by Guy Antibes
Jack agreed with his mentor. “The same thing could happen to Raker Falls.”
“That is something we can discuss when we return. Now that we have established a connection let me know how the battle fares,” Fasher said.
Jack nodded, but there wasn’t anyone to nod to. He felt a bit foolish, but no one paid him a bit of attention since riders were slowly approaching the village. None of the Black Finger wizards wore gloves. They rode with one hand raised in the air, showing the dark tips of their fingers.
An arrow shot out behind Jack and hit a wizard in the raised arm. Jack was sure the villager aimed for the palm, but all the hands came down almost at once. They wore black breastplates, shining in the sun. Jack aimed at one of the front riders, confident they were out of range from Black Finger wizard bolts.
He didn’t think his bolt was strong enough to kill, but it could certainly maim. Jack raised his sword and laid it, point facing the Black Fingers, on an overturned cart. He wanted to get close, not knowing how well he could steer the bolt from such a large distance. He aimed for the knee of a wizard and let a strong bolt fly.
It sped through the air, almost too quickly to be seen, but Jack made the correction. The bolt dropped toward the end of its flight and hit his target in the shin. The man yelled and reached down to grab his leg and toppled to the ground. He got up hobbling and held his horse, bending over as the rest of the Black Fingers rode past him.
The first wizard bolt from the Black Fingers fell short, but that was enough for Jack. A flight of ten or so arrows flew from behind him and struck a few wizards. Others waved wands and were able to deflect the missiles, but some of the deflections hit their compatriots. The villagers cheered.
Jack heard a woman’s battle cry, and the Black Fingers galloped to the barricade. Jack began to shoot wizard bolts. One grazed his cheek enough to turn his head, but he only got one more off before the wizards arrived at the barricade. They split into two groups, leaving the dead and injured wizards in their wake.
The odds were improving, Jack thought as he mounted his horse and rode in the direction of the leader. She went left, so Jack did too. The village wasn’t a small one, forcing Jack to thread his way through blind alleys and narrow lanes until he arrived at the next spot. The Black Fingers were more successful here. A few villagers were moaning and a few more succumbed to the wizard bolts.
Jack jumped off his horse and pointed his sword toward two Black Fingers who had made it past the barricade. They fell off their horses. If they weren’t dead by the bolts, angry villagers dispatched them.
The Black Fingers moved on to the next barricade. Jack wished he had walked the perimeter of the village so he could teleport from spot to spot, but it was much too late for that. He met the same situation as he had just left and was able to help the villagers defend the barricade. The Black Finger contingent was shrinking.
The third barricaded entrance was a madhouse. A few of the retired wizards fought the remainder of the Black Fingers on this side of the village. Smoke filled the air from the burning barricade. Jack pressed his lips together as two Black Fingers converged on a wizardess shooting wizard bolts at the invaders and incinerated her.
He raised his sword and invoked Takia’s fire immolating the horses and the two Black Fingers. He spotted the leader and two others emerging from the other side of the village. Jack chased them as the three struck down fleeing villagers. They threw fire into a few cottages.
Jack threw a wizard bolt and struck one of the three in the back since he only wore a breastplate. The man was in lethal range. The horse reared as the man toppled off. The two Black Fingers wheeled their horses around and faced Jack. The man at the leader’s side shot a wizard bolt, but his power was about depleted. With murdered villagers in his mind, Jack shot the man in the face where armor wasn’t.
The leader looked at the fallen man. “You can’t have much power left,” she said as she raised her wand.
Jack invoked invisibility from his knife and rolled off the back of the horse beneath the canopy of a large tree. His ankle turned. So much for daring horsemanship, he thought fleetingly. He hobbled away from his horse.
The woman narrowed her eyes. “You must be under the tree,” she said, spelling a stream of fire from her wand. It reached the tree, setting it aflame, but then the spell failed.
“You are the one out of power,” Jack called from the shadows.
