Radstac would swing the blade up into Abraxis's abdomen, gutting the wizard. She saw he was already bleeding from his scalp, dark droplets flecking the ground. She planted her feet, seized a handful of his robe and cocked back her arm, muscles pulling taut.
At that moment Tyber's face erupted into flame. A sharp maddened shriek accompanied this, as Tyber reeled to one side, hands clawing at the licking tongues of fire that had appeared so suddenly and impossibly, without any combustion. He blundered hard into Aquint, who in turn crashed against the stall with the red and yellow awning, tumbling the rest of its wares to the ground.
Radstac smelled the terrible cooking meat on the air.
She swung with the blade, but the fire had been an effective distraction. Abraxis took advantage of it, twisting himself once again, so that the knife sliced through the robe's fabric, glancing off flesh, then bone, but not cutting deeply enough to bring the wizard down.
She knew that she was going to be the next thing to burst into flame. She let go of the blade, rather than trying to pull it out of the tangle of Abraxis's robe. Tyber fell, his head roaring with fire, as thick and bright as the head of a torch. He writhed and made more awful noises. Aquint was trying to scramble back onto his feet.
Abraxis was grimacing, but his lips were working again, his hands in motion. Radstac felt a heat gathering over her, harsh and dry and smothering. In another eye blink, she knew, she would be enveloped in the fiery magic.
The bolt struck Abraxis in his back, just to the left of his backbone. He reared up to his full height. Deo had smuggled the crossbow into the marketplace, wrapping it in a small rug. He had taken up a sniper's vantage near the edge of the market. Radstac hadn't expected that they would require his services. She had, frankly, foreseen this episode much differently from how it was turning out. A fast cut and run. Abraxis not knowing what was happening until it was too late. She had put much faith in her own abilities.
The heat around her was climbing. But she was faster than this magic. She had survived so very many battles by simply being faster than her enemies.
Her heavy combat sword seemed to leap eagerly from its sheath into her ready hands, an ominous weight, the blade glinting sinisterly. She swung it as she had swung it many times before, a hard clean hack, backed by her sinewy strength and the tenacity of her simple philosophy. Survive. Always survive. Beat the enemy, whoever it may be.
Radstac's blade caught the mage's throat just below the ear. The metal went into the flesh, did not pause for the bone it met and came back out into the air, showering blood in a wide thick spray.
The head dropped to the ground, rolled wetly, came to a stop. The body held itself upright an instant, acting now without any directives, then collapsed gracelessly.
Radstac sheathed her sword and tore the red bag from the headless corpse's shoulder. With her other hand, she seized and wrenched Aquint onto his feet. His eyes were wide and horrified. On the ground, Tyber had gone silent.
It had all happened quite fast, as such things often did. But it was most certainly time to flee the scene.
Deo had already disappeared from the market. Radstac held the bag hard to herself as she and Aquint sprinted off. It was, quite possibly, the fate of the Felk war that was inside this bag. And Radstac found she did indeed have an opinion about that war.
PRAULTH (5)
These weren't maps of ancient engagements, celebrated by fastidious military scholars and studied with compulsive exactitude by University students. She had been one of those students, one of the most astute and promising, in fact. War studies had consumed the bulk of her intellectual interest. Master Honnis had been her caustic mentor, a man she had judged to be as intent and single-minded as herself. She had been wrong. Honnis had lived a life she knew nothing of, a life that included the active practicing of magic and participation in a vast scouting network that had kept track of this war since its inception.
Not faded brittle papers, these. Not testimonials of warfare that had occurred a hundredwinter and more before her birth, and which absorbed her strictly as an intellectual abstraction, without any true thought ever given to the unruly bloodshed and final human cost of the events.
No. These maps and intelligence reports spread before her were very much alive. They were news of events occurring in the present and still unfolding, and very much requiring her attention.
And like many things that occurred in the here and now, these events were not going as planned.
Praulth was on her feet, staring down at the maps as Merse delivered them, the ink still glistening. The Far Speak magician was apparently receiving field intelligence from a number of different sources, which was serving to give Praulth a clearer picture of what was happening north of this city of Petgrad.
The cluster of minor diplomats inhabiting the auditorium pressed near to get a look, sensing something important transpiring. Praulth's scarf of metallic red kept swaying into her line of sight, and with a grunt of annoyance she unknotted it and tossed it behind her. Now, she realized with clear understanding, wasn't the time to worry about how she was going to look for any future portraits.
An ambassador's assistant from Ebzo jostled her left elbow. "What's going on?" he wanted to know, eyes squinting confusedly at the arrayed maps. "Is the Alliance winning?"
Praulth felt the very uncharacteristic urge to backhand the man across his balding skull. Instead she called, "Xink!"
He was at her side immediately. "General Praulth?"
"Clear any extraneous personnel. I need room to work."
It was a treat for Xink, being ordered to take some positive physical action on her behalf. He wasn't gentle about clearing the curious from the auditorium's dais.
Praulth had remained vigilant here throughout the day and now into the night. She had received the reports of initial visual contact between the Felk and Alliance forces. Cultat had arrayed the aggregate army, which he led according to Praulth's instructions. A "vulnerability" was placed among the front ranks, a company of noticeably weak strength, bait that Dardas was meant to recognize. Apparently he had, for the Alliance scouts had then reported that the Felk were moving small units east and west, presumably having discovered the Alliance's flanking gambits. These, too, were bait, however; and if Dardas had followed through, using (here Praulth adjusted for the magical capabilities of the Felk) Far Movement wizards to transport companies against the Alliance flankers, then the Felk army would have left itself susceptible to an attack that would have cut it in two.
But that wasn't what had happened.
Dardas had evidently abandoned his maneuvers against the Alliance's flanks. New strategies were arising, ones not documented in war studies texts that she knew from memory. Dardas was adapting. Dardas was strategizing in the present. Dardas would have to be engaged by an equal tactician.
"Tell me what's happening."
She looked up abruptly. Merse was standing on the opposite side of the table, plainly addressing her, though his eyes looked past her and weren't quite focused. His hand clutched the familiar-looking bracelet.
"Who's asking?"
"Cultat," Merse said. "I'm speaking to a scout here, and she is relaying the words to you. Praulth, time is crucial. What is happening?"
"The Felk aren't moving to outflank your forces," she said. "The trap has failed." She heard several gasps from the diplomats who had regrouped a safe distance from the dais. Xink, standing off to one side now, turned his head sharply toward her. The words felt like knives in her throat.