Magic Underground: The Complete Collection (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 4)

by Melinda Kucsera

  The riders fanned out, drew short bows, and fired as they neared. A withering storm of arrows punched through canvas, into sidewalls, and found their mark in too many pilgrims. A few of the wagons slowed, the drivers who had bonded with the animals having been felled, and now the beasts felt the full strain of their exertions. The raiders drew their bows again and let loose with another volley of arrows.

  Several, three it seemed, battered Eihn’s shield, almost driving him into his master and making his arms burn. It felt like these arrows hit harder than the ones before, or was that the wear of the fight dragging his arms down? More cries flew into the air, more bodies tumbled to the sands, and Eihn could see the wagons pulling further apart. The raiders drew again.

  Urkjorman roared. It wasn’t a natural thing, young as he was; even Eihn could tell that the minotaurs’ rage-fueled roar was edged in magic. It quaked like thunder and sent echoes of terror through his blood. For the horses he raged at, it was worse. Many threw their riders to flee, some lost control, and only the most disciplined held pace. The volley of arrows this time was thinner, and no one fell. Still, Eihn couldn’t believe they could hold this forever.

  “Ar … arr,” began Muraheim.

  Eihn understood. “Arrow! Arrow!” he cried. The lead wagons slowed to encompass the slower ones. Some brave pilgrims jumped to wagons with felled drivers to take the reins or lift shields. They were slower now, but now fewer wagons were vulnerable at once. Another volley of arrows flew into the side of the wagons and the satisfying crack of arrows breaking on shields rippled through the air, accompanied by a few cries of pain. The raiders seemed done with arrows now, though whether they were out of ammo or patience Eihn couldn’t tell. The bandits cast aside their bows, drew all manner of murderous weapons, and charged. “Poles! Poles!”

  A raider was pitched from their horse as they ran headlong into one of the wooden poles; another was sent tumbling to the earth with a broken arm as they passed too close to Urk, and a third was sent flying forward as a low pole tripped a horse and sent both man and beast crashing to the ground. It gave Eihn hope, but he knew it wasn’t enough. Three of perhaps twenty, perhaps more.

  Now the raiders did not race through the wedge of wagons but into them, slashing at wagon drivers and reins, stabbing at cowering women, and trying to pull children from their parents’ grasp. Almost too late, Eihn raised his shield as a raider attacked. The black crescent of a blade slid along his shield and sent a slash of pain across his scalp as it tore skin and hair above his eye. A cry of pain burst from Eihn’s lips, but he kept enough presence of mind to lift his shield again, and again to block the sword strikes. The blade rose for a fourth strike, but the man-catcher speared the raider in the throat, sending Eihn’s would-be attacker tumbling to the sand. He tried to thank Al’rashal, but by the time he had enough sense to, she’d moved on to another raider and shouldered him from the saddle.

  A low, warbling hum rose into the air, lying beneath the sounds of battle and tromping hooves that made Eihn’s teeth vibrate. Almost immediately, the raiders began whistling to each other and pulled away, some falling back to let the caravan race ahead as others returned to speeding horses.

  For a moment, Eihn thought it was some call to retreat, but as the tone grew in strength, he abandoned such hopes. Ahead, barely visible on the sands, was a line of raiders astride horses, barring their path, and at their head was a man holding a weapon that he was circling overhead to cause the bone-rattling noise. That, however, wasn’t the scary part. The scary part was the storm.

  The skies overhead had been almost clear, with only the thinnest traces of clouds to spoil the vast blue expanse. Now the clouds hung low and gray, with lightning dancing about them. The winds rose in strength and pitch, sounding like the angered cries of a banshee, and soon a wall of sand was barreling toward them. The wind struck them with such force it blunted their charge and tore at their flesh. Eihn’s eyes watered with pain, and he tried to spit out orders to stay near between mouthfuls of grit. Then droplets of water, almost ice cold in comparison to the desert heat fell upon them.

  At first, he was thankful to it for washing the sand from his eyes, but then he felt the wagon slow. The ground was turning into mud, and the draft animals found it more and more difficult to push on. Then there was a lurch, a wheeze of pain from Muraheim, and the wagon ground to a halt as the horses collapsed.

