Fall of Angels (The Saga of Recluce #6)(171)

A firebolt hhissssed past Nylan, its heat skin-searing. The wizard had reappeared beside Gerlich, who waved the big sword in Nylan's general direction.

Another firebolt flared across the distance between the mounted groups.

Aeeeiii!

The sickening scream was cut short, as if by a knife.

"Aim for the wizard!" ordered Nylan, and almost immediately several shafts arrowed toward the white-clad man.

Nylan could sense the white wizard throwing up some short of shields, and parts of the arrows flared into flame. The arrowheads tumbled forward untouched.

"More!" snapped Ryba. "He can't use his powers while cold iron's flying at him."

How did Ryba know that? wondered Nylan. It made sense, but how had she known?

HHHssstttt!

Another of the wizard's firebolts flared toward Ryba, and she raised her blade and half ducked, half parried it.

"To the tower!" ordered Gerlich, spearheading a wedge of horsemen aimed slightly to the left of the center of the guards.

The invading horsemen charged forward, and the wizard vanished. Nylan extended his senses, probing for the wizard ... and finding him behind a wall of unseen white. Maybe . .. maybe, he could do something like that, or figure out a way to break down-

"Nylan!"

At the scream, Nylan blinked, then lifted his blade as a bearded armsman bore down. The engineer wanted to turn and flee, but he'd just get himself cut down from behind.

Nylan barely managed to get the blade up to deflect the smashing blow, and his entire arm ached. He urged the mare sideways, raising his own weapon again, and hacking the bearded man, who caught Nylan's blade with the big crowbar. Again, Nylan's arm shivered, but he actually gouged a chunk of iron from the huge sword.

He wished he had had the time to try his shield idea, but the armsman brought the huge blade around in a sweeping, screaming arc, and the engineer was forced back in the saddle. He could no longer see what else was happening, though he could feel the lines of white-red force flying toward and around Ryba.

Almost automatically, as the attacking armsman overbalanced, Nylan felt the moves that Saryn and Ryba had drilled into him taking over, and his blade flashed-once ... twice.

The bearded man's surprised look stayed on his dead face, even as the white shock of his death shivered through Nylan.

"Move, ser! Move!"

At the sound of Huldran's voice, Nylan forced his eyes back open, despite the needles of pain that shivered through them, and weakly lifted his blade. Three guards had swept in before him and seemed to hold back twice their number.

His guts churned, and his eyes burned. His arm just hurt.

Another armsman rode up, circling toward Huldran's blind side, and Nylan, again mostly reacting, threw the heavy balanced blade, and immediately grabbed for his second blade.

As the thrown blade sliced through the armsman's chest, Nylan's fingers groped for, and almost lost, his other blade. For a moment he sat on the mare, paralyzed, knives of liquid lightning stabbing through his eyes, and lines of ionized fire streaming down his arms.

He forced his blade up, but, for the moment, it wasn't needed. The last armsman attacking Cessya wheeled his mount, turned, and started to flee. Cessya threw one of her blades through his back, then rode after the trotting mount to reclaim it.

HHHssttt!

Nylan's stomach churned as the ashes that had been Cessya flared into the morning air, but he forced himself to turn the mare toward the white-clad figure and raised his remaining blade. "Let's go."

Extending his perceptions again, ignoring the fire that ran through his body, he let the mare trot forward, afraid a run would jolt him right out of the saddle.

Huldran rode on his right, Weindre on his left, and two others he didn't look back to identify slightly behind.

Another firebolt flared, but Nylan raised his blade, using his senses somehow to deflect it.

A third firebolt slammed at Nylan, cascading around his blade, and almost singeing his hair.

The engineer felt as though he were riding in slow motion, but he kept moving, holding the blade like a talisman, ignoring the soreness in his muscles as he and the guards narrowed the distance between them and the wizard.

Two firebolts, in quick succession, flashed toward them, but Nylan, with his senses, eased them aside.

As the white wizard saw the guards beating their way through the armsmen, he glanced left, then right, and squinted.

Nylan could feel the sense of distortion, the wrenching feeling twisting at his sight, and he fought it, muttering under his breath, "I will. I will see what is. I will . . . will . . ."

His head seemed to split as unseen lines of fire stretched from the wizard to him, but he held firm, his eyes blurring, only knowing that the wizard's defenders were melting under the flashing, often crudely hacking, blades of the Westwind guards.

Suddenly, the wizard turned his mount and started to gallop away. Two blades flashed through the air. One struck, almost a glancing blow, Nylan thought, but the wizard almost seemed to disintegrate.

"Get those blades!" ordered Huldran.

Nylan, ignoring the blinding knives that accompanied each glance at the bodies strewn across the area around the fields, and the gash in his arm that he had not even noticed before, urged the mare toward the knot of armsmen besieging Ryba and the guards around her.

As the two guards reclaimed their blades, Huldran, Weindre, and Nylan rode over the corner of the bean field toward the dust-shrouded figures struggling in the mid-morning light.