The Outcast (Summoner #4)(64)

“Run!” Rotter yelled, turning and sprinting into the fields.

They ran. Sacharissa flattened a path through the grass ahead and it was all he could do but follow her, dragging Elaine stumbling behind him.

They were a stone’s throw into the grasslands now, and ahead, Rotter had turned, his sword extended at whatever followed them. Pushing Elaine behind him, Arcturus stood alongside Rotter, tugging frantically on the crank of his crossbow in his haste to load it.

“Hide in the grass,” Arcturus snarled to Elaine over his shoulder. “And don’t you dare come out.”

He heard the telltale click as the string fell into position and he fumbled a bolt into place from the rattling quiver at his back. It was only then that he allowed his eyes to dart up toward the jungle’s edge, and the horrors running at them.

The bull orcs were charging through the field of corpses, resplendent in great swaths of green paint daubed across their gray skin. Racing ahead of them were their hyenas, four barrel-chested beasts with slavering mouths, baying for blood with every leap across the ground.

“You’ll only have one shot,” Rotter shouted, “so make it count. Wait for it…”

Arcturus glanced over to see Edmund and Alice with their own crossbows pointed, their only other weapons the cleaver and spear.

“Now!”

He barely had a chance to aim before his shot was whistling through the air, and the nearest hyena was tumbling as the shaft hit it. But even as Arcturus whooped in triumph, it was back up and running, the bloody bolt dangling and bouncing from its shoulder as it ran on and on.

“Hellfire,” Arcturus cursed, kneeling to pull out his dirk. From the corner of his eye, he saw another hyena writhing in its death throes on the ground, while another limped and the third raced toward the others. Then his vision was filled with the piebald body of the creature ahead of him, leaping for his throat.

He fell back, only to hear Sacharissa’s deep roar as she met the hyena in midair above him, slamming into it and falling to the ground in a maelstrom of claws and snapping teeth. She was smaller than the hyena, and injured, but Arcturus had no time to worry for her, rolling away from them and to his feet, blade clutched in his hand.

Because beyond, another orc was charging directly at him.

It was almost on instinct that his hand flew up. Swirling the air with the tip of his finger, blade clutched in the remainder, Arcturus sketched the spiral of the telekinesis spell. Over and over his finger circled, while his mind tried desperately to pulse mana through his body.

He could hear the wet slap of the orc’s feet on the muddy field, see its red-rimmed eyes boring into him. His mind was suffused with terror, even as he felt the mana roil in his veins, pulsing alongside Sacharissa’s consciousnesses with jolts of pain, anger and fear.

Still he stood firm, gasping as his finger took on a blue glow. The symbol hung in the air as he traced its outline, then he felt a shudder through his hand as it fixed in place, following the motion of his arm as he pointed it at the orc, now so close he could smell its musk.

His mind twisted as he tried to push the energy through his fingertip, struggling for the briefest of moments, until it suddenly jetted through in a shimmering ball of swirling, translucent energy. He let it gather, even as the orc bellowed, lifting a long, stone-studded club high above its head.

Yelling through the sheer terror of it all, Arcturus unleashed the spell, sending the churning ball of energy directly into the orc’s midriff. To his surprise, the giant orc was hurled back, lifted off the ground as if a huge fist had struck it in the chest. Then the ball imploded, and the giant was thrown head over heels in the air, the force of the blast rippling across its body like a rock thrown into a lake.

Arcturus didn’t stay to watch it fall to the ground, instead running to the still-fighting beasts, following the bloodstains on the grass to where Sacharissa tussled with the hyena. A dozen paces beyond them, Alice’s Vulpid, Reynard, had the throat of its own hyena clutched between his jaws.

Before he had a chance to intervene, he saw Sacharissa had the upper hand, the claws of her back legs scratching the lower half of her opponent to ribbons as their jaws snapped at each other on the ground. Their rolling bodies were moving too fast for him to get a clear blow—all he could do was watch and wait for an opening.

But before one presented itself, there was a scream. Arcturus looked up, and his heart froze. An orc, its shoulder and chest a blackened mess of burns from the battle, clutched Edmund by his throat, lifting him high above the ground as if he were no more than a piece of fruit plucked from a tree. Alice lay some distance away, dragging herself toward them, her face bloodied, eyes dizzy, a cleaver clutched in her hand. Behind them, Rotter and a third orc battled back and forth across the ground, the bold soldier leaping and thrusting, oblivious to what was about to happen.

Arcturus lifted his finger, but the spell had faded, and the mana no longer flowed through his veins. Not enough time. His crossbow lay a dozen feet away, forgotten. Instead, he ran.

The grass snatched at his heels and in those panicked moments it was as if he were wading through molasses. All the while, Edmund struggled and kicked, and the orc laughed throatily as it swung back its club, ready to bring it down on the writhing boy’s head.

Time seemed to slow. Back the arm went, and Arcturus knew he wasn’t going to make it. Instead, he hurled the blade in his hand with all his might, and his heart sank as the dirk tumbled pitifully through the air.