  Eihn grasped his master’s arm, trying to feel for a pulse. “Master! Mura …” But he got no further, as another wagon collided with their own, and another crashed into others somewhere in the blinding gale. The sound of breaking wood fought with the howl of the wind, but Eihn was barely aware of it as he rolled to the earth. The next few moments were only snatches of awareness. Sand. Rain. Pain. Crashing wood, and finally large gentle hands pulling him upright as the wind died down. Pushing back the pain between his ears and ignoring the blood in his eyes, he looked up to see he was in the hands of Urkjorman as the minotaur conversed with his wife.

  Chapter Six

  Lost On The Sand

  Urkjorman looked down at the child in his hands. Only one of the boy’s eyes was dilating, and his face was covered in blood, but his heartbeat was strong. The minotaur reasoned the child would be fine if they made it through this. The raiders drew closer in a wide horseshoe before the calamity of broken wood and people that remained of the caravan.

  The beasts were exhausted, or dead and many of the pilgrims just the same. Still, the number of raiders had dwindled drastically; he knew at least nine of them lay broken or worse at his hands, and his wife had seen to more than that. But the network of fresh wounds crawling his body was bleeding his strength and making his nerves itch with pain. Urk spat, and it tasted like it held all the acid in his burning muscles. “I don’t have much left,” he admitted to his wife.

  Al’rashal’s chest heaved as sweat poured down her face. “We just need a little more. I think we can break them if we get the leader.”

  He nodded as he looked about. He preferred his armor and best weapons, but they were in the ruins of the wagon, almost a mile behind. Grasping the damaged side of a wagon, he pulled, and broke off a section almost as broad as his chest. He inhaled deeply, tasting the threads of magic in his lungs and following them to the caster. “He’s at the center of it now, like the eye of a storm. If he moves, he’ll lose the spell.”

  “You sure?”

  “As I can be without knowing who taught him or how. But that’s what it tastes like.”

  “Fine, you lead, I’ll follow.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll make it.”

  “The more reason I should come with you.”

  “I may die out there, Al.”

  She was quiet a moment. “Then we die together, Urk.”

  He kissed her, or she him; honestly Urk neither knew nor cared which of them moved to the other first. When their lips parted, Urk noticed the child, Eihn, looking at them with something like wonder in his eyes. “Have faith, boy.” With one last squeeze of his wife’s hand, and he lumbered forward.

  The winds picked up, becoming a shrieking gale as Urk strode forward. Though it might have slowed a grown human it was little more than an inconvenience for the minotaur. The spellcaster spun the tool faster, and the winds picked up with a rising pitch. The sands lifted into the air to stab at his eyes and catch in his throat, but the thick fur coating his body protected him from the worst of it, and he didn’t need his eyes to know where the spellcaster was. The warble rose in pitch again, and now the winds were enough to give him a moment’s pause. Head down, body low, he trudged on. Urk could almost see the spellcaster now and the man’s arm faltered, the spin slowing and the winds’ pressure easing.

  The raider next to the spellcaster pointed in alarm at Urk, no doubt demanding the spellcaster to do something. The spellcaster said something in return, and though Urk was too far away to hear, he well understood the ire that came from the spellcaster. He understood, as well, the orders that we
re given next. “Brace,” he told his wife.

  The wind dropped, not abating completely but reducing and the raiders alongside the spellcaster drew bows and let fly a rain of arrows. Urk held up the plank of wood before him and stretched to his full height to act as a wall for his wife. Even with the wind reduced, most of the arrows flew wide, with many more stabbing into the minotaurs’ makeshift shield. Three arrows cut shallow lines along his arms, and a fourth sunk into his thigh just beneath the pleated skirt.

