He had something protecting him too.
"I cannot divide my attention," Dolanna said in a strained voice as the men reached her shield and started beating on it with their swords. "It is all I can do to hold a shield this size!"
Tarrin pulled off the robe and dropped off the horse, understanding instinctively that if the mage wasn't killed, he would bring down Dolanna's shield, and they would be hopelessly outnumbered by the attacking bandits. He dropped his staff and waited for the right instant, right when the middle-most man was rearing back his arm. Then he exploded forward like an arrow from a bow. His shoulder caught the man squarely in the chest, picking him up and carrying him into the man behind him, exploding him off his feet and carrying him for several spans before Tarrin threw both of them aside almost negigently. Then he put his ears back and ran flat out right at the mage. Tarrin's inhuman strength gave him inhuman speed in that sprint, faster than a horse, and the chanting man's eyes' bulged and he nearly mis-spoke himself as he saw the Were-cat bearing down on him, his face full of mindless fury. The mage simply redirected his spell, pointing at Tarrin instead of Dolanna. A bolt of brilliant white lightning lashed out from the man's hands, arcing across the meadow.
But Tarrin wasn't there.
The man blinked a second, then a shadow on the ground made him look up.
It was the last thing he would ever see.
Tarrin had sprung into the air at the last instant, jumping clear of the magical attack, jumping impossibly high, nearly twenty spans into the air. He could have jumped onto the roof of a two story bulding with his vaulting leap. It wasn't that hard for him to adjust his trajectory so that he would land right on the unfortunate man His hand-paws leading, Tarrin slammed directly into the man's chest, and he was already slashing and tearing before his opponent hit the ground. They both rolled several times backwards as Tarrin's momentum blew them both back towards the trees, as Tarrin got a grip on the man's shoulder with one hand, his claws sinking deep into flesh, and he brought up a foot and put it against the man's ribcage. He drove his claws into the man's belly as they rolled, then kicked out and down even as his hand pulled the man into it. It was an instinctive move, the same as a cat raking with its back claws, and it was devastating. Tarrin ripped the man open from the base of his ribcage to his hips, and all his internal organs flew out of him in a stinking, bloody spray, their rolling making them fly all about. The man managed to make a gurgling croak before he came down hard on his back, Tarrin on top of him. His eyes registered shock as Tarrin lifted a paw while hunched over the man, his other paw holding him down by the chest and his face twisted into an animalistic snarl of pure hatred, and then struck with it. The blow was aimed at the throat, but the sheer force of it, and Tarrin's inhuman strength, ripped the man's head right off his body. That head was swiped aside by the raw power of the blow, bouncing in the bloody grass like a ball before coming to rest at the base of a tree.
Tarrin was almost overwhelmed by the smell of the blood, and for a horrifying moment, he had to stop himself from ripping the man apart. He put a blood-saturated hand-paw to his head, trying to shake off the loud song of the Cat trying to get him to do as it willed, urging him not just to kill, but to savage the victim. But his human reason prevailed; his friends needed him. Tarrin got up and turned around, looking at the men beating against the shield Dolanna created with their weapons. Dolanna made a pushing motion, and the shield suddenly exploded outward, sending the men flying in all directions. Faalken charged into the fray with his sword drawn, having his warhorse stomp and grind enemies into the ground under his hooves. Tarrin sprinted back towards them, chagrined at throwing away his staff like he did. Walten put an arrow into a man's belly as Dolanna seemingly grabbed small balls of fire from the air, hurling them with deadly accuracy into the chests and backs of the attackers. Tarrin hit the back of the regrouping men like an avalanche, grabbing one by the back of his mail armor, picking him up, and hurling him into three others with enough force to tumble them three paces down the road. He raised a bloodstained paw, the claws with small bits of ripped flesh stuck to them, and ripped the face off one attacker with it, then backhanded another with enough power to rip through his chain mail. One man desperately tried to spear him from the side, but Tarrin twisted, grabbed the spear with a free paw, and swung the man around, throwing him to the ground. Tarrin used the spear shaft to block a sword, then an axe, then stepped into an overswing and delivered a short kick to the knee. It snapped the man's leg like a twig. Tarrin almost instinctively fell into the Ungardt forms of fighting, and found a center, a focus that kept the Cat in check and let him concentrate on the matter at hand. Killing enough of them to make the survivors break and flee.
