“What was that?” I asked, speaking aloud since our attackers obviously knew our position.
“I’m not sure, some kind of fireballs, but explosive. It’s not a spell I’m familiar with,” Rafe responded.
“What now?”
Rafe half turned and grinned at me. “We give them a chance to back off.”
“You think they might?”
“If they have any sense. They were hoping for surprise, but now they know we’re awake,” he shrugged. “We’ll find out in a minute.”
It didn’t take a minute. There came more whooshes and a half dozen of the glowing spheres arced across the wide riverbed. This volley was more dispersed than the first three. Even I could see that Rafe’s wind trick wasn’t going to work like last time. If the wind blew from the west again, half of the spheres would move off target, but the other half would be blown toward us.
Rafe raised his arm, and his jacket cuff emitted a blue glow again. The trees began to bow, but this time, they bent toward the oncoming threat. At first, I didn’t get Rafe’s tactic, but then I saw that he had the wind flowing upward in a spiral at the center of the orbs path. The mini-cyclone pushed outward, and the explosive spheres began to move off target as they fell. I mentally calculated their trajectory and decided that some were going to hit a lot closer than last time. Another glow came from beneath Rafe’s jacket’s waistline. This glow was violet.
Rafe pointed at the nearest of orbs, and it exploded in a flash of brilliance and a concussive wave that bent the nearby trees toward us.
Before Rafe could fire another blast, the spheres impacted.
I cringed, squinting my eyes closed against the blast, and half expected the shield to fail as our world became bright and oh so loud. I shouldn’t have worried, but I could feel the strain on Rafe as he poured energy into his shield. The ground quaked beneath us, and the shield lit up like the Fourth of July. Once again, I found myself at the center of an explosion. Having been maimed, disfigured, and–by the way–killed by in IED blast a few weeks earlier in Kandahar province; this was not something I wanted to experience again.
My vision cleared, and we were still standing. My jaw muscles were so tight that I couldn’t talk. I looked at Rafe. My vision had narrowed down until it seemed like I was looking through a cardboard tube with Rafe at the center of a long tunnel.
I had turned to Rafe expecting his normal flippant self, but his emotions were troubled, and I could tell the attacks had strained him.
He started unwinding the cord from his left wrist.
*Are you all right?* I asked. I had tried to ask it aloud but had to settle for thinking it across our meshing. Why was my jaw so tight? It was freaking me out. I’d never experienced anything like it before.
*So far,* Rafe responded in like manner. *But I’m not up to par. It’s Loki’s talisman.*
*What do you mean?* I asked, confused because the only function the talisman had was to augment a healing spell. That’s why my left hand had been regrown, and my right leg was complete nearly to my toes, not a bad recovery in barely a week.
Rafe took an iron ball from his jacket and put it on the leather pad at the center of his sling. Immediately, he began to spin it vertically. Our protective shield winked out.
“I made a mistake when I chose our camping site,” Rafe said as he released one end of the sling. The iron ball shot into the sky and an instant later, our shield snapped back into place. “The lack of a nearby ley line meant that the amulet’s effect on the healing spell drained me faster than I could recharge. I’m not up to full strength.”
“Can I help?” I asked. I doubted there was much I could do. I’d learned a little magic in the last week since becoming Raphael Semmes’s apprentice, but not near enough to help him.
Rafe raised his left hand and formed a Cub Scout salute. Through his enhanced sight, I saw bolts of magical energy shoot from the ground and strike the iron ball. It glowed as it rose into the sky. The missile moved off toward our left as Rafe’s wind continued to blow. Then I saw the missile changing direction to be more vertical.
“Give me your hand,” Rafe ordered.
I stepped closer and took his right hand in my left. I felt the energy flowing toward him from the earth and then I felt my own stored energy start to flow through our joined hands. The pull was shocking, like someone had sucked all the strength from my muscles. I gripped his hand tightly as my knees momentarily weakened. Then I began pulling energy into myself from our surroundings. One of the first things Rafe taught me was that the ley lines could restore a Wanderer’s magical energy almost as fast as one of us could expend it, but without one, the available energy was only a trickle of what you could draw from a ley line. He explained it as the difference in a 12-volt car battery and a high voltage line.
I could feel myself getting weaker. Not physically, nothing so mundane as that, but Wanderers store great quantities of energy in their life force, and Rafe was draining mine faster than I could restore it.
“That’s better,” Rafe said after a minute. “Here they come. When they reach the center of the riverbed, let go of my hand and pick out whatever targets you choose.
*Got it, Boss,* I responded. I still couldn’t get my jaw muscles to relax.
I took a deep breath and wondered just what those targets would