  Even through the volley he didn’t stop moving steadily closer. The spellcaster was barking orders, words Urk was almost close enough to discern. The raiders about the spellcaster dismounted, but the tool was spun faster, the wind picked up, and all was obscured by a cloud of sand before he could see what else was happening. No matter, Urk didn’t need eyes or even ears to know where the spellcaster was. He could taste the threads of magic on his tongue and could track the source of the spell for miles if he wanted. The wind died, dropping away with such suddenness that it sent him stumbling forward and onto the thrusting tip of a spear.

  The swirling sands had hidden the approach of the raiders and now Urk was close enough to hear the spellcaster to hear him laughing. Urk grasped the spear in his side so the raider couldn’t pull it out and struck him with the back of his fist. The man’s neck snapped like a twig. The Wayfarers would be upset, but Urk didn’t care. He pulled the spear from his side and launched it like a javelin at the spellcaster. Almost too late the spellcaster spun his tool, creating a wall of wind that sent the spear off course and mere inches from impaling him. Urk would have thrown something else, but the surrounding raiders were no longer transfixed by his rage and moved to attack him and his wife.

  A cry of pain sailed through the air as Al sent a man flying backward with a kick. Al tore into the raiders with long sweeps of her man-catcher, sending men retreating in fear or tumbling to the sand. Urk smiled and hurled the plank of wood he’d been using as a shield into the knot of men to his left, sending several crashing to the ground and more diving for cover.

  With his opposite hand, he swung the pole, to the satisfying sound of broken legs. The warble of the spellcaster’s tool picked up again, long, broad swings emitting a low-pitched tone that brought the faint echo of thunder from the clouds overhead. A blade skittered off his pleated skirt as a dagger was lodged in his side. Urk kicked a man in the chest, probably fracturing ribs, as the first drops of cold rain fell.

  His wife was driving a man back into his fellows with her man-catcher as Urk fended off the thrust of a pair of spears with his pole. The rains grew stronger and turned the sand about his feet into a thin mud. Someone wrapped himself about his left arm, trying to slow the minotaur’s swing with his sheer weight. Urk turned the man into a club as he beat him against his compatriots.

  “You’re wasting time!” shouted Al, her voice struggling to be heard over the mounting gale. “Don’t let them tar-pit us!”

  Urk nodded as he stumbled in the thinning sand, his leg sinking almost to mid-calf now. He pushed forward, marching through the deepening sludge toward the low dune the spellcaster waited on. Two men grasped his pole, dragging it down as a third slashed at him dragging a line of blood along his side. He shook the two men off and snatched at the man who slashed him, just barely missing him as he too found it more difficult to move in the slick sands. A cry from Al pulled Urk’s eyes backward.

  One of the raiders was on Al’s back, wrestling with her arms and grasping her mane as another tried to hold onto one of her forelimbs. Urk turned back, trudging toward his wife, but she waved him off as she punched another man in the jaw, no doubt shattering it as he went down. “Go! Go! Go!” she shouted. Even as she was borne to the ground.

  Urk roared as he turned about and tried to charge uphill. His legs sunk past the knee now and the difficult footing brought him down onto his hands. One of the raiders leapt onto his back and drove a dagger into his shoulder. Another drove a sword into his chest. The minotaur spat blood and gored the man with the sword skewering the raider’s face with his horn before grasping the man on his back and slamming him into the wet sands. He stomped on the sinking man, ensuring he would not rise again, even as he felt the ground beneath his hooves fall further away.

  “Enough!” cried one of the raiders, the quicksand past his hips now. “Deep enough!”

  “No,” replied the spellcaster, as more rain fell sending a wave of slick sand down the dune to wash several raiders into Urk and sending him sliding backward.

  The minotaur could no longer feel the ground beneath his hooves as the sands pulled him down. The raiders cried out in desperation, to the mounting laughter of their leader. Urk threw his pole like a missile at the spellcaster. Too close to change the spin of his tool, the raider jerked his horse aside at the last minute, and the pole turned the horse’s head into an explosion of blood and meat. Horse and rider crashed to the ground, but the raider rose, sneering. The warble picked up again, and the rain poured on harder. Two of the raiders near Urk were submerged to their chests and struggling to reach the edge of the pool. The minotaur grasped them about the shoulders and pushed them under. It was the only act of defiance he had left, probably the last act of defiance he would ever make.