Tarrin went to rake a man across the chest, but an arrow appeared in his side, and Faalken cut him down from behind an instant later. Tarrin darted to the horse's side and grabbed the haft of an axe that was aimed at the horse's leg, then yanked it out of the man's hand and buried it up to the handle in the back of the man's head as he was turned by the strength of Tarrin's yank. Tarrin saw out of the corner of his eye a man trying to stab him in the side with a sword, then grabbed the brained man and dragged him into the sword's path. The man lost his sword as the dead man fell, then he fell himself with an arrow right in the temple. Tarrin had to admit, Walten was a very good shot with his bow.
The remaning five men, two wounded by Faalken's sword and Walten's arrows, turned and fled, screaming in panic. "Let them go!" Dolanna said wearily as Tarrin moved to chase them down.
"Are you alright?" Faalken asked. "You're covered with blood."
"It's not mine," Tarrin said through clenched teeth. He'd killed. Not just one, but several men; he couldn't even remember how many. Although it was a case of kill or die, he'd never taken a human life before, and he found the taste of it to be very bitter.
"Tarrin," Dolanna said in a tightly controlled voice. "The next time you decide to do something like that, let me know. You nearly gave me a heart attack."
"I didn't know I was doing it myself," he muttered quietly, looking away from the carnage and trying not to smell the blood, or listen to the Cat sing to him in his mind.
"This was no group of bandits," Faalken said with a grunt. "Not with equipment like this."
"And not with a Wizard leading them," Dolanna agreed.
"This is too much, too fast," Faalken continued in a sober voice. "There was the fire at Watch Hill, and then the attack on Tarrin, and now this. Somebody doesn't want us to get back to Suld real bad."
Tarrin could hear the pounding of horses' hooves, and feel the vibration of it in the pads of his feet, coming from the road under him. "Dolanna, those horses are coming up fast," Tarrin said urgently.
By the time Dolanna had turned to look up the road, the first of them appeared. The man behind the leader was carrying the banner of Torrian and Duke Arren. They were dressed in the blue surcoats that were the uniform of the armored, mounted warriors under Arren's control. They slowed to a stop at the battlefield, and the lead man advanced. "Lady Dolanna, Duke Arren sends these twenty men to be your escorts and guards on your journey," he announced. "I am Captain Daran." He looked around. "I see we didn't ride hard enough," he said in a grating voice. "Are there any wounded?"
"Not among us, captain," Dolanna said warily.
The captain reached under his surcoat and produced a letter. "The Duke asked me to give you this, to prove our identity," he said. "Jarax, take two men and see if the survivors of this are still lurking around. Kardon, take three men and pull these bodies off the road. Let's not litter the King's Highway."
The two men, one slim and wiry and the other massively built, saluted and took men to carry out their orders. Dolanna accepted the letter from the captain, broke the seal, and read it quickly. "These are the Duke's men," she affirmed. "Noboby but Arren would know what is written here. Considering what just happened, captain, we will be very glad to have you along."
Daran looked around
professionally. "Quite a rumble," he noted. "Looks like the Were-cat did some serious damage. Good work, Master Kael," he said, bowing in his saddle. "It looks like you saved one of my Duke's favorite people."
"It was nothing," Tarrin said weakly. The smell of the blood was getting to him, and it was getting very hard to control the instincts.
Dolanna looked at him sharply. "Tarrin, there is a stream just at the bend up ahead," she told him. "Take a clean change of clothing and go wash up."
"I think I will," he said gratefully.
After scrubbing the blood and bits of flesh off his paws and getting himself clean and into clean clothes, he rejoined them. The bodies had been pulled off the road and placed in a line in the meadow. The bodies had been carefully searched, nearly stripped, much of their equipment now on the pack horses serving the Duke's men. Dolanna was with Walten and Tiella, talking to them as Faalken helped the captain throw the last body into line with the others. The three men sent to look for the survivors had returned. Tarrin joined Dolanna with the others as she finished telling them about something. Tiella, Tarrin noticed, was a bit pale, but had a determined look on her face. "You alright, Tiella?" he asked.
"I'm alright," she told him. "I almost got pulled off my horse by one of the bandits, but Sir Faalken saved me."
