The Wizard Read Online Free PDF Page A

his feet, a sword as long as a weaver's beam flashed over his head, red already with someone's blood. He must have found his lance and caught the stallion, because he was mounted again, bruised and badly shaken. The Angrborn roared, horses and mules shrieked, and men shouted, bellowed, and groaned. An Angrborn rose before him. Perhaps he rode toward it; perhaps he thrust at it with his rude lance; perhaps he fled. Perhaps all three. The image remained in his mind, bereft of fact. Abruptly, there was a servingman in the saddle behind him. The reins were snatched from him, and they were riding away, streaming from the fight with twenty or thirty more; my knife was crooked on the end of Toug's staff, crooked and dripping, a drop striking him in the face as he raised his staff and the stallion dropped to a weary trot. He twisted and snatched the reins, wanting to say they were running but must not, that they had to fight again and win; but the servingman hit him on the ear, knocking him into a night in which there was no more fighting. When he was able to stand, he saw scattered, frightened men with bows. There was no dooming cloud of arrows, nothing that would fit the descriptions of battles he had heard. An arrow flew now and then, as a lone bird flies at twilight, a faint singing in the empty air. To the north, the lofty figures of Angrborn were making off through a field of millet, man-high millet that betrayed the presence of the animals they drove by frantic, irregular motion. An arrowhead of gray geese passed over animals and giants, three birds on one side of the leader and two on the other, creaking like rusty hinges as they rode a cruel wind. Their arrow seemed more warlike and more apt to be effective than those shot by the men with bows. The giant king was letting fly geese from the ramparts of his castle, Toug thought, a castle like the one he had seen when griffin fought dragon above the clouds, although doubtless larger. Almost idly he looked farther, shading his eyes, to where twono, four pinpricks of scarlet appeared along a range of brown hills. Darker against the darkling sky, a mounted man bent as if plucking something from the grass. He straightened, and held a light smaller than the blossoming scarlet that made his mount sidle away. Rising in the saddlean act scarcely discernible at such a distancehe cast the lesser light west, a spark arcing high against the cloud banks. A moment later, he wheeled his mount south, toward Toug. Driven by the wind, the crimson lights raced as fast as he; a breath, another, and the pungency of smoke. Hardly a bowshot away, the Angrborn halted and seemed to confer. One pointed. Garvaon was galloping toward them sword in hand, with Svon keeping pace and soon outreaching him. Toug began to run, shouting he knew not what and waving to the men behind him until a brawny arm scooped him up and plumped him down on the withers of a loping mule. "Ya ain't got nothin'." Uns' head was below his own. "Ya ain't got no sword nor nothin', 'n dey'd kill ya even if ya had dat sword ya talk about." Mules and horses were streaming toward them through the millet, animals driven as much by the thunderous shouts of the Angrborn as by the fires the Angrborn feared. Struggling to control his own mule, Uns relaxed his grip, and Toug slid off, rolled, and sprang up. He found no dropped weapons, but he ran forward, dodging left and right to avoid panicked animals and buffeted by the loads they carried. He had nearly reached the nearest giant when a great dark beast sprang upon itToug glimpsed fiery eyes and a ravening maw. In a moment the beast was gone and the giant lay dead at his feet. There was a knife in the giant's belt, a knife with a wooden hilt as long as Toug's forearm and a blade twice the length of the hilt. He drew it, and though the grip was too big for his hands, it narrowed at pommel and guard enough for him to grasp it as he might have gripped a quarterstaff. Smoke left him weeping and