The Archmage Unbound (26 page)

It also barred Dorian from pursuing the
men carrying Penny and Miriam steadily away. He could see someone riding hard
from the tree-line, followed by a string of horses. The abductors had
obviously planned carefully, within moments they would have their targets on
horseback and any chance of catching them would be much smaller.

In a fit of rage Dorian struck at the
metal bars that kept him from following. Although his sword was enchanted and
razor sharp the metal was far too thick to cut through, his blade kept sticking
a half an inch or so into the heavy two inch iron bar. The wizard on the
ground beneath him groaned audibly. “Raise the portcullis!” Dorian screamed,
but he knew it was futile. The sight of the dragon had unmanned the guards.
It was doubtful anyone was within earshot to obey him anyway.

Sheathing his sword, he eyed the iron
portcullis carefully. He knew from experience that it weighed many tons. It
was designed that way to enable it to be dropped quickly in time of emergency,
and its weight was all that prevented an enemy from lifting it. Since the day
he had received the earth bond Dorian had been aware of a noticeable increase
in his strength and stamina, but this seemed far beyond possibility.

In the distance he could see them
loading Penny and Miriam onto the waiting horses. “To hell with what’s
possible,” he said and crouching down he took a firm grip of the bottom of the
portcullis. Drawing a deep breath he began to lift, keeping his back straight
and his arms locked while his legs strained to lift him up. At first nothing
happened, but while he struggled he began to hear a great thumping beneath him,
like a massive heart, beating in time with his own.
Give me the strength
,
he thought.

Something answered his call, for he felt
energy suffusing his limbs and while his face turned red and his body trembled,
the portcullis began to lift. As he came up a long drawn out cry of pain and
effort issued from deep within him, while the portcullis gathered upward
momentum, rising faster as it approached chest height. Not daring to pause he
used that momentum and centering himself under the heavy metal he thrust it
upward above him.

Time slowed for a moment as he held the
massive structure above him, and by all rights the weight alone should have
crushed him. Looking downward he saw the wizard watching him. “If you’re
going to move, now would be a good time…” he ground out slowly between clenched
teeth. Comprehension dawned on the stranger’s face and he began dragging
himself out of the way… leaving a trail of blood behind him.

Once he was clear, Dorian stepped
outward and let gravity take its course and the massive portcullis slammed down
behind him. He looked at the wizard lying on the ground on the other side.
“Let them help you when they finally get over their fear of your ‘dragon’ and
you might live. I want to talk to you when I get back,” he told him. He
wasn’t sure if the fellow was still conscious but he thought he saw him nod an
acknowledgement. The man was in such a bad state he might have imagined it.

Turning away Dorian began to run toward
the group of men and horses that were beginning to ride away. They were over
fifty yards away and he could clearly see Penny being held in front of one of
the riders. Miriam had been slung sideways over the back end of another
horse. He took that as a bad sign, since in general only corpses were slung
across horses like that. If she were alive the position would do nothing to
keep her that way.

Running in armor was an interesting
proposition normally, something usually reserved for very short charges. In
the chain mail that most men wore it was a difficult affair… the weight of the
armor served as a limiting factor. In the plate armor he now wore it should have
been even more awkward, not because of weight, plate actually weighed slightly
less than chain, but because of the more restricted mobility the armor
afforded. Yet again Mort had worked a miracle. The armor was cunningly
crafted and moved very freely with his body. It still would have hindered a
run, but because it worked to augment his own motions it made it feel almost as
though he were running without armor at all.

It still wasn’t perfect however, and it
did slow him down more than running in normal clothes would have. Fifty yards
wouldn’t have been too much for a normal charge, but the riders were now
spurring their mounts to a canter, creating more distance between him and those
he was determined to reach. Hopeless as it was he ran anyway.

Dorian thought of nothing else besides
running. He had never been a great sprinter but being tall and athletic he was
no slouch either. His breath quickened as his legs drove him forward, pumping
rhythmically. A minute passed and still he ran, and the riders seemed no
further away than when he had started. The party ahead of him consisted of six
horses bearing riders and several without a rider; those had probably been for
the men he had slain. One horse carried double, having an armsman plus Penny
aboard, while another carried Miriam alone slung across it like so much dead
weight.

Because of the heavy burden on the horse
carrying Penny and her captor the others were forced to maintain a slower pace,
and incredibly it appeared to be one he could match. He pushed himself harder,
hoping to close the gap though in the back of his mind he couldn’t help but
wonder when his stamina would run out.

Apparently his quarry had begun to
wonder the same thing. Two of the riders, who had brought the horses to meet
the fugitives, were looking backward with incredulous faces as they watched him
run. On the face of it, it was ridiculous… a man in heavy armor could not hope
to keep up with horses, even at a moderate pace such as they were riding at
now, yet he was beginning to gain on them.

Finally with a word to his fellows one
of the riders turned aside and made to intercept him. Drawing his sword the
man urged his mount to a full gallop, charging directly at the maniac following
them. With barely forty yards between them when he turned Dorian’s opponent
wasn’t able to get his horse up to full speed; not that he needed to do so.

Dorian crossed the distance rapidly
while the fellow turned his horse and prepared to ride him down. They drew
together with surprising speed but Dorian never slowed, opting instead to run
straight for the horse rather than try to avoid it. Seconds later the animal
grew large in his view and he could see its rider leaning out to catch him in
the sweep of his sword. Just before they met the horse tried to adjust its
course enough to avoid a collision, but Dorian wasn’t having that and he headed
straight into it.