She shot a wizard bolt that died before it reached halfway to where Jack stood. She would have missed anyway, he thought. He raised his sword and shot the woman in the throat. Jack took another step, and his ankle collapsed beneath him.
Two Black Fingers rode into the street. One of them dismounted to check on the leader. He shook his head. Jack had no doubts about her status. Another joined them.
The fire was taking hold of the tree, so Jack had to emerge from the shade and stand facing the two Black Fingers.
“You killed our leader,” one of the wizards said. “That means you are next.”
A wizard bolt hit Jack’s arm, twisting him around, and with his bad ankle, he fell to the ground. His sword fell out of reach. Jack faced the wizards, since he, too, had no back protection.
An arrow struck one of the wizards in the arm, but a brilliant bolt finished the task. The last of the wizards trotted to Jack. “Now, face death.”
Jack needed a shield. His mind whirred, and then he lifted his blue-cuffed bracer and built an ice shield in front of him. The wizard shot a bolt, shattering the ice, but the delay was long enough for three arrows to sprout from the wizard’s back.
Jack collapsed, looking up at the sky. His ankle and arm protested too loudly for him to think about anything else other than to look at the dead wizard who had nearly killed him. “You made a big mistake fooling with Fasher Tempest.”
Hands grabbed him and took him elsewhere as Jack sunk into a sea of pain. Someone poured a liquid down his throat. Jack was too weak to cough it up and gagged it down. He blinked a few times as the potion took effect and then he slipped away.
Chapter Thirty-Five
~
“Y ou can wake up now,” Fasher Tempest said.
Jack blinked awake. “We won? What happened?”
“There were more Rockedge wizards on the other side. We lost twenty-two out of four hundred villagers, though. It is a time for mourning in Rockedge. Corina and I have decided to return to Raker Falls. You can come with us if you choose.”
Jack nodded. He couldn’t leave the two of them to travel all the way to Raker Falls alone. “I’ll come along. What about my ankle?”
“It was broken. How did that happen?” Fasher said.
“Jumping off my horse.” He didn’t tell his mentor that he rolled off the back, trying to look dashing. “I faced three wizards and didn’t want to stay mounted.”
“So he says,” Corina said with a smile on her face.
Did anyone see his miserable acrobatics on top of the horse? Jack rubbed his arm and felt a scar from the wizard bolt. His arm throbbed, but he flexed his fingers, and everything seemed to work. The ankle still hurt, but he’d wait to put weight on it when Fasher was gone.
“You didn’t come through the fight unscathed, I tell you that,” Fasher said. “Here is a healing rod. Hold onto it for a few days.”
Jack nodded.
“What was that ice shield all about?” Fasher asked.
Jack held up his arm. The bracers were off.
“Looking for these?” Fasher said, holding them both up.
“A present from Eldora I never told you about,” Jack said. “I took them to Passoran. They came in handy.”
“Blue for ice and red for what? Eldora doesn’t like fire.”
“Water. If you ever need a drink of heavenly water, I can provide both the water and the ice to cool it if it is a hot summer’s day.” Jack shifted on the bed, suddenly very uncomfortable.
“Even I can’t use these,” Fasher said. “I tried, but they are keyed
to you.” He tossed them on the bed. “They are all yours.”
Jack thought they were his anyway, but he would rather change the subject. “Are we going to be hounded all the way home?”
“Home,” Corina said, smiling. She looked at Fasher, who smiled back.
“It is time to leave,” Fasher said. “I think we can be ready tomorrow morning. See how well you can walk. We will be riding, not teleporting. Keep clutching a healing rod. It has a more intense spell than the ones you manage to make.” He looked at Corina. “Shall we?”
She gave her husband a dazzling smile. “We shall.”
And with that, Jack was alone in his room. He noticed three healing rods lined up next to each other on the bedside table. With a grunt, he sat up and swiveled so he could put his feet over the edge of the bed. He grabbed a healing rod in both hands and sat for a few minutes. He could feel the spell penetrate through his palms.