"Not before you put that sling stone in his eye, then kicked him in the face," Faalken chuckled as he rejoined them. "That had to hurt."
"It was supposed to," she said primly.
"I imagine it would," Faalken grinned. "For a trio of farm children, you three are rather nasty fighters."
"It's from working all day, Sir Faalken, and having nothing else to do but shoot things," Walten replied dryly.
"Just Faalken, please," he corrected. "And I think I'd rather have you three farm villagers in a fight over a pack of knights. Are we ready to leave, Dolanna?"
"Yes, we are ready now," she said. "Tarrin, pick up your staff and put the robe back on, and we will be off."
Tarrin rode with Dolanna and Tiella as they got under way, encircled protectively by the Duke's alert men, wrapped in a layer of steel and trained warriors against another attack. Faalken and Jarax were scouting ahead, and the captain had a man riding behind as rear guard. Tarrin had a grim expression on his face as he broached a subject he wanted to continue talking about. "Back there, Dolanna, you said that you didn't think that they were bandits," he said.
"They were not," she said gruffly. "A pack of bandits would not have a Wizard leading them."
"And then Faalken brought up the fire, and, and what happened to me."
"Yes, and I do not think that they were mere coincidence. Not now. Tarrin, someone sent the female Were-cat after you on purpose. The collar that she was wearing was a device that was controlling her. And now the attack on us, after you and Faalken had noticed the Wraith. And before that, the fire that started so mysteriously, and raged out of control faster than even my magic could control it. No, someone is trying to stop us from reaching Suld. Someone with considerable resources at his disposal."
"But why?" he asked. "It makes no sense. We're three villagers being brought to the Tower by a Sorceress and a knight. What possible reason could someone have to try to stop us? We're not worth the effort."
"I know, that is a part of the puzzle," she said thoughtfully, a finger tapping her chin as she thought. "Obviously, these people know something that we do not. Or believe that they do."
"I think-" Tiella said, then she quickly hushed herself.
"Go ahead, child," Dolanna prompted. "Do not think that you cannot speak your mind to me."
"I think that maybe it's not just one person," she said.
Dolanna raised an eyebrow. "An intriguing concept," she said with sincere interest. "Why do you believe so?"
"Well, there was the fire, then what happened to Tarrin, and now this," she said. "And the Wraith, but it didn't attack us. Well, aren't they just a bit too different?" she asked. "Why not try another fire? That almost worked, and they had to know that. Why send that woman after Tarrin, when she could have attacked you? If they got you, Dolanna, the rest of us would probably just turn around and run home. Then there was this, where they tried to kill all of us, but they used brute force and not magic or a slave, like before. They just don't add up."
"I think that you have a point," Dolanna said. "They may be from the same group, but I think you are right in believing that this was not the work of an individual. This was either a group or several individuals working independently."
"The question is still why," Tarrin maintained.
"That, I cannot answer," Dolanna said, rubbing her delicate jaw.
"So we'd best plan our moves carefully," Tarrin said.
"I have already mapped out our plan of action," she said. "At Marta's Ford, we will take a riverboat to Ultern. That, I hope, will leave behind any spies that are watching us. From Ultern, it is but a bit over three days to Suld. Two days to Jerinhold and one day from there to Suld itself. Plus, the Ultern Road is packed at most all times with caravans and travellers," she added. "The congestion on the road will help to conceal us from sight, and dissuade another such direct attack."
"So the worst of it will be getting to Marta's Ford," Tiella said.
Dolanna nodded. "It is still three days to Marta's Ford, even if we travel hard," she told them. "This is a wide expanse of unsettled territory, where most anything can hide and wait in ambush. I must admit, I am relieved beyond measure that Arren had the foresight to send a guard detachment after us. Daran and his men are highly skilled, and are extremely familiar with this terrain. They will get us to Marta's Ford. That is our main objective at the moment."
"And from there, a boat ride," Tiella said.
Dolanna nodded. "Rennee should still be at Marta's Ford," she said. "He is an old friend of mine. He told me that he would not be leaving for a while, so that his crew can conduct minor repairs to his ship. Perhaps, if he is there and seaworthy, he will agree to take us downriver. His ship is fast, and his crew skilled. They will put us far ahead of any pursuers."
