“That won’t be a problem,” Magda said. “I hit Torin with a tracking spell. I’ll be able to determine his direction and distance with a simple incantation anytime I like.”
“How long will it last?”
“Several weeks, certainly long enough.”
“Well, that’s the best thing I’ve heard all day.”
Chapter 16
The horse’s tracks followed the road and it looked like he was being run ragged. Confirmation came when they found the animal, collapsed and left to die where he fell. Abigail shook her head sadly, kneeling next to him. His body was still warm.
“They’re not far, maybe an hour or so ahead of us.”
Magda nodded, muttering a few words under her breath. “About a league south,” she said, looking up at the steel-grey sky. “Only a few hours of light left.”
They moved quickly, pushing themselves to cover greater distance, but as fast as they were, Magda reported that Torin remained a league out of reach.
“Why didn’t she bite Torin’s guards?” Abigail asked while they walked.
“That’s hard to say. It could be that her venom is limited and she used so much of it to turn so many soldiers back in the city that she didn’t have enough left. Or it could be that those charmed by venom lose some essential aspect of their free will, making them less useful to her in a fight. The truth is, we don’t really know for sure how their venom works.”
“Do you think she’s bitten Torin?”
“I doubt it. Over the years we’ve done what we could to gather information about the Sin’Rath without violating our truce. It seems that they don’t bite those in positions of power whom they wish to influence. Instead, they reserve their venom for those that they deem expendable. I suspect that the influence of the venom diminishes one’s ability to think rationally and thereby diminishes one’s usefulness.”
“I hope you’re right,” Abigail said. “She should be dead. I put an arrow right through her head. If that won’t kill her, what will?”
“As I said, she survived your arrow because of a very powerful constructed spell. One that I’m quite sure she hasn’t had the time to replicate. Another such well-placed arrow would be the end of her.”
“I’ve seen a lot of things over the past year, but that swarm of locusts made my skin crawl.”
“It was disturbing.”
They walked on in silence, the forest to their left thickening and eventually overtaking the rangeland that had bordered the road on their right, creating the effect of a tunnel with a ceiling of fir boughs. Magda stopped a dozen feet before entering the gloaming pathway before them, her eyes narrowing.
“What is it?” Abigail asked, unslinging her bow and looking around warily.
“I’m not sure. Something’s not right here.”
“It just looks like a forest road to me.”
“Yes, but …”
An arrow whizzed past Abigail, grazing Magda on the shoulder, her riding armor deflecting the shaft but not before it managed to cut a shallow gash across her outer arm. She cursed, then began casting a spell.
Abigail nocked an arrow, searching the woods for any sign of movement. A rustling in the bushes caught her attention. She fired blindly into the foliage, eliciting a cry of pain. Three men emerged from the woods, two charging toward them while the third walked around in a circle, trying to reach the arrow sticking out of the back of his shoulder, yelling in pain with each attempt.
Abigail dropped her bow and drew the Thinblade, swinging it wildly to ward off the man charging at her, cutting him in half from the ribcage to the shoulder with one stroke. His torso fell into her and nearly knocked her over, staining her armor with blood.
The other man ran headlong into Magda’s newly erected shield, bouncing off it in stunned amazement, then turning toward Abigail with almost desperate urgency. She pointed the Thinblade at him and shouted, “Stop!” but he charged right into it, impaling himself on the blade while still trying to stab her with his dagger. She spun away, drawing the Thinblade through half of his torso and narrowly avoiding the blade plunging toward her.
The third man had fallen to the ground and rolled onto his back, breaking the arrow off with a horrific scream before staggering to his feet and advancing toward Abigail with a knife. Magda knocked him over with a force-push. His landing stunned him for just a moment, but then he scrambled to his feet and charged again, wild-eyed and driven by something unnatural.
Abigail clenched her teeth and set herself to meet the attack, sidestepping to her right and spinning, lashing out with the Thinblade. A foot of the magical blade passed through the man’s upper arm and his chest, cutting through his heart and lung. He fell in a heap, bright red blood gushing from his wound in decreasing surges until the ground beneath him was soaked red.
Abigail’s heart was pounding in her head from the sudden violence. She searched the darkening forest for more threats, but the calm of the late winter day settled over the battlefield in stark contrast to the carnage scattered across the road.
“How did you know?”
“I cast a number of spells every morning as a matter of course,” Magda said. “One such spell warns me when danger is near … at least most of the time. As with everything else in life, spells sometimes fail.”
“Well, I’m glad it worked today.”
Magda knelt next to one of the dead men, pulling his collar down and nodding to herself. “He was bitten.”
“Three dead … and all of them innocent.”
“We should proceed with caution,” Magda said. “These are probably not the only men she’ll send against us.”
“I wish we had time to bury them,” Abigail said.
“As do I, but every moment we delay …”
“I know. Let’s at least move them off the road into the woods.”
After the grisly task was done, they continued south, walking briskly into the growing darkness of late evening. When night fell, Magda conjured three softly glowing orbs of light that hovered over their heads, providing enough illumination to travel by without drawing undue attention. They walked well into the night until exhaustion overtook them both.
Morning came much sooner than Abigail would have liked. She was sore from walking so many leagues, but her sense of urgency overpowered any discomfort she felt. They ate a cold breakfast on the move, picking up their pace after their bodies warmed and limbered from exertion.
The forest remained thick and overgrown on both sides of the road as it meandered along a path cut to avoid the ups and downs in the terrain until it came to a stream where it turned and followed the water. Not an hour later, the road crossed the stream over a bridge that looked in need of repair, many of the timbers rotting from the constant moisture. A village was nestled against the far side of the river.
As they approached, a man on a platform in a tree overlooking the bridge blew a horn, and seemingly every able-bodied man in the little hamlet took up makeshift arms and came rushing to the bridge. Pitchforks, shovels, and axes were the most common, though a few had spears, and one, the biggest among them, carried a broadsword. He stepped through the crowd of men arrayed on the opposite side of the bridge and planted the point of his sword in the ground, resting his hands on its pommel.
“You shall not pass!” he shouted over the low roar of the water.
“This is getting old,” Abigail muttered, stopping a step short of the bridge.
“Indeed, yet it does pose a problem,” Magda said. “I count nearly thirty men.”
“And all of them are dupes; not a one deserves to die.”
“Agreed. Perhaps they would be open to reason.”
“I doubt it, but it’s worth a try,” Abigail said, holding her hands up and open in a gesture of peace, while walking to the middle of the bridge. Magda waited on the far side, softly casting her shield spell.
The big man’s eyes narrowed suspiciously but he approached after a brief internal struggle, stopping several paces from her.