Beast touched down about fifty yards in front of the column on a large red boulder, and Maia landed beside him. Rafe slid off Beast’s shoulders, and I dropped to the rock to join him.
“Beast, you and Maia move back out of danger and watch. If I need you I’ll call,” Rafe said.
“You got it,” Beast growled.
Our familiars leapt into the air and disappeared behind us.
I moved up to Rafe’s side, and he held out his right hand. I took it in my left. We meshed in a few seconds. His enhanced senses tat activated and I saw everything clearer. Many of the creatures coming toward us glowed with magic; others carried weapons that glowed with their own power.
I released Rafe’s hand and raised the crossbow to my shoulder. “I hadn’t expected there to be so many.”
Rafe gave me a sideways glance. “What part of ‘horde’ didn’t you understand?”
I shrugged. His tone was light as if this were just another day in his world. Would I ever get used to the screwed up job that Wanderers had?
I felt Rafe focusing energy and then he spoke.
“You do not belong here. Move back through the portal to your own worlds or suffer the consequences.”
Rafe’s voice was amplified loud enough to make me wince.
The closest of the creatures, orcs on what had to be wargs, slowed but did not stop their advance toward us.
“Last warning,” Rafe said, once again loud enough to hurt my ears.
There was laughter from some of the orcs. A gravelly voice snarled, “You do not frighten us wizard. We have a Wanderer leading us.”
Rafe triggered his shield, and I could see it shimmer in a half-sphere immediately in front of us. He began to unwind the sling from his left wrist. I triggered my own shield and focused it into another half-sphere at our back, bringing it toward us until our shields touched.
Rafe loaded his sling with an iron ball and set it to spinning.
The lead orcs raised metal-rimmed shields into a guard position.
Rafe released the iron ball and raised his left hand in a Cub Scout salute. Magical energies leapt up from the earth and cascaded into the metal ball as it flew higher. I sensed rather than felt the wind that Rafe called to push the ball higher until it reached the line of clouds that were moving in from the west. The clouds parted and changed their flow as Rafe’s wind pushed his meteor past them until it gradually faded from sight.
Rafe reloaded his sling and set it to spinning vertically at his side again.
The lead orc screamed something that I couldn’t understand and a hail of arrows arched through the air toward us.
Rafe released the second metal ball into the sky as the first of the arrows reached our shields. The arrows struck and fell to the ground along the front edge of Rafe’s shield.
I felt Rafe reaching out for the group of ley lines that seemed to intersect at the site of the portal. He began pulling energy into him, topping off what little he’d expended so far. I had never stopped sucking in energy from the ley line we’d followed here and I was feeling a lot better than I had just after triggering that earthquake spell. I wondered if that spell would be useful in a fight, but with people standing in the open I didn’t see how I could hurt them without breaking open the earth to swallow them. Maybe as a last resort, but it would weaken me to the point of being useless after that.
I felt an impact of magical energies against Rafe’s shield. The power behind it was impressive, as strong as anything I’d sensed to date, but Rafe strengthened his shield even as the energies played against it. I tried to spot who was casting such powerful magic our way, but I couldn’t see anyone who looked suspect.
Rafe must have spotted something, though, for he raised his left hand into a fist and a tattoo glowed. Lightning split the morning sky and raked across a group of creatures a few hundred feet back from the front line. When the bolt finally faded from sight, scores of creatures lay unmoving on the ground. In their center was an undamaged circle that contained two creatures that I couldn’t identify at that distance. But obviously, these were the wizards who had attacked us.
“There you are,” Rafe said.
He pointed at the figures and then waved his right hand as if in greeting.
The only response was another wave of energy washing over Rafe’s shield. It did no damage to us, but three of the orcs closest to us burst into flames and turned to ash in seconds.
“Maybe we should just stand in the middle of everyone and let their misses kill off their allies,” Rafe said with an evil chuckle.
I didn’t see anything funny about our situation, but Rafe was the experienced one. If he found this amusing, who was I to gainsay him?
I spotted a fiery streak arching down from the layer of clouds a thousand feet or more above us. It was one of Rafe’s meteors.
Rafe was already loading a third iron ball into his sling when the first one impacted the wizard’s shield. The ground heaved against our feet, knocking more orcs from their mounts and causing dozens of the winged beasts to take to the air. A small mushroom of fire and debris rose from where the wizard had stood. When the wind moved it away, there was nothing but a crater where the wizards had stood.
Releasing another metal ball into the sky, Rafe performed his Cub Scout salute again, held it long enough to get the bullet glowing with energy and then switched to a fist.
Lightning struck the nearest orcs, wargs, and other creatures that had been moving toward us. For a dozen or more seconds, bolts of incandescence played across the creatures. When the lightning faded, dozens were down,