"I like the sound of that," Tarrin said sincerely.
"As do I," she said. "Now then, let us pick up the pace a bit. We still must make Skeleton Rock before we may stop."
Skeleton Rock was literally self-explanatory. They reached the formation right at nightfall, and all four moons rose early and full, washing the land with enough light to see by for a human. The others couldn't see that far into the distance, but Tarrin's eyes could easily see to the cliff face that towered over the road some distance away. In the side of it, there was the head and partial skeleton of a monstrous animal so huge that Tarrin doubted it was ever alive. The skull was long and vaguely reptillian, and it looked like the teeth were as long as Tarrin's foot, all of them coming to sharp points.
Tarrin peered at the formation for several moments, then stopped Dolanna as she walked by. "What kind of beast is that?" he asked.
"Nobody knows," she replied. "The bones are actually stone, but I have been told that bones turning to stone is a natural process. It means that the bones are beyond ancient. They are so old that all the Tower's attempts to study them through magic have failed. It is just too far back for our magic to reach. There are reports of much smaller creatures resembling that one that live in the Desert of Swirling Sands, to the west."
"Much smaller? How small?"
"About the size of a house," she replied calmly.
"Yeek," he said under his breath. "I wouldn't want to see one of those up close. It looks like it's nothing but an eating machine."
"That is a fairly accurate description," she said with a light chuckle.
Tarrin was given his own tent, and it was another night of dreams. The fear wasn't as bad this second night, but the dreams were even worse, because more than once he simply could not wake from it. They were also mixed with human-like dreams of the men that he had killed, rising up from their resting places and following him around, demanding
to know what gave him the right to take their lives. That scared him more than the Cat dreams. Tarrin had suppressed the shock, fear, and horror at what he had done, but when he was asleep, they all rushed back at him in a flood.
Hours before dawn, he found the idea of going back to sleep to be too frightening to contemplate, so he dressed and left the tent. Three men were standing guard around the camp, and the fire was low. He spent the hours before dawn reading one of the books Dolanna gave him, a book about the sources, uses, and practioners of magic. The book was confusing, obviously written for someone that already had a basic understanding of magic and the people who use it, but he did learn several things that he thought were important.
There were four distinct types of magic-users, and each one drew magic from a different source. The Sorcerers, who were born the ability inside them. Where anyone with sufficient intelligence could learn another type of magic, only people born with the ability inside them could be Sorcerers. They manipulated the existing pattern-web of magic that laid over the world, twisting and changing it into the magical effect they wanted. This magical matrix was called the Weave, and it was from this web of magical energy that Sorcerers drew their power. Sorcerers were the only magic-users that could generate Illusions, it said, and a Sorcerer could interfere with the flow of magic through the Weave that would disrupt and block the powers of a Wizard. There were also Wizards, or Mages, who drew on their magical power from an elsewhere, a place that nobody really understood. They did this with their arcane chants of special words of power and precise gestures, and the presence of certain materials that were vital for the magic to operate. Wizards were the only ones that could Conjure creatures up from other worlds and command them to do their bidding. Much like the Wraith that he had seen. Priests, or Clerics, were the worshippers of Gods, and it was the Gods that supplied these faithful with the magical power. Tarrin was already familiar with Priests, for one from the temple to Karas in Torrian visited Aldreth every two months to check in on them and see if they were doing alright. Abram preached alot about the goodness and power of his God when he was there, and though the villagers politely ignored his ranting, they were always happy to see him, because he could perform healing on the sick or injured. The main powers of a Priest were healing, supportive, and defensive, the book said, meaning more to aid than to hurt, but Priests did have formidable offensive magic at their command. Mending broken bones, breaking fevers, that sort of thing was what Abram did for the village. Sorcerers could heal too, but a Sorcerer's healing worked differently. Sorcerers could heal injuries, but not illnesses. The last type of magic-user was also a type that was born with the ability. They were called Druids, and little was known about them or their magical power. What was known was that their power seemed to come directly from nature itself, almost like the magical energy of life that was theirs to command. Druids were rare and exceptionally powerful, because a Druid could disrupt and block the magical attempts of any other type of magic-user. But Druids were as rare as they were powerful, living far from human settlements and doing their obscure work in the wildest of the wilderness.
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