Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3)(13)

Max, in the midst of turning to the war engine, paused. "Um. What?"

"Sweat and muscle only," Magnus said cheerfully. "Everything from harvesting timber to metal fittings. We'll rebuild it. Only the next one needs to be about twice as large, so I'm glad you're volunteering your-"

Tavi got nothing more than a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye to warn him, but suddenly every instinct in his body screamed of danger. "Max!" Tavi shouted, even as he dived at the Maestro again.

Max spun, his sword flashing from its sheath with the speed only a wind-crafter could manage. His arm blurred into two sharp movements, and Tavi heard two snapping sounds as Max cut a pair of heavy arrows from the air with the precision only a master metalcrafter could bring to the sword, then darted to one side.

Tavi put a low, ruined wall between the attackers and the Maestro and crouched there. He looked over his shoulder to see Max standing with his back to a ten-foot-thick stone column that had broken off seven or eight feet above the ground.

"How many?" Tavi called.

"Two there," Max replied. He crouched and put his hand to the ground for a moment, closing his eyes, then reported, "One flanking us to the west."

Tavi's eyes snapped that way, but he saw no one among the trees and brush and fallen walls. "Woodcrafting!" he called. "Can't see him!"

Max stepped out to one side of the column and barely darted back before an arrow hissed by at the level of his throat. "Bloody crowbegotten woodcrafting slives," he muttered. "Can you spot the archers?"

"Sure. Let me just stick my head out and have a look around, Max," Tavi said. But he fumbled at his belt pouch and withdrew the small mirror he used for shaving. He lifted it above the ruined wall in his left hand and twisted it back and forth, hunting for the reflection of the archers. He found the attackers within a second or two-though they had been under a woodcrafting when they attacked, they must have dropped it to focus their efforts on precision archery. Half a second after Tavi spotted them, another arrow shattered the mirror and laid open his fingertip halfway to the bone.

Tavi jerked his hand back, clutching at the bleeding finger. It only tingled, but there was enough blood that Tavi knew it would be quite painful momentarily. "Thirty yards, north of you, in the ruin with the triangle-shaped hole in the wall."

"Watch that flanker!" Max shouted, and flicked his hand around the column. Fire streaked from his fingertips, blossoming into an enormous cloud that reached toward the archers. Tavi heard Max's horse scream in panic and bolt. Max sprinted around the far side of the column in the flame's wake.

Tavi heard a crunch of stone on stone to the west and rose to a tense crouch, sling in hand and ready. "Hear that?" he whispered.

"Yes," Magnus grunted. "If I reveal him, can you take him?"

"I think so."

"You think so?" Magnus asked. "Because once I draw him out, he's going to send an arrow at my eye. Can you take him or not?"

"Yes," Tavi said. Somewhat to his own surprise, his voice sounded completely confident. To even more surprise, he found that he believed it. "If you show him to me, I can handle him."

Magnus took a deep breath, nodded once, then rose, flipping his hand in the general direction of their attacker.

The earth rumbled and buzzed, not with the deep, growling power of an earthquake, but in a tiny if violent trembling, like a dog shaking water from its fur. Fine dust rose from the ground in a cloud fifty yards across. Not twenty paces away, the dust cloud suddenly clung to a man crouched beside a row of ferns, outlining him in grime.