  “Urkjorman!” cried Al’rashal, throwing off one of the raiders pinning her to the sand and kicking another in the leg so hard he heard the bone snap over the wind. But they had her thoroughly pinned now. Even from here, he could see the pain and love at war on his wife’s face.

  “Al’rashal!” he cried as the sands reached his chest. “This life or the next, I will always love you!”

  She might have responded with something other than an anguished cry, but his ears were already submerged and a moment later he sank into darkness.

  Chapter Seven

  Karden

  Eihn couldn’t tell if it was misery or exhaustion that kept his head bowed, but the hours they spent trudging across sand-swept stone seemed as wearying as all the days of travel before it combined. The raiders had only taken two of their carts, piling what they could lift or desired onto them and had left the rest to bleach on the sands. Their draft animals, those that still lived, were led by raiders at the rear, while the pilgrims had been forced to walk, two abreast between the lines of riders. The raiders spoke to each other in a light, sibilant tongue too genteel for people of such fierce character. Though they also spoke the Tongue of Kings, which they used to jeer and threaten their captives. At the lead of the pilgrims was Master Muraheim almost carried between his daughter, Iilna and Seedan. Before them was Al’rashal.

  The centaur had been stripped of her leathers, leaving her nearly nude above the hips, exposing her tan skin and the fresh cuts and abrasions to the merciless rays of the sun and the biting winds. Her arms were bound at the wrists by ropes that writhed like snakes and were held by a man walking beside her, while another wriggled about her throat and was held by a man riding to her right. Her rich ebony mane spilled from her scalp in an unkempt mess, and the men leading her kept trying to drag her this way or that to molest her spirits. However, despite the pain, humiliation, and fresh wounds, the woman remained straight-backed and resolute. Eihn heard some of the raiders promise to toy with her, and he feared for their foolish lives if they did.

  “Why so glum?” roared the leader, before releasing a mocking burst of laughter. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

  Silence and fury were the pilgrims’ only response.

  “You’ve made it, at long last,” pressed the leader before sweeping his hand behind him. “Welcome to Karden!”

  He knew he should have expected a ruin. Eihn had seen what remained of the other towns across the desert. He knew they were going to an abandoned shrine in an abandoned city. So, he knew he should not have expected some gleaming edifice rising from the sands. But he had hoped and dreamed such things, despite himself, and to see the truth now before him was almost as painful a thing as seeing his friends lost on the sands.
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br />   Some echo of Karden’s grandeur remained. The stone that rose from the sands was white, not sand brown like the blocks in other places. Here and there Eihn could see indents in the architecture where copper gilding had been before it was removed by theft or time. Trees, though few in number, rose in defiance of the sands, and somewhere the winds turned the remains of some great chime to cast a single stuttering note of welcome into the air. Yes, an echo of grandeur, but only an echo.

  “Keep moving.” The raider beside Eihn jabbed the butt of his spear into his back. The boy bit back the curse rising in his throat and complied. His anger had already earned him a few new bruises. Instead, he cursed fate and moved on, shuffling with the rest and snatching glances at the empty buildings about them. Here and there he saw the evidence of life. New litter in the streets, horse droppings swept down alleyways, and small desert lizards fighting over the discarded scraps of old meals. The raiders had likely been here for some time. An abandoned city that attracted pilgrims would be an ideal place for scavengers, thieves, and slavers.

  “P-please,” croaked Muraheim with a voice withered by exhaustion and thirst.

  “What?” snarled the leader of the raiders, the spellcaster.

  “Please,” begged the old gnome, managing the strength to take the few steps toward the leader and bow. “Please let us see Se’aræles, the statue please.”

  The leader spat into the sands with a derisive snort and thrust his boot into the old gnome’s brow, sending him to the earth. A ring of laughter rose from the raiders as cries of alarm rose from the pilgrims. Muraheim lay still for what felt a long while and then dragged himself back to his feet. Once again, he approached the leader of the raiders and pleaded. “It is all we have. It is why we came so far, to be so close, please!”