Jack stood up. His ankle didn’t protest the weight, but Jack didn’t feel he could walk very far. It was good enough for him. His stomach told him it was time to get down the stairs for some food. He hadn’t stepped foot in the inn, but someone had taken his belongings, such as they were, and put them in the room. He put on some clothes, the ones without holes from wizard bolts, and he struggled to get his boots on.
His sword was propped up in a corner. He wouldn’t wear it downstairs, but he did strap on his knife. Jack descended the stairs, not knowing exactly what time it was, but there were a few others eating breakfast, so it was morning. Fasher was letting him recuperate for a day. Jack felt like he needed it.
The people in the inn stood and clapped as he took a table.
“Breakfast is on the house,” the innkeeper said. “We all patched together what you did last evening. You are a brave wizard and saved many lives.”
Jack smiled, feeling his face get hot. “I did what I could. I’m glad most of us made it through. The Black Finger wizards would have killed us all.”
“They killed more than enough,” a woman said. “I’m worried they will return.”
“I think we are leaving in two days,” Jack said. A little misdirection was always a good thing. “I have some recuperation to do.”
The woman patted Jack’s arm. “I am praying to Alderach for your quick recovery.”
Jack continued to endure all the well-wishers while he ate breakfast. He returned to his room and tried to contact Penny again. Even though they weren’t friends, he continued to worry about her.
Fasher showed up with a bagful of spent healing rods at midday.
“You can make yourself useful while you are recuperating,” the wizard said during his visit. “You can’t heal yourself. Any object you make for yourself will return the power you put into it, but you won’t heal. For a rod to do any good, you have to get it from someone else.”
Jack grabbed one of the rods Fasher had left and felt a strong sense of well-being. After he charged one of his own, Jack could feel the difference. That meant he wouldn’t be able to know if his worked, but if they hadn’t Fasher wouldn’t have had him make any.
The rest of the day was spent filling up the rods with magic and going down to the common room for his meals. When he descended for dinner, he could walk down the stairs without pain. Fasher really did create potent healing objects.
~
Jack yawned. He tugged on the rope to keep the reluctant packhorse from dawdling behind them. Fasher had woken him before the sun was even up. After a quick treatment of his injuries, his mentor declared him fit enough to ride. Jack felt that regardless of the shape he was in, Fasher would get him on a horse that morning.
Fasher kept the pace up. Evidently, their recovery from the ill effects of the illness spell wasn’t quite complete. Jack still refreshed the healing rods for the pair, and Fasher did the same for Jack. He kept a healing rod tucked into the boot that encased his broken, or once broken, ankle.
They rode through dusk and arrived at a village inn in the dark.
“Two rooms, if you please,” Fasher said. “One for my wife and me, and another for my nephew.”
They found a quiet corner in the common room. Jack was pretty tired and wouldn’t be doing any drinking, although the patrons were singing and telling stories. He found himself listening to everything.
Dinner was a thick stew that tasted like it had been reheated a few too many times, but it was food. Jack ignored Fasher and Corina, who never seemed to run out of things to say to each other. They were about to get up to leave, but Jack had a question for Fasher.
“Do you know how to cure Penny?”
The wizard smiled. “Of course I do. Don’t worry about her. If anything, she will be stronger for the experience. Go to bed. We will leave at the crack of dawn tomorrow too.”
Jack nodded and left them talking for a bit. He climbed the stairs and felt a bit calmer. Penny’s condition had been weighing him down. He only hoped Fasher wasn’t humoring him.
~
Toward the end of the next day, they crossed a river. On the bridge, they passed a long line of Black Finger Society riders heading west. Jack stopped counting at thirty-seven. He guessed there would be fifty of them.
Fasher looked back at the column as the stragglers passed. He stopped his horse.
“We need to know if they are heading to Rockedge,” Fasher said. “The village will need to be warned. There is an inn up ahead. We will spend the night there.”
