The other troll smashed me into the street.
Only the fact that it had lost its club saved me from a shattered skull. It
loomed over me, back still smoldering, and bared its teeth at me.
“Hrug eat puny wizard,” it growled. It picked me up by my broken
arm, and opened its mouth.
I formed a force lance, rammed it through the roof of the thing’s
mouth, and sent fire rushing into the wound.
For a second it just froze, and I wondered if the lance had gone deep
enough to do any damage. Then the troll’s eyes exploded, and jets of flame
burst from its eye sockets. Hah, let’s see it survive that.
Its hand went slack, and I fell back onto the cobblestone. Then the
troll’s burning corpse fell on me.
I must have blacked out for a moment. When consciousness returned I
was still buried under the hulking brute, but I could hear movement all around
me.
“Weigh them down with those timbers. Quickly now! You, and you,
light the torches from that building. All of them! We’ve got to burn them to ash
or they’ll be back at us in an hour.”
I tried to groan, but all that escaped was a weak gurgle. Too much
weight on me. My ribs had broken again. I tried to push the body off, but I
didn’t have the strength to do more than shift it. Not enough magic left.
“It moved!” Someone shouted.
“Impossible!” Another voice argued. “Look, it ain’t got no brains right
now.”
“Wait, the wizard!” Someone else put in. “I think he was under it.”
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“Gotta be dead,” the second voice countered.
“I’ll check,” said the main who’d been giving orders. “You men, get
that timber under its shoulder and lift.”
There were a few moments of cursing and straining, and the weight on
my chest moved. One side of the troll’s body lifted a few inches off the
pavement, giving me a view of booted feet and a burning building in the
background.
“Hold it steady, boys,” the commander ordered. Then a face appeared.
One of the knights I’d seen with the Baron when I first arrived in Lanrest.
I tried to talk, but all I could do was gurgle. There was blood on my
lips, and more in my lungs. I needed to get out from under this thing, and let my
amulet work for an hour or two.
He smiled grimly.
“You look like shit, wizard,” he said quietly. “You going to magic your
way out of this one?”
I shook my head weakly. “G… ouw… hlll…”
He drew a dagger from a sheath on his forearm, and laid it against my
throat.
“Nah, see, I’m Sir Zenon Broz. Cezary is my cousin, and I’m not real
happy about you kicking his ass and humiliating him in front of his men. So you
know what?”
He drew the blade across my throat.
“Fuck you, wizard. You’re freaky magic isn’t getting you out of this
one. Maybe you can heal like a troll, but I bet you’ll burn like one too.”
He backed away.
I clutched weakly at my magic, trying desperately to close the gaping
wound in my throat. My blood ran out over the cobblestones, fast, too fast…
“He’s gone,” I heard Zenon say. “Died right in front of me. Put it down,
boys, and let’s get these things burning.”
Too fast. The last dregs of strength fled from my battered body, and
everything went dark.
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Chapter 12
Someone was crying.
My head rested on something warm and soft. Every now and then a
teardrop hit my cheek. But the rest of me was cold, so cold. I was numb to the
bone.
I tried to open my eyes, but nothing happened.
“We have to go, Tina.”
It was Beri’s voice. Low and full of worry.
“She’s right, girl. There’s nothing we can do now. Our getting eaten
won’t help him.”
A male voice, vaguely familiar. The blacksmith?
Tina sniffed. “We’re all gonna die without him, Oskar. He was our
only hope.”
“Maybe,” Beri admitted. “But we have to try. Come on, now.”
I tried to speak, but nothing worked. Not the faintest twitch from my
limbs. What happened?
A muffled gasp drew my attention.
“Beri! He’s breathing!”
“What? But, that’s impossible Tina. No one could survive that.
Besides, I checked.”
“Put your hand here!” Tina insisted. “Feel that? He… oh, gods. His
heart just started beating.”
I couldn’t feel anything below my neck but the cold. But I heard Beri’s
gasp.
“You’re right. I… I don’t understand. Oh, I wish Miss Avilla was
here! She’d know what to do.”
“We take him with us,” Tina said fiercely. “He’s gonna get better, just
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like he always does. Come on…”
Something jostled me, and darkness descended again.
The next time I woke I was lying under a thin blanket, with a warm
body pressing against my side. Soft, generous curves, and a small but
calloused hand resting on my chest. Tina?
“I’m not taking any chances, Beri,” Tina was saying urgently. “I was
touching him when he started getting better. What if that’s how his magic
works?”
Beri sighed. “I still say that’s silly, Tina. How would touching you
make him heal from… from that. Besides, you need to eat.”
“Take my place, then,” Tina said stubbornly.
Hey, I could feel my body again. I tried to open my eyes, but still got
nothing. Was it that dark, or was I blind? I shifted, and opened my mouth.
“Guuuh.” Well, that didn’t work out like I intended.
“He’s awake!” Tina gasped.
“I can hardly believe it. Milord, we’re safe for now. What can we do
to help?”
“Wa’er,” I managed.
“Of course. Tina, prop him up a little. Gods, those burns must hurt
terribly. Here you go, milord. Drink slow, now, so you don’t choke.”
I managed a few sips of water, feeling absurdly clumsy as I managed
to dribble half of it down my chin. Beri just wiped it away and tried again. The
water seemed to help, and the clumsiness quickly passed.
“Thanks,” I said. “No pain. Got it blocked.”
“That’s a mercy,” Beri told me. “You were burned nearly to a crisp
when we found you, and then mostly frozen. I thought for sure you were dead.
That was just after dawn, and you’ve been healing all morning.”
“It’s kind of neat to watch,” Tina put in. “Are you gonna get all
better?”
I felt terribly weak, but my amulet was still tirelessly working away.
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“Should,” I answered. “Few hours? Where are we?”
Because I could hear the distinctive sound of people walking on
wooden floors somewhere nearby, and that didn’t make sense. If the girls had
decided to hole up shouldn’t we be in the tower?
“We’re hiding at Oskar’s place,” Beri explained. “The blacksmith
you recruited? It’s a good thing you did, because we never would have made it
this far without him.”
I was getting a bad feeling about this.
“Avilla? Cerise?”
Beri sighed.
“Cerise led Oskar’s group back to the tower around midnight. We’d
been up with Miss Avilla watching from the windows, and things were looking
pretty bad by then. A lot of the town was on fire, and the Baron’s men mostly
pulled back into the keep. They both got pretty worried when they found out no
one knew where you were.”
“They argued a bit,” she went on. “Miss Cerise was looking really
scary, all covered in blood with her shadow moving on its own. She wanted to
summon a demon to drive the goblins out of town, but Miss Avilla talked her