The poor beast reared as they came
together and he came up under its right shoulder as it flailed and tried to
keep from losing its balance. With a shock he straightened up as he passed
under the horse and drove all of his momentum up and forward; the move cost him
most of his forward speed, yet after stumbling drunkenly for several yards he
was able to regain his rhythm and begin running again. The horse he had struck
was nowhere to be seen but he didn’t pause to ponder that mystery, choosing
instead to focus on catching up to Penny and her abductors. They had gained
several tens of yards in distance after his collision.

Dorian ran on. His breath was coming
heavily now, and he was starting to stagger every so often as he ran, but he didn’t
slow. His mouth tasted of blood and iron while his lungs sounded like a raspy
set of bellows, but he ran on. Those he was chasing didn’t make the mistake of
sending anyone else back to delay him, but he saw Ruth looking over her
shoulder frequently. She seemed surprised at his perseverance, and she didn’t
give the impression that she surprised easily. Dorian grinned at the thought.

Long minutes passed and still his chase
continued. They had turned off of the road near the forest, a mile or so from
Lancaster, and now they were following a small trail. They had probably
planned the route in advance to help avoid any patrols or pursuit, but they
hadn’t counted on Dorian. The smaller trail with its tendency to wander and
the occasional low limb forced the riders to slow even more and now Dorian was gaining
rapidly. He was now within ten yards of the last horse, an unused palfrey
following the rearmost armsman’s mount. The man had wrapped its reins loosely
around the front of his saddle, keeping his hands free while he nervously
watched Dorian closing on them.

The rider’s face was a study in fear as
he watched Dorian draw close, till he was almost able to touch the free horse
the man was leading. Drawing his sword in one economical motion Dorian neatly
severed the left rear leg of the horse several feet from the ground. Screaming
in pain the animal fell and began tumbling; its cries of pain combined with the
jerking of the lead rope connecting it to the horse ahead of it created instant
pandemonium. In seconds the trail was littered with the bodies of both horses
along with the unfortunate rider.

Dorian ignored the carnage and ran on,
though he was forced to leap over one of the horses as it fell. He regretted
killing the horses, but at the time he had only one thought on his mind… the
two people he was charged with protecting.

Ruth rode in the lead, with Penny in
front of her and looking backward she gauged Dorian’s distance carefully. The
look on her face worried him for a moment for it had changed. It was no longer
the face of someone desperate to escape but rather the face of someone planning
their next move. Drawing her sword she cut the lead line that tethered
Miriam’s mount to hers, leaving the unguided horse to drift away. Then she
faced forward again and leaned to the left, stretching out her sword arm, as if
she meant to cut down an invisible foe.

Her action puzzled Dorian until he saw
the rope, which she gracefully cut in two as she rode past, and then he felt
the rumble in the ground. It was one of the oldest and simplest traps, a
deadfall of cut logs piled and braced up and to the left of the trail. Once
the rope was cut the supports keeping the timbers in place fell away and the
logs began rolling sideways across the trail, sweeping horses and men away,
like some wooden tide. The only one that escaped the trap was Ruth… along with
Penny naturally.

The horse bearing Miriam’s body went
down as its legs were swept sideways by the first of the rolling timbers.
Luckily her ‘mount’ had been slowing down already and Dorian was nearly beside
it when the cascade of logs arrived. Leaping forward he caught her as her body
tumbled from its back and without knowing what else to do he dropped to the
ground and tried to shield her body with his own. Chance as much as good
reflexes allowed him to get her onto the ground so he could cover her body with
his own before the rest of the wooden avalanche arrived.

The cut logs averaged more than a foot
in diameter and they thundered and bounced across the trail, sometimes bouncing
over him and occasionally glancing off of his shoulders and back. The impacts
came with tremendous force and Dorian was driven hard into the ground, until he
feared he might crush Miriam with his own body. Then the logs stopped coming
and silence rose up suddenly in the aftermath.

Examining himself he saw that his arms
had been driven into the ground past his elbows, and one knee had gouged a deep
divot into the earth. Yet somehow both he and Miriam were still whole, though
he still was unsure if she was alive or if he had wasted his time protecting a corpse.
Everyone else, both the remaining riders and their horses were strewn, broken
and mangled across the trail. It was very apparent that they were dead, though
one horse was still whinnying pitifully as it died.

Pushing carefully away from the earth Dorian
pulled himself free and shook the dirt loose before picking up Miriam’s still
body. He carried her to the verge of the trail and laid her gently among the
ferns, away from the area the logs had torn up. As he did he noticed blood
seeping down his armor, staining both of his gauntleted hands where they
touched her. Somewhere within the seemingly invincible plate he wore he was
bleeding… probably in several places, though he couldn’t see any place where
the armor had been breached or compromised.

One rider had escaped, Ruth, and with
her she carried Penny. The two of them were no longer in sight but Dorian could
hear the sound of the horse bearing them away. Standing upright he began
walking, following the direction they had gone down the trail. His body had
become a throbbing mass of pain and now that he had stopped running Dorian
wondered how he had managed to do it for so long. Exhaustion and weariness had
taken on entirely new levels of meaning for him.

“Faster… I have to move faster,” he told
himself, urging his legs to move more quickly. Each step was agony but his
legs did seem to be responding, though he couldn’t seem to manage to get past a
fast walk. This went on for several minutes, while the sound of Ruth’s horse
got further and further distant. Eventually he could no longer hear it at all,
yet he continued to walk.

After an indeterminate time, in which
the only sounds to be heard were those of his labored breathing and the noise
made by his armor as he walked, he heard something new. It was the cry of a
horse in pain followed by a heavy thumping sound, as if something heavy had
struck the soft earth. This was followed by the sound of Penny swearing, until
her voice was cut short. Silence followed.