Jack wondered what thoughts rolled through Fasher’s mind. He wouldn’t be involved in fighting all those men, but he stopped before the sun went down. In the stable yard, Fasher took Jack to a corner.
“I want you to teleport and find out where they are headed. Unless they are riding through the night, they will stop to camp. It is too big a group to use any of the inns we passed,” Fasher said. “I’ll take care of your horse. Take your objects, you may need them.”
Jack nodded his head. “I didn’t even think there were so many Black Finger wizards in Corand.”
“There are more than you think, lad,” Fasher said. “You’d better get going. We won’t wait for you in the morning, but we will leave your horse. Check with the innkeeper when you arrive to see if we have gone ahead.”
“Am I strong enough for spying?” Jack asked Fasher.
The wizard smiled. “You are. Just don’t fight them. You won’t last long fighting fifty wizards. You had a lot of help two nights ago.”
“I know,” Jack said.
He pictured the west side of the bridge and teleported. He made shorter jumps until he spotted campfires in a wood that ran a few miles on either side of the road. Another jump took him to the wood’s edge. He slipped inside the little forest and threaded his way through the trees as best he could. Twilight was beginning to grip the light, removing the need to use invisibility.
The Black Fingers weren’t an army. Jack didn’t see any sentries, so he was able to get close to a group of the wizards.
He waited for a long time. Darkness fell, and the wizards still hadn’t talked about where they were going. A Black Finger approached the group.
“You need to go to sleep. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. We were told that Fasher Tempest started his journey this morning. He can be anywhere along the road.”
“How will we recognize him?”
“A bearded man, a pretty woman, and a tall young man. We stop any who meet the description.”
One of the wizards spoke up. “We passed three people like that, plus a packhorse, when we crossed the bridge this afternoon.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell us?”
“You never let us know who we were chasing, you just mentioned Rocky Ledge or something by the seashore.”
“Rockedge. Perhaps we will have to break into two groups. One heading west and the other heading east.”
Jack had heard enough. If he hadn’t promised Fasher, he wouldn’t get involved, he would have taken care of some of their pursuers. If he didn’t have to fig
ht wizards, he would do something else.
It took Jack more than half an hour to cut all the saddlery. The Black Fingers hadn’t made a decision by the time he finished. He doubted the riders would last more than an hour on the road, if they didn’t snap the harness belts when they mounted. He had done enough. He smiled. It had been too long since he played a trick on anyone, and he couldn’t think of better victims.
He teleported to the edge of the woods and then teleported to the other side of the bridge. Jack set his sword to work and started an unquenchable fire on the wooden bridge.
Another two jumps, and Jack’s stomach began to complain. He couldn’t figure out which jumps made him sick and which ones didn’t. He found Fasher and Corina talking in the common room. The remains of their dinner were spread out between them.
“I’m back,” Jack said.
Fasher looked up. “Obviously. Did you learn anything?”
Jack nodded. He sat down and told his story.
Fasher’s eye bulged when Jack said he burned down the bridge. “Why did you do a foolish thing like that?”
“To keep them off our backs.”
“But you might have told them where we were,” Fasher said, putting a hand over his eyes. “Don’t you ever think?”
“Bridges have burned before,” Jack said.
“What is done is done. Perhaps you have given us precious time, and perhaps not. But your spying has paid off. Now we know that one or more of my wizard friends in Rockedge is a Black Finger. That is the only way they could have found out where I was.”
“Can’t the army stop these roaming bands of the Black Finger Society?”
Fasher nodded. “They can if they know. I will communicate with a few highly placed wizards in the army as well as the three who mastered telepathy in Rockedge. If they aren’t all Black Fingers, and I doubt that, the villagers will keep the military contingent that was called to help them.”
“Assuming the messengers got through.”
Fasher nodded. “There is that.” He rose from his seat. “Keep Jack company while he eats some dinner. I have people to talk to. We will leave after a few hours sleep tonight.”