Owlflight

The mage laughed, and reached out, his fingers curling into a claw.

Darian ducked and rolled to the side. He came up running, or trying to, heading for the open stable door.

Behind him, the mage screamed something else, and the door slammed shut in his face; he hit it, unable to stop in time, and dropped to the floor.

The mage laughed again, and Darian rolled over, his back to the door, and his hand fell on the bar that had held it shut. He didn’t even think; he just grabbed it, and came up swinging.

He caught the mage on the side of the head, once again catching him by surprise. The man reeled back, and Darian swung again.

This time the mage caught the wooden bar and wrenched it out of Darian’s hands, throwing it aside.

Darian dove underneath the man’s grasping hands, gambling that the wound in his side was too painful for him to move easily. He somersaulted and came up on his feet on the other side; the mage was between him and the door again. He looked frantically about for a weapon, any weapon.

His eye fell on the forged tines of the pitchfork as the mage turned.

This time he didn’t dare fail. It didn’t matter if he died; he couldn’t fail the others.

He snatched up the tines, braced the rounded end against his chest, and charged again, but this time with every last bit of strength, and every bit of his weight, holding back nothing.

He drove the larger man back against the closed door; felt the tines hit flesh that yielded, resisted, then gave with a wet pop. The man screamed horribly; he flailed at Darian and a terrible blow to the side of his head knocked him away, stunning him; he fell to the ground as everything went dark.

He couldn’t move, couldn’t see anything.

Am I blind? With a convulsive shudder, he managed to move, to get to his knees, but he still couldn’t see anything. Everything was dark.

Then, with a creak, one of the stable doors swung open, and vague and flickering red light outside proved that he wasn‘t blind after all. It was the mage-light that was gone.

But the mage was still moving. In a moment, he might get up again. He was hurt, but by no means dead yet.

Darian’s right hand was wet, as was his sleeve, and as he moved it, his fingers touched his abandoned bucket. He grabbed it and lurched to his feet, staggering over to the mage who stared up at him in the changing light, spittle at the corner of his mouth.

He gave the man no chance to act; he brought the bucket down on his head as hard as he could. If the man wouldn’t die, at least he wasn’t going to stay awake for long!

He hit the mage a couple more times for good measure, then left the bucket upturned over his face and staggered, exhausted, out into the open. He didn’t care who or what saw him at this point. He stood in the middle of the dirt path, swaying on his feet, wondering where he should go next. The shouting had decreased; who was winning?

Then he sensed something gathering at his back; something oddly familiar. Magic - but - where and when had he sensed something like this before?

Magic - like - For some reason the sensation called up a memory of Justyn, but Justyn had never had enough magic for him to sense like this -

Except the day he destroyed the bridge!

Fear gave him energy he thought he didn’t have; he sprinted for shelter, any shelter, heading for the nearest building as fast as his feet would carry him. He reached it just as the stable behind him exploded into flame, the shock of the blast knocking him into the side of the cottage. He saw fireworks behind his eyes for a moment, and had all the wind knocked out of him. He struggled to breathe, lying on his side, trying to make his lungs work again.

He didn’t stay that way for long; when his eyes cleared and he got a few good breaths, he picked himself gingerly out of the remains of a flower garden. He looked around, and things were pretty much the same as they had been. With a single exception, that is. What was left of the stable blazed fiercely, as if it had been soaked in oil.

Darian went looking for Snowfire and the others, but didn’t have to go far to find them. No sooner did he round the corner of the house than he saw the entire cavalcade approaching - the Hawkbrothers, battered and