Falconsbane seemed to be ignoring both the beasts, his attention fixed on the Shin'a'in. A moment later she knew why, as a flight of arrows sang toward him, only to be incinerated a few arm's lengths away.
Another scream in her ear reminded her that there was equal danger, nearer at hand. Darkwind's beast was holding its own against him now, and even regaining a little ground, its one good eye mad with rage and fixed on its target. Even if Treyvan won his contest, he could still lose if this beast killed Darkwind.
She had to help him, somehow-One good eye-She acted with the thought; dropped one of her knives into her hand from its arm-sheath, aimed, and threw, as one of the beast's lunges brought that good eye into range.
It missed, bouncing off the eye-ridge. The creature didn't even notice.
She swore, and dropped her second knife, as Darkwind slipped on blood-slick rock and fell.
Crap!
The beast lunged with snapping jaws, managing to catch his leg in its teeth. He screamed and beat at the beast's head with his stick, trying to pry the jaws apart, stabbing at the eye.
Suddenly calm, Elspeth waited dispassionately for her target to hold still a moment-and threw.
The creature let Darkwind go. throwing its head up and howling in agony-and instead of scrambling out of the way as Elspeth expected, Darkwind lunged upward with the pointed end of his staff, plunging it into newly-revealed soft skin at the base of the thing's throat, and leaning on it as hard as he could.
The creature clawed at the stick, at him, falling over sideways and emitting gurgling cries as he continued to lean into the point, thrashing and trying to dislodge it from its throat, all with no success. Darkwind's eyes streamed tears of pain, and he sobbed under his breath, but he continued to drive the point deeper and deeper.
It died, breathing out bubbles of blood, still trying to free itself.
Across the stretch of scorched earth, Treyvan had clawed his way up his enemy's back to the join of neck and spine. As Elspeth looked briefly away from Darkwind's beast, Treyvan buried his beak in his foe's neck, and jerked his head once. The beast collapsed beneath him.
Treyvan's battle shriek of triumph was drowned in Falconsbane's roar of rage.
Before anyone could move, the Adept howled again, his eyes black with hate, his hands rending the air as he clawed at it. Elspeth did not realize he was making a magical gesture until an oily green-brown smoke billowed up from the ground at his feet, filling the space between the ruined walls in an instant, completely obscuring everything that it rolled over.
Poison! That was her first, panic-stricken thought, as the cloud washed over her before she could scramble out of its path. There was a hum of dozens of bowstrings as the Shin'a'in loosed their arrows.
But though the thick, fetid smoke made her cough uncontrollably and brought tears to her eyes, it didn't seem to be hurting her any. She reached out a tentative Mindtouch for Gwena.
"I'll be all right," came the weak reply. "Don't move; the nomads are still shooting." And indeed, she heard bowstrings sing and the hiss of arrows nearby.
But not a great deal else.
"Darkwind?" she called. "Are you all right?"
"As well as may be, lady," he replied promptly, pain filling his voice.
He coughed. "Stand fast, I am going to disperse this. I have enough power for that, at least." A moment later, a fresh wind cut through the fog, thinning it in heartbeats, blowing it away altogether as Elspeth took in deep, grateful breaths of clean air and knuckled her eyes until they stopped tearing.
She looked first for Falconsbane; he was no longer there, but where he had stood were dozens of arrows stuck point-first into the earth-and leading away from the place was a trail of blood.
That was all she had time to recognize; in the next moment, a surge of powerful energy somewhere nearby disoriented her for a moment. She might have written it off as a spasm of dizziness, had she not seen Darkwind's face.
He stared off into the ruins, his mouth set in a grim line.
"He used the last of his energies to set a Gate-spell back to his stronghold," the Hawkbrother said, bitterly. "Shaeka. He has escaped us."
*Chapter wenty five
This isn't finished yet.
Tension still in the air knotted her guts like tangled yarn. And it wasn't just Falconsbane, either. Something was going to happen. There was unfinished business here-but whose it was-she couldn't tell.
The trail of blood ended in a little pool of the sticky scarlet, directly in front of an archway in a ruined wall, or so said the Shin'a'in who had followed it to its end. There wasn't any reason for them to lie, and although they did seem a bit too calm and detached for Elspeth's liking, she assumed she could trust them. Darkwind apparently did. He made no effort to see for himself, but simply allowed the Vale Healer to continue working on him, although his lips moved with what Elspeth suspected were curses.
Elspeth swore under her breath herself as she tested Cymry's legs for any more damage than simple bruises and sprains. Skif's Companion was suffering mostly from shock; somehow between them, the Companion and Darkwind had managed to shield Skif and herself from the worst of Falconsbane's blows. That was nothing short of a miracle.
Gwena's talon-punctures had been treated, and would soon heal completely on their own. She was in pain, but it wasn't as bad as it could be, and she said so.
Skif was in the hands of one of the Shin'a'in, the one who had introduced himself as the Tale'sedrin shaman, Kra'heera, and who had seemed oddly familiar to Elspeth. Skif had evidently suffered no worse than a cracked skull that would keep him abed until dizziness passed, and several broken ribs that would keep him out of the saddle for a while. He was unconscious, but not dangerously so. Nyara had satisfied herself on that score even before Elspeth and had taken a place by his side with Need in her hands. Since the blade's Healing power was working on the cat-wornsin's hurts, and might well aid Kra'heera's efforts with Skif if Nyara managed to persuade the blade, Elspeth saw no reason to take it away from her.
She herself had gotten off lightly, with scratches and cuts; but Darkwind and Treyvan looked like badly-butchered meat. When Hyd na had flown limpingly into the Vale to fetch help, the Vale's own Healer had timidly come out of protection to treat them and bandage them, then had scuttled back to safety like a frightened mouse. Elspeth didn't think much of him; oh, his skills were quite excellent-but she didn't think highly of any Healer who wouldn't stay with his patients until he knew they were well. Darkwind saw her thinly-veiled scorn, though, and he'd promised an explanation.