Cursor's Fury Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Woodcrafting!” he called. “Can’t see him!”

    Max stepped out to one side of the column and barely darted back before p. 22 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.

    The man rose at once and lifted his bow, aiming for the old Maestro.

    Tavi stood, whipped the sling around once, and sent the heavy lead sphere whistling through the air.

    The attacker’s bow twanged.

    p. 23 Tavi’s sling bullet hit with a dull smack of impact.

    An arrow shattered against a tumbledown rock wall two feet behind Maestro Magnus.

    The dust-covered woodcrafter took a little stagger step to one side, and his hand rose toward the quiver on his shoulder. But before he could shoot again, the man’s knees seemed to fold of their own accord, and he sank to the ground in a loose heap, eyes staring sightlessly.

    From several yards to the north came a ring of steel on steel, then a crackling explosion of thunder. A man let out a brief scream cut violently short.

    “Max?” Tavi called.

    “They’re down!” Max called back. “Flanker?”

    Tavi let out a slow sigh of relief at the sound of his friend’s voice. “Down,” he replied.

    Maestro Magnus lifted his hands and stared at them. They trembled violently. He sat down very slowly, as though his legs were no more sturdy than his fingers, and let out a slow breath, pressing a hand to his chest. “I have learned something today, my boy,” he said in a weak voice.

    “Sir?”

    “I have learned that I am too old for this sort of thing.”

    Max rounded a corner of the nearest ruined building and paced over to the still form of the third man. Blood shone scarlet on Tavi’s friend’s sword. Max knelt over the third man for a moment, then wiped his sword on the