals in question when we are."
"I'm flattered." He hoped she couldn't tell how hard it was to keep his voice level when someone had just replaced the marrow of his bones with ice. "But isn't this the point in all the really bad stories where the gloating villains tell their hapless victim all about their grand, complicated plans?"
"I believe it is," she agreed. "I, on the other hand, have better things to do with my time. We're about to have a few other guests we need to keep properly entertained, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave you to your own devices. Do try to keep yourself amused."
She smiled brightly at him, pressed with a heel, and went cantering off into the darkness.
"Don't worry." Rethak's tone was ugly as Trayn let his neck muscles relax and pressed his face back into the side of the horse over which he was bound. "You'll find plenty to keep you 'entertained' where you're going, mage. I'll look forward to helping amuse you."
VIII
"Things are getting complicated," Wencit murmured.
Ken Houghton heard the wizard over his earphones and glanced at him. Wencit was gazing off into the darkness in the direction of the brilliant blue lightning flash which had split the night. Gauging distances in the dark was always difficult, but the flash had to have been considerably farther off than it had looked. Houghton hadn't heard even the faintest rumble, and any lightning bolt that brilliant must have been accompanied by the mother of all thunderclaps.
He waited for Wencit to say something more, but the wizard only frowned thoughtfully as long, slow seconds trickled past.
"I beg your pardon?" Houghton said finally, and wanted to laugh at his own astonishingly banal turn of phrase.
"Um?" Wencit turned towards him, wildfire eyes thinning down into bright slits.
"You said things are getting complicated." Houghton chuckled with harsh irony. "Given the way Jack and I got here in the first place, and all of the certifiably insane things you've had to say since we did, 'getting complicated' isn't exactly a phrase I'm delighted to be hearing."
"I can see how you might feel that way," Wencit conceded with a chuckle of his own. "And I really didn't mean to sound mysterious. It's just that I've been continuing that wrestling match I mentioned to you earlier, and I think their glamour's sprung a slight leak. Unless, of course, they wanted to let me have a peek inside."
"And why might they have wanted anything like that?"
"I couldn't really say . . . yet." Wencit shrugged. "It's rather like a game of chess, I suppose. Or perhaps the sort of misdirection in which a stage conjurer specializes. You show the other fellow what you hope he'll see in order to keep him from noticing the knuckleduster coming at him from an entirely different direction." He snorted. "As a matter of fact, I've done it myself, on occasion."
"Somehow I fail to find that particularly reassuring," Houghton said dryly while Tough Mama continued to snort along. The JP-8 in the LAV's fuel tanks had fallen to about the halfway point, and Houghton hoped they weren't going to end up running them dry before they got wherever the hell they were supposed to be going.
"Did that 'peek' of yours tell you how much farther we've got to go?" he asked.
"No," Wencit said. "But that-" he waved one-handed in the direction of the silent lightning bolt "- tells me quite a bit."
"How?"
"That flash was Bahzell," Wencit said simply.
"So he's a lightning rod, is he?"
"As a matter of fact," Wencit actually laughed out loud, "that's a remarkably good description of Bahzell Bahnakson, in a great many ways. But the lightning didn't strike him, Gunnery Sergeant. It came from him. Well, from him and Walsharno."
"Sure it did." Houghton decided he should have sounded rather more skeptical than he actually did.
"They can be a bit flamboyant," Wencit said. "Mind you, Bahzell is a Horse Stealer, too. He knows the value of creeping about in the bushes, and he's quite good at it, when he puts his mind to it. But he must have decided the 'bad guys,' as you call them, already know he's in the vicinity. You might say that was his way of warning them that he knows they are, as well."
"And he thinks sending up flares to tell the other side he's coming is a good idea because -?"
"I could say it's because he's a champion of Tomanâk. Or because he's a hradani. Both of those statements are true, and either one would be more than enough to explain it. But I imagine the simple truth is that he and Walsharno are angry, Gunnery Sergeant. And, believe me, you really don't want to be the person who makes those two angry."
"But if you're already concerned about the odds, doesn't that mean . . . ?"
Houghton let his voice trail off. There was no need to finish the question, after all.
"Very few champions of Tomanâk die in bed." There was little humor left in Wencit's quiet reply. "Bahzell is capable of remarkable subtlety, despite the slow-talking barbarian persona he's fond of presenting to the unwary, but at the heart of him, where all the things that made him a champion in the first place come together, he doesn't let the odds dictate his actions."
"Great," Houghton grunted in a long-suffering tone. "I end up in an entirely different universe, and I'm still dealing with John Waynes."
"'John Waynes'?" Wencit repeated.
"Idiots who have trouble separating movies-stories-from reality and think they're immortal and bulletproof because they're the heroes of the piece. Or the kind who still think people win wars by dying for their countries, instead of encouraging the other guy to die for his country. Or, even worse, who just don't care what happens to them-or anyone else-as long as they're dying for 'the cause.' Whatever the hell 'the cause' happens to be this week. Trust me, I've seen more than enough of that kind of fanatic to last me two or three lifetimes, Wencit!"